this is how it will go.

I will go home and take off my makeup,
cleanser,
exfoliant
moisturizer.

I go to chiles to meet alyssa
and talk to the nice waitresses
she sits down and starts talking to
me about her boyfriend,
you know who you would look cute with?
she asks me, I entertain her.

triple digits.  four consonants. She says your name.
I hooked up with him in april, but i think you guys would look good.

This is how it will go.
I will go  home and take off my makeup.

in april? i say.  She scrolls through her phone
I think about how I flipped your indian calendar from March.
yeah, got pretty drunk. Played pool. It just sort of happens.

this Is how it will Go.
cleanser.

I smile and tell her I know you.
we probably would look good together
and the rest that follows is irrelevant,
I think I already knew, I wrote a poem
about your bedspread months ago
but I am not sure how i will go
home tonight with her on my lips
and whoever else, I am not sure
how to trade one person for
another, how that is done
or if it is done if it is
really accomplished


this is how it will go.
exfoliant

so this must be where i am in
the dirt, where everything you
said finally makes sense,
you didn't want to feel
ashamed, guilty or sad
and this is why,
the other girls
you held
all the ones
with fair hair
and soft skin
that you didn't have to
feel ashamed of anyway
because I was just
the background noise
a skin you were desperately
trying to shed or forget
you said you gave me
everything but so did

i

everything that was mine to give
dispersed into other
women.

this is how it will go.

I will go home.
I will not call.

The question is not when we meet our end,
but how, and how does not mean what you think.
Should it be fought, or welcomed as a friend?
To that I say, live to the very brink
however you have lived to now.  Each one
who walks though shadowed days finds their own pace;
some stride, some cringe, some stumble, others run.
What each can handle is what each will face.
If talking seems to help, then speak.  Or you
might soldier on, clad in your armored will.
No one can tell another what to do,
just what they've done, for better or for ill.
The path, if smooth or bumpy, is your own
and should you choose, you need not walk alone.

Lay back in the afternoon sun
Next door's tired child cries half-heartedly
Having worn herself out in the heat
Mother makes soothing noises
As she takes her indoors
And I'm just soaking up the rays
My skin getting darker
And my hair going whiter
I am at peace with my piece of world
Listening to sparrows chattering
And a blackbird serenades
From the top of a nearby tree
As my dog diligently patrols the garden
My eyes closed against the sun
I drift to other places

                                      Phil Roberts

I, (Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself)


how I would, honor this with ecstasy joy effervescent,
the simplest of methodologies, if only I,
reasoned how one safely permits  
to love myself, if only I,
knew how to love an
I

to self love well,
not a university course,
no simple answers like thirst, yet how I thirst,
hunger, burst, curse for this peculiar wisdom, please,
instinct me to navigate murderous shoals of take but give
I

who teaches this to the children?

I, parents, teachers, not ****** or pastors or
TV the great substitute for all of the above,
myself is not a selfie, no glorying got in I,
I, burdensome, never comprehended,
love thy neighbor better, love actually, no mere pretense,
if well executed, perhaps is when the trapeze line is at last

cleanly indistinguishable,

your I, my I,
both wicks will be joined, brighter lit for it,
one flame, one godlike burning, fusing,
with neither consumed, wax fusing,
but teaching easy loving
to explode the
I,

~

9:24am EST
6/2/17
airborne over the Western US of A