In the morning I awake
With the after-taste
Of a half-remembered dream
And a barely formed face
Shadow of the past
And emotions that last

And some of these dreams
Would make a hero cry
And some of these dreams
No matter how I try
I know will stay with me
Until the day I die

                                   By Phil Roberts

I ache in the places where I used to play. LC*

Silence reigns
in the caverns of song;
the days grow short,
the shadows long.
Where are the flowers,
where is the sun
in the waning days
as the race is run?
Running out
of things to see;
running out
of things to be.
Dreams and lovers
lost and gone
and nothing waiting
further on.
With each new dawn
of each new day,
fewer reasons
to wish to stay.

Old age turns the page . . .
the leaf thrives from underneath
Days are made out
of hollow light . . .
night now remnants
of silence in grief

The air I breathe
once was your life
Yet our blood never mingled
Upon every page turns
the green leaf in air
The binding spine . . .
the trunk's despair

this pain in the middle
spinning, dividing, spinning
there are two points of him

he howls in my dreams
with cold hands in transcendental spaces
like a long absence in an imaginary present

his eyes - two black boxes
recording all the right data
everything more real than necessary
performing the body with toast sensations

he pauses naturally in the dark room
the man with the moon
swallowed
in his heart

Have you ever been madly in love?

The old man broke my reverie.

On the long faded green bench white with bird droppings
he was peering at me through his silver grey beard
looking oddly out of place in that college squire park
where only the dreamers at the prime of youth
would sit between classes to exchange love notes
and steal a kiss when the passion couldn't be reined in.

Have you ever been madly in love? he repeated,
and then as if growing impatient by my silence
mumbled, pausing between words,
like they stung him like thorns
it extracts a price been paying all my life
living with a void no other woman could fill
a commitment that breeds only pain
yet makes me insanely boastful
of being madly in love.

It was recess hour and the benches were being filled up.

How many, I wondered, would still hold hands
when the classes are over.

Love,  be gentle and kind,
take that rusty gun from under
my pillow and shoot me twice
in the heart so I can feel the hurt
from the first time and the pain
from the second again;
but don't bury me in the dirt
beneath your bare feet,
just burn me like the memory
of your brown soles I saw
running away, oh, so long
a time ago, I can't even remember.

There's stuff parents will never know,
The kicks and blows we all endure
To mind, body, spirit and soul.
The run-ins with society,
With the good and the Just for me.
Children should never ever know
Half the stuff they should never know.
The other half I won't tell,
Like the half my kids won't share as well.

Who else knows the stuff I've done,
Alone or with the chosen ones,
Who shared memories with me.
One has died,
One has forgot,
One was always on the spot,
But now stolen from memory's vault:
My recall is true and false,
But the memory now is real,
None here to make appeals.

He knew all of my youth and teens,
Knew my life and all my moves,
My families, old and new;
But his memory is fading too.
It's not forgotten,
It can't be retrieved;
It's lost and can't be found.
These memories now are treasures,
Forever buried underground.

Darkness and cold
press like death
upon my windows.
Each year,
harder and harder
to fend them off.
Slowly, surely,
each winter,
they creep deeper
into my soul.
Light and warmth,
only fading memories
of spring, youth
and you.