We sip our coffee and cream
  and drink our whiskey and beer
Then listen to wolves
   dressed as doctors
     with deaf ears
       and big empty eyes
        and blood stained teeth
Who tell us to dull the pain with pills
  and drown emotions
   in prescription prayers
    refillable
     at the small cost of our souls
And we sit in front of flat screens
  and smart phones and insta-gratification
    and press the illusion of our face
      between pages of a metaphor
        disguised as a book
And the imagined life is better
  than what is really going on
   so we script our day to day lives
     and step into the ring
       and wrestle like big men
         pretending its not just
           another form of ballet
We've doubled down on dumbing down
  and we're losing more than we're gaining
    but we keep spinning the wheel
      and the barrel
        and pulling the trigger
          playing the game
            of suicide
          and Russian Roulette
There is two bullets for every name
  and a bomb of every size
   waiting for its time to go BOOM
     and war is just a business
        for the rich
      payed for by the innocent
       and the ignorant
Death is big money
  and blood is cheap
    pump up the world population
      and the rise of inflation
        keep education at a minimum
          as well as a wage
Keep the poor hunger
  and give them an illusion to hate
    divide and separate
     fear is the season of reason
      needed to segregate and dissipate
       any sympathy or empathy
        or kindness or love
We live in a nation of sheep
  being lead by a pig
   and it sounds like fiction
    but it's horrifyingly real
     and he tweets and he oinks
      and he huffs and he puffs
       and he is just a sad little man
        having a bad hair day
         day after day
The world is watching
  and laughing
    a nervous laugh
Maybe it's nothing to worry about
  maybe I'm just late for my pill
   and my beer and my whiskey
    and maybe I just need a little
      cyanide and cream
       to lighten the mood
        of the black coffee news

In death, perhaps we are like water
making our way ever deeper from sand and sky.
Maybe we fly, linger and hover awhile
and the dream of becoming a bird is real.
Maybe we are stars, floating oceans of night skies
moving toward divine light in swooping waves
pushing upwards through embryonic waters
spilling over the soul
again and again.

Traveling back to humanity
from a place where there is hopelessness
beyond hopeless,
where one believes in God
and will not trust God.
Lost in a spiritual wilderness
for twenty-one days,
by grace alone not forty.
There is no fear quite like
the fear that your fervent prayers
are being ignored,
or put on celestial Hold:
"...your call will be answered
by the next available Higher Power;
estimated wait time is
approximately three lifetimes."
There are times
when I must founder,
battered, shattered
against the reef of my ego,
baptized by drowning in self-pity
before emerging, reborn
on a safe shore in sheltered harbor,
pulled in by willing friends
who miss me when I'm lost.

I felt this primal urge
This trance-like instinct
To set things right
In case I have to leave
Move on, so to speak

So
I took my jaundiced eye
And rolled it from corner to corner
Of this, my situation
And I felt so very small and hard
Lost in largeness
For cynicism is a tight thing
Which allows little movement
A strange kind of chastity

And then, you see
Changes
Honesty demanded that I see more
Grow, so to speak

And oh, my poor sore eyes
See how the children starve
All over this bitter world
This bitter, sickened world
And cynicism did this
Through the slack hands of millions
Who still refuse to believe
That things can be changed

                                    By Phil Roberts