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

for a  cute girl  post to get
hearts galore
I just think of all the hard legged
drolls and dredges drooling over her
my girlfriend pointed out to me
how I was more apt to plus a pretty thing
and now that I look at it she was right
and she is pretty too, so I kind of
get jealous , but I see the dudes side , too
how to balance poetic justice on a hard leg is hard
and goes through the small brain first, I get it.

Things get broken
Hearts
Minds
It's no-one's fault
It never is
Not really
Butter fingers and distraction
Without malice or forethought
Things
Like hearts and minds
Slip
And shatter on hard contact with reality

“I have something for you to remember me by,” said Tim.

    He held a little foam Hippo – the lone play animal supplied by the loonybin to patients in need.

     It was brand new – just as every Hippo looked – and I wondered why he’d chosen something seemingly impersonal in comparison to his other, odd gifts.

     However, what he did next made his hippo – my hippo – absolutely ideal. To people like Tim and I, that is.

     For, to my astonishment, he casually took the toy in his hands, twisted, and ripped it cleanly  in two.

     He ripped off its head, which he gave to me, whilst he kept the body.

    I will never get rid of that mutilated, foam hippo head. For he understood what no one else had ever come near.

     In this way – perhaps – Tim and I became synonyms. Synonyms for what ignorant perceptions would later christen ******, or merely, crazy (the latter - coined by those who remain too depressingly colloquial to invent unfounded diagnoses).

     These epithets, catalyzed post personifying such societal taboos as Tim or I committed, follow me still, and have yet to disperse.
  
     A criticaster disaster, personified.

     Yes; in this way – Tim and I became synonymously insane.


•

If we could open up and show what we keep inside, would others like what we would show them? Beyond our false pretenses and fake smiles, what would the world really see? Would all of our frailties be exposed and make us look weak, or would we become more human? Would the ugly and hateful self we hide in the shadows of our heart appear and repulse those who call us friend? Would the world embrace what we truly are or would it shun each of us as it saw a reflection of itself? No one can predict what would happen if our true selves came out. All that we can say for sure is that the world would be a different place than the one we create for others to see.

Open my arms to the bright noon day sun, gasp in awe as butterflies flutter around me. Walk barefoot in the grass and feel the earth between my toes. Step into a shaded grove of trees and listen to a brook as it runs by over smooth aged stones. Step into a shallow pool where minnows dart about and let the cool water run over my feet. Sit on a bed of Moss and smell the damp odors rise around me. Watch squirrels run about beneath large Oak trees, as they play. Sit back against a large cool stone and listen to birds serenade me with melodious songs. Separate myself from the ordinary grind of the daily life that I call progress while immersing myself in natural wonders that are often ignored, an yet exist all around me.

I want you to be in my head, I want you to be in my heart. I want our souls to be one so that we will never be apart. I want to feel your spirit each time I am alone. I want you to join me and make a house a home. I want to finish your sentences. I want for you and I to just be. I want you inside of me, for you are the better part of me.