I was always told
"actions speak louder than words"
and maybe that's why I'm always staring at your hands when you speak
instead of listening to what you have to say
and maybe that's why you keep spitting out things
like how gorgeous I am
instead of holding my hand or kissing my cheek
and I've come to the conclusion that
actions don't speak louder than words
because they're both equally meaningless
and that maybe you don't love me
and maybe that's okay

Those rodents that scurry along the house
Tell them I envy them.
I've been asphyxiated by the confines
Placed upon me.
Tell those furry creatures of the night
That I envy their freedom.
I've been fixated on escaping
Yet I ask myself 'how?-
How do you escape what you've-
known all your life?'
Tell those disgusting rodents
That I envy their existence.
So shall I lay upon the back
Of my breathing corpse
Tell my mother
'I have had enough
Of living a life
Much more rigid
And degrading
Than that of a
RAT'.

O thou, my divine, who in thy rule
Dost cradle Death's changeable effect;
Who by withering flourished true
And showered thy love widespread.
If thee, Chatelaine, must bring to ruin
That which she wishes to make prosper,
Then keep thee to this noble ambition,
That your savvy may Death dishonor,
And those moments he would dispatch
Shall go on, his intentions put to death!

This reality, different from yours.
Sandpaper ice-cream cones sold
in engulfed, aflame stores.

This body, tense yet soft
tears underneath
the rub of rope.
My friend's feet swiped
a flailing chair,
And her neck did snap,
feces everywhere.

This sky, wrapped in saran wrap,
becomes pregnant when it rains,
the plastic weighed down by water,
slumps down the aquarium sky,
we slump down as it kisses us,
crushes us, mashes us, thrashes us.

- It all changes here,
from god to god,
from year to year -

Her hips lay like cursive,
pale, promising, pent up
like the shoulders of
an anxious angel.

Her hair a burnt brown,
wrapped around a whatever-count pillow,
like a L'Oréal snake, sleeping sullen,
drifting off into a designer dream,
unsure of this, unsure of me.

I see her as a child --
No, I see me as a child --
No, I see us as children.
This. This surreal feeling I get
when you're around me.
When the world is around me,
vibrating underneath my Toms.
Vibrating in my prescription bottle.
Vibrating between her legs, my ribs.
Between each page, so much is hidden:
my early swearing that my late love
is slowly draining.

We were both wounded when we met
And, like fools
We thought our heat would heal us
And the heat became fire
Consuming us in full flame and blinding smoke
But we are too alike, you and I
Both wild and crazy
With matching dualling tempers
Until healing became fresh wounds
And reasons to part

Now we've been here before
And one time too many
I'm too tired for the battle
If we ever meet again
What you always said will be true
We'll meet in the flames of hell
Good-bye Faded Blue

                            By Phil Roberts