You pillage our planet for profit
While Fake Fox News snidely jokes
An Inconvenient Truth is made-up
Calling the science a hoax

Climate-denying allies in congress
Big Oil’s purchase-every one
Selling our children’s future for profit
No turning back once it’s done

Rip the last drop of oil from our Mother
Privatise all our Public Lands
Open all wild places to destruction
Blood money into so few hands

Deny all the earthquakes and forest fires
Damage from your chemical fracking
That secret formula legislated
Without a majority’s backing

For those who work to safeguard our planet
I support the Standing Rock Sioux
So many assaults our outrage must save
Bristol Bay-stop Pebble Mine, too

I climbed an ancient mountain up to the snowy peaks. I ascended to where you can touch the sky. In the frigid cold and the radiant blinding sun I looked around for paradise but found nothing but empty barren ground. In frustration I yelled at the sky then heard a faint echo and then the crack of thunder all around. I stumbled and fell to the ground as sheets of ice slid down around me and tumbled down the mountain side. In a snowy haze I regained my senses and stood on sure ground where the ice had been now was bare frozen earth. I had come to the heights of heaven looking for answers, but all I found was cold and an empty sky. Then I turned around and in a blinding moment, I saw a sheet of ice like a mirror, in it I saw my reflection staring back at me. It then came to me that my journey had not been in vain. While I had ascended in search of ancient heroes in another worldly home, instead I saw the truth about myself and who I really am. The heroes of old were not in truth Gods, but more than what people thought they could be.

My words and my poems
Are no more than explanations
And embellishments
My means of expression
For my life is my "art"
It's what I am and what I write
It's why I need to write
To make sense of the things
I've seen and done
And there are times when
I think I've done far too much
Then, in deep contemplation
I realise I could have done more
And that kind of inner debate
And discussion with myself
Are a large part of my life
Which becomes my version
Of something like "art"

                                         By Phil Roberts

There is someone
Who I used to be
When time was young
And skies were free

When great pines towered
Over northern lands
And a man could live
By the work of hands

That world to you
Would seem quite strange
To see rolling forests
Before a mountain range

Now all you know
Is dark steel and grey
The colors of progress
And urban decay

You know not what you lost
And in that is bliss
For I yet remember
The warm sun's kiss

Seven white lanterns
On a mountainside pass
The silver moonlight
Dancing on grass

A cool gentle wind
Blows down from the heights
The rivers above
The great northern lights

The earth here at peace
In reverent tranquility
Ever aware and secure
In its graceful fragility

That those lost be honored
On the mountainside pass
Where they died for all things
So that peace might last