He said I always write sad poems
who I am with you,
is really who I am with my writing
I tell it like it is. I always say what I mean
It might be the poignant anxiety of my mind

I observed people, observing them make me
Wondered about their lethargic self-control over their own life
If it’s not about health, it’s about their love life  
Believe it or not, watching them helps me
Get through a rough morning:
When I compose their pitiful stories,

It gives me an adrenaline rush, so I unwind
With a paragraph or two, dropping my ideas here and there
While I pondered about their state of mind
I learn from their mistakes, I bottle them in an old Mason jar

And I move on to my next subject, and that would be
The images and faces of Political madness
in two thousand and seventeen

My followers, my friends!
The Liberal minded is dragging us down minute by minute
Yes, I love to write about sad things
That fetter me. The dead can’t write about them
The fearful are too afraid to speak up,
A good rehab center is so hard to find,  
No wonder they had to make marijuana legal
So I had to touch on certain subject before I die
Their isn’t love in the world today
The little that is left, someone wants to buy it

Self-respects and self-esteem, we must try to distinguish between the two my friends

Staying silent is like a slow growing cancer to the soul and a trait of a true coward.


,

here we write our epic
from first post
to last bugle fading
and all your readers
throw in a handful of dirt
the day you stopped singing
and turn away to their bowers
to continue in this stranger than fiction endeavour
writing out their hearts and minds one big poem stitched together

My heart's floundering
Unwilling to trust my mind
And its perceptions

Q: Why should I care for dance competitions or cupcakes or make-up or grades?**

A: Because otherwise, there is nothing to distract from the futility. Nothing to obscure the purposeless fatigue. No vines to ensnare your ankles. Nothing to bind you to the cold earth and spinning tides, becoming all too easy to unstrap your wings and run from the roof, no longer forced to fly.

Without the superficial, I would have already died.

In the old part of town
There are still cobbled streets
And at one time
These streets were surrounded
By living working mills
Marking the towns heartbeat
Twenty-four hours a day
Seven days a week
The machines hammered the air
As the flying shuttles were cracked
From side to side of the weft
On more than a hundred looms
It sounded like a battlefield
And some would say it was

But that was long ago
And now the mills are dead
The buildings still stand
But inside they are broken
Housing many more
Modern endeavours
And in one of these old buildings
Within the same crusty bricks
There's another world that lives
In the dark hours at least
There's a night club that throbs
To the sound of bands playing
Different rhythms for the town
And the neon lights outside
Shine on the same old cobble stones

                                        By Phil Roberts

I am a musical note in a guitar
Waiting for the touch of dexterous hands

I am a chrysalis under a paling leaf
Waiting to be turned into a butterfly

I am raw ore in the far depths of the mine
Waiting to be extracted and purified

I am a smoldering piece of coal in the hearth
Waiting to be blown into a flame

I am a rough stone under the Earth’s crust
Waiting to be hewn into a diamond

I am an antique piece long buried in the soil
Waiting excavation to become a treasured exhibit

I am a piece of canvas fixed on the easel
Waiting for the touch of a master artist

How I long to transcend my rawness
Into something better and refined

But can I do anything wholly myself
Never! Everything depends on others will too

I discern I am only a flickering shadow
That has existence only if there is light!

I have so many musings
my hands they are complaining,
cuz I can't get them all right,
an so quickly jot them down,

An I feel that I'm connected,
to all my friends and my dear neighbors
an all that I can hear is just is that sound!

Of sweet snowflakes as they're falling,
in the silence sweet n pure,
an so softly as I hear them,
touch the ground,

An soon I'll imagine,
oh a winter wonderland,
in a covering in all you see around,

Those lovely floating wisps,
are so intricate-amazing
those parachuting sprites,
here they abound!

If you ever catch one close up,
well you really really oughta,
cuz the labyrinthine in sight
it will astound!

They are happy little ships afloat,
with an octagonal shape,
landing on all  life,
once sorely browned,

Every child and adult,
is now looking up in awe,
as there smiles turning up ,
instead of frowned!

I thought that I was lost,
an I'd never get to see,

but in poetry it seems-
that  I am found!

Ma Cherie © 2017

I move the pen
let it bleed
pinch out more life
yes - this is hemo-
camouflaged in black
camouflaged in black

falls on the page,
tumbles, rolls across
the eyeballs
and the gray matter is eased
of unwanted and unknown images
emptying
created out of black and
my ready hand
still steady
still steady

Cramming the words and letters
across this barren wasted papyrus
ancient scroll
for pharaohs and scholars

3 ringed and blue lined
receiving the unwanted, unwarranted
the wood block of
uncontrolled mind

Insistent
the blood
that rushes from heart to
feet and up again to brain
out my restless hand
camouflaged in black
camouflaged in black

Onto the desert
onto the Waste Land of Elliot
briny tavern of James Joyce
and black coffee pots of Thomas Wolf

Bleeding, in need of a tourniquet
medical attention
or at best psychosomatic drugs
control this outflow
stop the nonsense
it serves no purpose

bleeding out your sanity
proving you have lost it.
uncontrolled and deranged
wandering  running from
the bogey man
the bogey man

Who comes out of the dark cellar
quite near your little bed
with its pink flowered coverlet.

and the blood leaks out the
end of this instrument of
Terror
In the shadow of Stephen King
I make my stand
only poets get to say
things people can't grasp
The rest do graphic violence
camouflaged in black
camouflaged in black
their blood too
camouflaged in black.