Edges of shadows
In the corners of eyes
Too fast to see

Is it true
What you see
Is it me
Is it real
You do not hear my voice
Or know the colour of my eyes
You would not know me in the street

And yet
You have seen my soul in words
Those who care to look
Can know my story
My frailties
My vulnerabilities

The curse and the gift
Of poetry


                                By Phil Robrts

for Richard, the boy who narrated life*

Today, leaves are falling.
“One day Aaron will watch the falling leaves.”
The first day of school arrives.  
“One day Champ’s mom will take him to school.”

Life is the story of life, says the narrator.

Life expands. The story lengthens.
The intertwined threads begin to pull apart.

Life is surface and sheen,
laughter, tears, opaque signs.
The story strains after fictive frames,
the hero’s epiphany, the villain’s inner pain,
and undreamt creatures beyond human sense.

And so myth and magic
give form to stories
that we no longer star in.  
New worlds take shape
where the story creates its own life,
an escape from "the shock of recognition."

In time the threads converge again.  
Life’s pattern breaks and needs a new plot.
The stories yield their human meaning—
maybe we were in them all along.

The story ends and life goes on.
Life ends and the story goes on.

a treatise on compatibility this is theoretically
presented
by a linguist with limited trigonometry sense
   and since the heart beats and is 360 degrees
I sought out a tangent to measure her with
    or sine to figure out logically
whether we were compatible
             like functionally
on a straight line or tangentially
    perpendicularly
in degree and cosines or measurement mathematically
similar
then found no co-efficient to portray
her smile
fell out of my array
with nothing else
to equal
her.

Why does it matter the departure?
The first step ends in itself.

The priest puts his trust
In martyrs and miracles
Clutching his rosary and his celibacy
To his bursting breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

The ***** puts her trust
In bordellos and bodies
Clutching her money and her condoms
To her brassy breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

The lawyer puts his trust
In regulations and rules
Clutching his charters and his decrees
To his dusty breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

We each put our trust
In roles and rituals
Clutching convention and convenience
To our timid *******
So humanity continues to walk
Through a series of self-made cages
Every day

                 By Phil Roberts

There's more to a woman than her body and curves.
At the core of her brain is a thunderstorm that rains down wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, flooding the soul of man with love in it's truest form.
There's more to a woman than her physical beauty.  She's a living, breathing, ocean with waves of compassion leaping up from the depths sweeping man up in her current allowing him to swim in her essences that is woman.

Written by Keith Edward Baucum

I’d love to find myself a suit,
drive 12 minutes and
sit on a barstool that won’t
stop screaming,
be able to smoke
inside again,
**** in *******
stained toilets,
push on locked
stalls and trip over
high heels that reach
out from under like
ashes ready to be flicked,
have makeshift conversations
with a 62 year old
old bartender who throws
an ashtray and a glass
of jack on the bar
at 9:12pm every day and
spurns at irregulars,
harlequin nods
at pseudos and
tire at denials,
pay a $13 cab-fare
and let him keep a 20
for listening to me *****
about how I should be able to
smoke inside the cab,
find myself questioning
every single piece I’ve ever
written while spinning
beneath my sheets,
wake to work
and work to 5,
I dont yearn for much
just a kiss for when
I leave and one when I come
home, if she's still up.

in blue depths beyond our sight
day or night, you flagellate flawlessly
as if you had not a care

dare I say you're fleeing
a predator we're not seeing?
or perhaps just at play

in a world Verne created,
a space ahead of its drudging time
perilous, yet sublime

loligo forbesii, I can only imagine
what watery waves you whipped before I had you,
deep fried calamari, on my plate

It’s hard, to express in words
Exactly what we’re feeling
That’s why God
Made poets, so appealing
WIZDUMBs BY JA 640

She said I was history.
Then she said she would give me one more chance.
Then she said I didn’t deserve a second chance.
Then just as I was about to speak.
She said, I mean, who the hell do you think you are.
I was just about to say.
She said, this is definitely your last warning.
I was silent for a few seconds.
Well what do you have to say for yourself.
This is a wrong number.
What.
You’re not speaking to the guy you’re dumping.
Well why the hell did you let me rabble on.
To be truthful, I sort of get dumped a lot by phone, I just didn’t recognise the number.
That’s because you’re all jerks.
Well why don’t I take you out tonight to get over the ****.
Get knotted, consider yourself and the **** dumped.
Got a feeling she’ll phone back later and apologize, and then take me up on my offer, and when she gets to know me better.
She’ll definitely dump me.

We cannot take
a good, hard look
at ourselves
without help;
our own perception
a fun-house mirror,
twisting our foibles
into grotesques.
We become too big,
thinking we loom large
in the lives of others
who could not care less,
or we shrink into nothing,
disappearing from those
who miss us dearly.
Judge, jury and executioner,
we condemn ourselves
as not worthy of the air we breathe.
We cannot take
a good, hard look
at ourselves.
The look is rarely good,
and often far,
far too hard.