When the nights are endless
Full of time and space
I imagine the journey
Beyond roads and geography
And sometimes
I almost touch a beauty that can't be seen
And hear music from beyond our ears

My mind grasps for unknown stories
With endings not yet imagined
Meanings as yet undisclosed
For when nights are endless
I long for the truths that hide therein
Silently and invisibly
And I reach for the mysteries
That defy and deny us


                                          By Phil Roberts

I left so much behind
In those places and times
I still see the faces
Though I can't remember names
So long ago
So much has happened
All trickling through ghostly fingers
Pictures in black and white
Life in many tints and hints of grey
Some walked into the sky
With memories trailing and fading
Such memories make up a life
Create a past
Become what we are
Until we walk into the sky

                                             By Phil Roberts

As I lie here
With eyes closed softly
I think deeply of you
And I inhale stars
The scent of twinkling light
So fresh and alive
Sparkling gentle inside me
And I want to write this feeling
So tentatively
As it must be
Like writing words on bubbles
Delicate and precious
Begging them not to disappear
Like dreams in the morning

                                        By Phil Roberts

On wheels
On the road
Off our heads
City bound
Let's go bro
Let the adrenalin flow
In search of narcotics
On Devilment Row
Where the good don't go

Here dealers compete
In a threatening way
And if you're not bold
You better not stay
Young joeys surround you
On the carpark
But you ignore them
And head inside
The deals are better in there
Though the risks are higher
Amidst the heavy hitters

Thirty or forty
To pick and choose from
What ya sellin'?
What ya deals like?
Everyone's suspicious
And everyone's armed
There are people murdered
In this part of town
And nobody blinks an eye
And you know that when
You're that close to death
You feel so very much alive

                                     By Phil Roberts

When I was a young man
A heedless headlong consumer of life, was I
Above and beyond the norm or necessity
I wore paths deep and wide
To the pleasure centres of my brain
And I rode my soul like an easy *****
Oh happy daze of hedonism
How sweet life tasted then

If there was drink to drink
We drank it
If there were songs to sing
We sang them
If there were fights to fight
We fought them
We had fast feet and faster wits
If there was hell to raise
We raised it
Excess and adventure in equal parts
How fast, how high we flew back then

And then the magic playground
Became a bleak and dangerous place
Peopled by predators and prey
In an ever changing food chain
And I was only one step away
From the totally oblivious
One brain cell ahead of
The permanent reality challenged
Then friends began casually dying
Barely noticed in the rush to join them
Now the race is on
And I have grown old and slow

                                              By Phil Roberts

We come as we please
And we leave on the breeze
Away........

Distance
As an image of warm blue air
The ***** man denies seditious writhings
Coming in proud bursts of creation
Irrespective of soil or culture
Bursting thirsting creation
Heathen fertility
Haphazard geography
Lust of life beyond life

Screaming gadgetry can cowards make
Tight cages can our spirits break
But love is broad and clean
Fickle and immortal
The soil from whence we came
Without permit or permission
With honour and with relish
The ***** man denies nothing
Not one word at all

And on and on
The fairground moves on
Away

                    By Phil Roberts

Lost games
Longer lost rules
Night-time crimes
Lungs full
Of pungent smoke
Bellies full of *****
And heads full of
Something
And nothing

A kind of homage
To a kind of music
Riding across vinyl
And even crackling shellac
And the dead man's foot
Still taps inside the coffin
Refusing to relinquish
The hard-wired hammer
The outlaw life
Is hard in the dying

                                    By Phil Roberts