A fighting man
and now he's gone
May he never be forgotten
How he led his country towards peace
away from defeat and destruction
Rising above the powers that be
Knocking them down
Muhammad Ali

A poet, a boxer, a comedian
but, mostly a fighter,
One beautiful bad man
If you ask me, we need more of these
I speak of the Greatest
Muhammad Ali

Honesty, I hold back because I'm petrified.

Opening the doors to my heart will show you the result of a warzone & I don't know if you would want to stay.

I've tried to paint a picture of what it looks like from what I've gone through, & they all run. They think I have nothing left to give.

I have the most precious pieces of me left, they're just under the rubble & it's hard to dig through it alone.

All I ask, is for consistence & love; with those two things, I promise you'll encounter the best elements of me.

-j.nas

I know that you know
The pain you're so addicted to
Is not truly an addiction
To being hurt
To being made worthless
To feeling inadequate
It's an addiction to
Consistency
To feeling routine
But I know that you know
It's unhealthy
It's harmful
It's cruel
It's mean
Go find love elsewhere
Somewhere with respect
Somewhere with happiness
Somewhere without pain
I know that you know
It will not be easy
But I also know that you know
You need to do it
Because once upon a time
I was just like you
Addicted to the consistency
Of the abuse

I saw a bunch of poets
on a line
at the Avalon
in San Francisco

They looked so tired
So, I approached them
then stated
"you guys look beat"

but, at a closer glance
they were just ******

Allen was there
with Corso and Ferlinghetti
Bukowski was around the corner
trading his wife for cigarettes

again

Forty-eight floors up, a God’s-eye view

a man practices tai-chi on a tired patch of grass
he is measured, beautiful

families rest under new-green trees
in Yoyogi Park this early spring Sunday

Mt. Fuji rises like a myth, fading
to illusion in the gathering smog.



                                                            A few inches can be an impossible sea

                                                            we sit, silently contemplating discord
                                                            and the meaningless reasons for it

                                                            cherry trees paint the city pink
                                                            while faded petals cyclone at our feet

                                                            tears, fleeting as sakura
                                                            bloom and fall.

Wistfully
Wishfully
My daydream drift
Takes me eye to eye
And hand in hand
On a sunny morning
Somewhere
Settling dust
Step by step
And side by side
There's a tide close by
Responding to gravity
And gravity of sorts
Draws our souls
Fatefully
Inevitably
Together

                     By Phil Roberts

Somehow
the floor isn't
sticky anymore
yet I'm rooted,
stuck in this same
eternal
lackluster state of
having everything
I could ever want

they all wish to be here
while I only desire to hunger
to yearn - to thirst
for the next...