Just like your handwriting
You’re a mess
You hide yourself
By cunning words
Trying to disguise how you really feel
But that’s okay
I see right through the facade
You are the type of guy
Who sometimes cries alone
In his room
The type of guy
Who teases and messes with girls
Making them feel awful
Because it’s hard to express how you really feel
You are the type of guy
Who never shows his inner thoughts
You don’t believe anyone will understand
The chaos in your mind
But that’s okay
I see right through it
I am the type of girl
Who’s willing to put
My heart out there
However
You are the type of guy
Who never sees
A girl like me.

This bed is like a coffin
With a burial each night.
I could tell you where
it all went wrong
But it wouldn't make it right.
I'm never worth
Remembering
You each showed me that.
With your pretentious self obsession
Words that always fell flat.
Each day is long and empty.
I cannot find my way,
So forgive me
Graciously
While I slowly fade away.

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

There are sweet dreams which sometimes lead
To sadness and pain which sometimes bleed
Into a strange and eerie beauty
Causing the heart and soul to swell
Hovering between heaven and hell
And the deepest shade of blue
Rolls over the infinite truth
Of the sensitivity of being

                                       By Phil Roberts

I approach most desires
like a competition; can I
**** better than him;
can I be famous at twenty-
-three since he was famous at
twenty-four -- I must be able
to sink better than him.

God, it is exhausting. I
feel like I'm dancing with
a machine; a phantom that
I can never catch, for it runs
on my blood; my insecurities;
my passion -- and, boy, oh boy,
can I attest to having plenty of
  that stuff, ladies and germs.

I think, truly, that I am
encompassing the American Dream
I think is utterly flawed; that I think
is futile in nature; that I am sure of
is the closest thing to Hell, in this
Godless, spiritually motherless
dark shoebox of sudden collisions;
this space of useful and useless
results, splayed onto and into
our hearts, asking for reverence.

There is nothing  I want more
than to be sure that my importance
is not illusory. I am not sure if
I am real.