How dark and long the night
Growing up in the care
Of you, my mother
Unstable and violent
With fists as fast as your hair-trigger temper
I was very young when I learned to take a punch
And fly across a room with the best of them

But you taught me to read before I started school
And you read Dickens to me for hours
Igniting my love of words and stories
But even then
The storm could crash at any time
"What a quiet, well-behaved little boy.
Isn't he shy?"

But the worst thing you ever did to me
You told a lie as big as the moon
You said that my real father, the gypsy
Was dead
When I met him, in my teens
The world lurched slightly
And never went back to normal
And the worst thing is
I was still too scared to call you a liar

                                              By Phil Roberts

under my blue polo
with the emergency logo
i think there is a hole
in my chest
but i am afraid to look

another deep breath
and another

send the ambulance
to the old lady
who has fallen

what if on further inspection
there really is a hole
in my chest
and i find that i am missing
that big cardiac muscle

i still remember
when he said i was
heartless

The right question should be, "Who's on your mind?"
And the right answer would be you...

gingerly on the knife-point of a problem
my inflated ego slowly was punctured
i heard the hiss of its demystification
in that constricted moment of revelation
a moment that enthused about the demise
of my avid hallucination now laid bare
salvation, the voice of naked truths chanted
is neither in the fig leaves nor in bashfulness
and the humming monotone of desperation
is a boost to candid inactivity and stillness
it is in such big-bore moments that we of
puerile yearnings recognize our childishness
a voice told me to stop tempting fate forthwith
for in truth i was a child with a dangerous toy
and only pampered tutors could stay the course