A face stares into a mirror
Where the face dissolves into a picture
Of a blazing desert
Where the snow falls
And fishes writhe in the sand
And the broken moon glows
At mid-day
Then somewhere nearby
Coffin wood cracks
Disturbing the church
Of a damaged mind
As frailty shatters
And reality splatters
And brain cogs grind
For the mirror has become
The window on the lost

                                 By Phil Roberts

The priest puts his trust
In martyrs and miracles
Clutching his rosary and his celibacy
To his bursting breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

The ***** puts her trust
In bordellos and bodies
Clutching her money and her condoms
To her brassy breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

The lawyer puts his trust
In regulations and rules
Clutching his charters and his decrees
To his dusty breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

We each put our trust
In roles and rituals
Clutching convention and convenience
To our timid *******
So humanity continues to walk
Through a series of self-made cages
Every day

                 By Phil Roberts

My words and my poems
Are no more than explanations
And embellishments
My means of expression
For my life is my "art"
It's what I am and what I write
It's why I need to write
To make sense of the things
I've seen and done
And there are times when
I think I've done far too much
Then, in deep contemplation
I realise I could have done more
And that kind of inner debate
And discussion with myself
Are a large part of my life
Which becomes my version
Of something like "art"

                                         By Phil Roberts

A mind can burn
So white hot
That it bleaches the senses
And dislocates the soul
Did you know that?

And sleep can be terrifying
Because of haunting dreams
Dreams of huge steel wheels
With vicious toothed cogs
All waiting to catch and crush
As the dreamer slips and falls

Reality etches with acid
Ignoring hopes and plans
And the innocent shall scream
As the guilty creep away
Food turns to maggots
And drink turns to ****
And this is the intensity
Of madness

                             By Phil Roberts

Tripping over words of trust
Crawling backwards
Breathing dust
Mingling with the mental rust
Well, if I must
Then I must

I'll march right through the gates of hell
Me and satan
Playing show and tell
The sulphur
And the smell
Yes it smells

Yes I'll crawl through the deepest slime
However hard it is
I'll keep  on trying
But there's an end to the line
And there's a limit to my time
See,  I'm running out of time

                                  By Phil Roberts

My wild dreams still run
Through the fugitive night
And I still laugh and howl
At an unheeding moon
That forgot my name long ago

But the blood in my veins
The gypsy DNA
Can't forget the wild pulse
Or the wilder lusts
That drove me from life to death
And death to life

Stony day after deafening night
Sickening month after exhausting year
Too wired to stop
Too tired to sleep
So come and get me
Find me and hold me down
Down to earth at last

                             By Phil Roberts

We saw a light
I swear it
Something bright and crisp
And mother-clean
Or so it seemed to us
All those years ago
But we were so young then
Such noble fools
We believed
Oh, how we believed

Affection swells
And memory seduces
It is easy to love nostalgia
The children we were
Looking so new
Open-mouthed and wonderful
Delighted  and startled
Pointing yearning fingers
At the future
And there it was
And here it is
It's only a light
Really
I swear it
It's just a light

                             By Phil Roberts