I made my way
Through the raging years
To a certain tenderness
And I've known
A grown man's tears
And the agony of emptiness

And in my time
I have done and seen
More than I could stand
But what was then
And wherever I've been
I'm just another tired man

                             By Phil Roberts

Searching low and high
Open wide of heart
Clear and bright of eye
Kicking around dusty memories
And unintelligible dreams
I've missed something
And something's missing
A precious thing has left my life
A purpose for living
A reason to carry on
A glint of meaning
And a hint of heaven
I've waited and I wait
All to no avail
My inner cynic was right all along
So set a place for me in hell
I'm ready to come home

                        
                       By Phil Roberts

In wings of Amapola
I'm wrapped...a new seed found

Atop round midnight strands
circlets keep my dreams

I'm drunk, intoxicated
spring has poured right through my veins

I sit on dirt side dreams
The desert calls my name
For now, I sit, I wait
I watch through windowpanes

I watch my crystal world
Where butterflies are dancing
And hummingbirds are diving
They dive into white Lilies
then jump into Camellias
While Zinnias wait their turn

The lilacs look my way and tell me, "soon your turn...
Your turn is coming soon"
I smile...all I do
For now, I sit,
I wait... like Zinnias
wait their turn

Tell me something
Anything
Tell me anything to get these thoughts off my mind

It can be a story
What happened during your day
Even things about me

Just tell me something
Anything
Because these annoying thoughts won’t get out of my head

Tell me about how Alice fell through the rabbit hole
Tell me about the people at work
Tell me you love me

Just tell me something
Anything
Because the thoughts are getting louder

Tell me something happy
Something light hearted
Anything thats better than death

Just tell me something
Anything
Because currently I just want to die

Tell me about the good luck you had getting home
About how someone was flirting with you
How your mom called you today

Just tell me something
Anything
Because the thoughts are getting meaner

Tell me about a movie you just saw
Something gross you saw today
Something to remind me about the future

Just tell me something
Anything
Because the thoughts make me want to die

Tell me about how much you love the character and hot he was
About how you picked a grey hair out
How we are going to pick our kids up from the bus stop

Just tell me something
Anything
Because I cant help myself anymore

Actually stop talking to me
Shut up about these things
I cant handle it anymore

Just tell me something
Anything
But you aren’t helping anymore

All I can hear is how you only love me when I’m sad
All I can picture is the other guy being better than me
All I can think about is how you think about the movie while we have ***

Stop telling me things
Anything
Because you’re only making it worse

You only mean it when I am sad
Of course he’s better than me
I don’t blame you

I’m gonna pretend to sleep now
And I hope you stop talking
Because now the thoughts have taken over

How lonely I am today
Tiny speck in all
Empty immensity.

How alone am I today

I wake in this city
This city that didn't bear me
This city that didn't raise me
And yet it's this city that i seek to find something of me
Not in the pubs or the clubs or the karaoke bars
Where revelers conspire to dream and drink to the stars
Nor the cafes where poets and artists in a foreign language create.
Pass the market stalls where secondhand books and vinyls are stacked like freight
It is to the quietened streets of the old town I go
Where i long for the walls to speak once more
To reveal their hidden histories
To help fashion some sense of a man
One unknownst to me, my fathers father whose name I share
A fine skilled seamster, thus a tailor by trade
Not arriving to this city for work on fabrics of nylon and silk
But to stitch and sew the flesh of limbs in a paramedic corps
Another pawn of the Great War under King George's command
Driven only by economic necessity from a penal homeland
Not of conscription, politics or some moral conviction at play
For the price of neutrality is one that poverty simply refuses to pay
Returning home to an Ireland of hostility or silence at best
Medals now lying deep in pockets not proudly pinned to chests
Irish heroes don't fight in a British war for a King's crown
No such stories from father to son shall ever pass down
And now, a grainy photograph, three medals for a sons son to take
A dog tag that bears my name, a number and RC to depict a faith
From a man exiled in his home as a forgotten prisoner of war
To honour a legacy i find myself in this city afar
Asking the same questions of him as to me
Is this city the last place he truly felt free?

Lost games
Longer lost rules
Night-time crimes
Lungs full
Of pungent smoke
Bellies full of *****
And heads full of
Something
And nothing

A kind of homage
To a kind of music
Riding across vinyl
And even crackling shellac
And the dead man's foot
Still taps inside the coffin
Refusing to relinquish
The hard-wired hammer
The outlaw life
Is hard in the dying

                                    By Phil Roberts

I drown in the careless glow of the moon
He bares me an eternal wink
And I sink
in the forever fading,
blue velvet sky
Grasping for the faintest hope of
Reality
The sins I cling to,
make the stars gasp
My face burried in White skirts
As I have the strange tendency
to wear white chiffon
To funerals