Death patiently files his nails
And smokes a casual cigarette
Grinning and eyeless
He says so calmly
"Catch you later
Brave little dreamer"

Despite such brittle certainty
Men and women build
Despite such small mortality
Every space is filled
In the midst of death's destruction
Men and women build again

Fear, like a cringing bowel
Exudes an acrid stench
And whimpers and whines
Simpers and cries
"Don't you dare
Don't you ever dare"

Despite this clinging dread
Some will need to dare
Despite the bursting head
Dreams insist on birth
In the midst of our stupidities
Something wondrous strives

                                    By Phil Roberts

If a man sees beauty
And approaches with intent
He soon retreats
In fear of brains

If a woman sees brains
And approaches in fellowship
She soon retreats
In fear of beauty

- Lonely

What memories old photos hold,
Inside the creases, beneath the folds,
Friends whose names I cannot mine,
Stirred feelings, mix and intertwine.

Faces, smiles, our eyes star bright
First loves, best friends, love in hindsight,
Cocky, loud, such laughing fools,
Long hair, bold flowers and way too cool.

Three wishes offered I’d take one,
To live again, let life rerun
To be that boy in time again,
To passion all and youth regained.

Archie and Gigs,
Slow dancing, toes touching,
Maybe what,
The tenth Christmas song in a row,
Peanut shells crunch under their soft shoes,
The bar clock slips past midnight,
Her arms in a loose noose around his neck,
His hands on that perfect powder puff *** of hers,
Sentimental embezzlers,
God he loved the feel of her cheeks in his hands,
Made him feel like he’d achieved something
With this pathetic life of his,
Didn’t matter how bruised he was,
When she walked into the room,
He smiled,
Every **** time
And well *******
If that weren’t the signature of love,
Then ,as Archie often said,
He would eat pigeon crumbs and throw his shoes in the East river
And although nobody could quite figure what he meant by that,
Gigs knew he’d sooner stop breathing, than miss one dance with her,
He’d rather live in the trunk of a car full of spiders and bats,
(Which he did one early weekend to prove his love to her,
Archie said love had to be demonstrated or it was just phony *******,
Anybody can say stuff Archie said but a real man always takes action)
,
And harsh truth, she was ****** hooked
On the old ******,
Her poet , her man, her rare and rough ,
It just felt too **** good to see that smile,
That twinkle, the sly eye and his hands fit her *** perfectly
So could there be any better proof
That they were they.

One more Archie asked
And Gigs did her sigh with the horse flutter at the end
And Archie, smiling like a buzz saw
Lifted her off her feet and knew he was alive

If I cannot run, I will not fall,
If I cannot kneel, I will not crawl.
If I cannot sleep, I will not dream,
If I cannot wake, I will not scheme.
If I cannot lie, I will not speak,
If I cannot die, I will not weep.

Should we enjoy life while others suffer.
Right now all us know there are horrors beyond words
Occurring in this second.

A girl child is being ****** to her death,
Buried up to her neck in dirt, while grown men
Throw heavy rocks at her head,
And gossip amongst themselves,
Until they fracture her skull several times and she dies slowly.
Oh they put a hood over her head,
So none will have to look her in the eye.

A boy just blew himself and others to pieces.
A child,
He walked six blocks
Shivering from the chill of final minutes,
The awkward explosives rasping the skin on his hips raw,
Praying to a degenerate god,
Until his uncle presses a button.

A man is being tortured to death
By an adult in a uniform,
A uniform worn with pride by millions,
A uniform stained by hypocrisy and confusion,
And the mud of rights and wrongs.

A mother is watching her child starve to death.
Can you place yourself there,
A single room,
No heat or light, no way to protect your child,
No one to help you, death a constant whisper,
The suicidal despair of watching your child die,
A child who pleads into insanity, for you to help.

Perhaps it is happening only two blocks
From where you sit,
Or two million blocks
From where you sleep and fornicate and wish.
But we know.
We know.
It is happening and
I know
That
You know.

You, the one reading this poem right now,
And I
We know this truth.
So now what?

He learned English.
By rereading
The instructions
The ingredients,
The head office addresses,
The countries of origin,
The nutritional estimates,
And the sizes and weights
Off the back
Of the heat and ready to eat cookie dough packages,
In aisle 5.


He studied the words
And salivated over the contents
Progressed quickly
And memorized the recipes of other
Easy to bake products.
Pictures of cakes and butter tarts in his dreams
A joyful discovery,
The sweet promise
Of the full shelves
In a giant grocery store,
Two blocks from the single room
He made into his home.

He was hungry. Always.
For all things,
And motivated by nightmares of wolves,
Packs of predators in his dreams
And his empty stomach,
Ruled him with a continuous hum,
A sort of tinnitus of his entire body
And so
To spend an hour in the dessert section,
Of a building full to the sadistic edge of its light fixtures
With food,
Made him drift again
And wish for better things.

Eventually he graduated to cookbooks
Second hand bookstores,  
Memorized ‘from scratch’ the recipes of hundreds of dishes,
Crispy potato skins, eggplant caviar, chicken- avocado and tomato soup,
He became a code breaker,
An industrial spy with intent
His focus narrowed by near starvation
Within a year he could recall
And write down
4500 different ways to prepare food.  
Each day he would memorize one or two new recipes,
An exercise
Where he learned measurement and actions.
He taught himself to stir, to ladle, to sear,
And he learned to convert grams and ounces and cups,
He knew temperature equally in Celsius and Fahrenheit,
He learned to sliver, to filet, to carve, and
To put butter under the skin of a guinea hen,
And roast it into a golden delicate anticipation.
Allant knew how to prepare.

On January 1st when all of New York stayed in bed
For a few extra hours
He approached a food truck in Brooklyn,
Whose owner was tired and hung-over.
Using the universal sign language of calm strangers,
Along with his easy charm
He convinced the weary man to let him cook.


Within 15 minutes he had made grilled peaches and split sausages
Over which he poured a light sauce made from
Orange, mango and mustard.
The food truck owner tasted a spoonful
And devoured the magnificent creation in two bites,
The look on his face as if he had seen God.


Allant went from truck to stall to indoor grill
Until line ups went around the block.
He was grateful of course,
Grateful for the hunger,
The night sweats brought on by memories
Of evil beyond belief,

He worshiped his good fortune,
Spoke loudly about freedom as a gift,
Loyalty as a lifelong obligation and
Guilty that the world had given him a chance.
He became
Unshakable in his belief
That others must be helped.
So he made the immigrant promise,

And never for one second
For the rest of his life,
Did he ever refuse a tired man a seat
A hungry man a meal,
A broken man an ear,
A lonely man his comfort,
Or an angry man his smile.
This ,he said, is the dream.