When I was still young and fresh
A million years ago
I walked on edges
Always on the edge of something
Something wild

Bright lights and long nights
Lots of laughter and music
Always music
Singing with the band
Dodging the flying glass
When fights broke out
Howling to the moon
Oh, wild indeed were we

All shadows now, alas
Visions from an addled brain
Pubs, clubs and smoky dumps
Leave no turn unstoned was the cry
More fun than fundamental
And fundamentally flawed, it was
A couple of hours sleep 'fore the day job
With eye-lids stuck together
And walking into walls
But still I wouldn't have swapped it
For all the strait laced straight faced
Wealth in the world

                                 By Phil Roberts

It's because we were built like this
and the crumbling effect is in the design.

A kiss can make lots of things okay,
I've had my fair share of those,

and I've moved through many stages
( butterfly's on pages )
finding
that love is the cutest kind of pain.

but because we're busily about the business
of getting on
we forget sometimes that we need to get off
and chill out.

and when I crumble
which I surely will,
I'll still be.

I wish to age like a wrap-around porch
In a thunder storm,
While generations tell tales,
Sipping drinks.
A porch of blinking stars,
A shelter out of rain,
With ascending and descending friends.

I will age like a tree,
Grow stronger in the wind;
Give shade and shelter to all
Beneath my ring-aged limbs.

I wish to age as a river bends,
Contiguous with all shores;
Floating everyone I know
On eternal waters,
A current winding with no rest.

I will age like a star,
Burning bright, giving light,
Something to reach for.

I wish to age like a mountain,
With secret caves and riches.
And you can rock your soul
Around, over or through,
Solid, snow-capped summit,
Beckoning you.

I will age as the moon,
In stages, full and new;
Each night different,
Unnoticeable fading,
As all who age will do.

The place I came from was known locally
As Apache country
Later to become the Lebanon
I guess you get the drift
Even to this day
Taxis are loath to go there after dark
And nobody blames them

Everybody smoked back then
And most men got drunk too often
Women might get a little merry
When weekend came round
Most men hated their jobs
And many women hated their lives
But everyone carried on
Because it had to be done

In the streets I learned every swear word
Long before I started school
In a place where "****** this"
And "****** that" and worse
Were everyday parlance
Nobody ever mentioned "love"
Oh, don't get me wrong
I know that there was love around
But I only ever heard it mentioned
In the words of popular songs

                                              By Phil Roberts

Your hands spell trouble--paradoxically,
in red bruises that swell and blue
veins that reach outward
past the skin,
searching for something fragile but intangible--like the song
of a rare bird or the color that a peach turns
one moment before ripeness--to cup in your hands
and then preserve
in the wooden box bolted down
underneath your bed--if only
you could figure out how to open it.

The box locks and unlocks
spontaneously
and you were never given a key.

Sometimes you hang from your bed
upside-down
and try to tease the box open with your eyes,
praying to the absent stars that your brain will fall
through to the top of your skull
and click open the lock with its flipped-over thoughts.

You wink at the lock and it winks back,
but does not reveal its contents
and only flirts with the idea of openness.

After a while you swing yourself upright and lie with open hands
until your palms’ little collection of colors and sounds floats toward the ceiling
in an exhale so quiet, it borders on silence.

And you close your eyes,
allowing the darkness to empty your mind
of its divine fullness.

Woman with no
shoes and rag

dress, don't jump from the roof
of your three-story
apartment building,

wait until
it's on
fire.