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

sit down beside me for a while
even if it hurts
there are packs of stray dogs in my mother's smile
nothing's gonna hurt my father's fists
darkness comes with soft paws and no affection after ******
they refused their bodies such
that I had to not lose sight of the corpse of morning
I caught my eyes simply falling
waiting for the birds of prey
to tell their truth in our cage
what does it mean, you know, to have a soul

sit down beside me for a while
in this impossibly empty room
our flesh needs words

writing love songs about an invisible lover
who hides deep down in the goodness of life
who's presence you discern in the Beautiful
is a poets dream come true over and over again.

My list of goodbyes for this year
Have been extensive and excruciating

I've lost more than I've gained

Every goodbye was difficult
Tearing at the hem of my humanity
My sanity

I've lost more than I've gained

I feel so much older and harder
Yet none the wiser
Just More broken

I feel I like I've lost

Every goodbye is etched into the crevice
Of my ever in creasing in stone hardening heart

And yet it weeps
for what it refuses to let go

Ive lost

Standing, in the gathering darkness
in the fading light of the bleeding sun,
Hooded and cloaked,
amongst the dying trees
Golden cursed tears of scattered forever,
Falling from white eyes,
ringed in black
Decisions to stay held
aloft,
A leaf blown through out time on the breeze of
Eternity
Or,
To wake a heart, cursed with forever
Knowing
That the bearer of such a cursed heart
Will fade, as the colour of a rose lain upon an immortal grave
Dying trees can't speak
and reflections held in mortal tears
Evaporate~A

I enjoy the place your poetry takes me
your art is undeniable

a place in the Universe I never guessed existed

-unfolds in my soul when you sing it

We could have been lovers
our bodies hungry for the *******

our souls riding the outer stars
where new worlds are created


I enjoy your poetry, and the place it takes me
I am forever wondering

wandering along the hidden paths
of your soul-sense poems

the songs you sing
and leave me

leave me a better person
than I could ever have imagined.

I write not because i seek your truth,
i just do - for someone who seeks
understanding in all the doors we see.

I write not because i seek your pity,
i just do - for someone who seeks
understanding in all tough roads we
go through.

I write not because this is a job,
i just do - for someone who seeks
relief to the burden he has not
spoken out loud.

© pax