Embers stinging the clouds,
soot settling on a line -

black flake rain
is stirring.

Here is a new sleep,
where I find myself.

Laying in the cascade,
the phone's young flood

assembles your hair -
I'm reminded of my flight

across the salt,
to the place where you are.

This city's graved flecks
are forgotten; I've left them

for a green kingdom
in another pattern.

Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know,
You are too strong to know everything
Too strong,
Can you hear me, too strong,

Do not be afraid of the crowds,
They are too small for you,
Petty muggers,
Hear. how they make noises like  starved  mosquitoes,

Do not be intimidated by knives, when
Your eyes are like gillet match 3,
Listen to your own steps cutting their own steps
Cutting. the dead. Dead. Corners. of the streets.

I turn my face to the light
But the low winter sun
Is shrouded in unmoving clouds
Offering no warmth at all
The trees are stark and naked
Like jagged skeletons
With ragged crows hovering
And the world is breathless

For this winter
This of all winters
The air is crowded and heavy
With the ghosts of the painful dead
Their accusing eyes searching
For those whose negligence
In the blast of a plague
Caused their breathless deaths

                                         By Phil Roberts

I do not love
like the angels

where everything
is white

and we all
have wings

to escape
when things

go bad

I do not live
in the sterile

world where
everyone is clean

and pain takes
her pills

to sleep soundly

I live on the
outside where

lines are always
crossed

and the picture
is never quite

complete

if you take
all that I feel

tonight

and wrap it into
a ball of blue yarn

you could crochet
your own ocean

and drown in me

Blue dregs are hanging
each to each on the line,  

& ash tendons pull
as cirrus takes the stair.

Overflowing night is emptied
in the twine of our sleep,

& we wake, suspended
in our own eye.

There is a silver splash
perched in the bathroom

where the hand finds itself
encased in breath,

a throwaway gesture that drifts
over to the new corner,

& finds shape as your face,
shielded in cloud.