Living in his feral mind
Always travelling twisted roads
He knows about right and wrong
But he's a very sharp man
And he's noticed who say to do right
Quite often do wrong
So he doesn't take it too seriously

He just does what feels good to him
Without worrying much about others
There's a trail of friends and lovers
Left in careless disarray
As their usefulness to him wanes
He moves on to the next toy


But you can't really blame him
How can you stay angry?
He's just like a little boy
Who doesn't know any better
His eyes charm the birds from the trees
And his smile is as wide as the sea
So that's alright, then

                             By Phil Roberts

Caught in the coils of indifference
It's so hard to want to care
About anything much
Even my flow of poetry
Has become a problematic prostate dribble
Such are the joys of old-fartdom
Come day go day
Wishing my aches and pains away
Life goes on

I remember things that used to worry me
What was I thinking of?
None of it mattered
Young people take the poses that once were mine
And they make me smile
With amused fondness and nostalgia
I am envious of their innocence
But mostly their energy
I need a nap
Life goes on

                           By Phil Roberts

Hello
It's me again
It's the early hours and I'm slightly drunk
And it's me again

He has the sins of his mind
Which keep him warm inside
Amidst the weary and the wasted
Such warmth keeps him alive

Restless
I've always been restless
I hate to move yet I can't sit still
Hours are endless

There is a thrush inside his head
An agony of wings
Panic beaten thrashing
A cage of singing things

Anxious
Still always anxious
Even though I've slowed right down
This edge is ageless

Laying low and watching
A million sub-plots hatching
Paranoid and paranormal
He scatters to survive

                                     By Phil Roberts

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

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

There's a shower of rain
Yet the sun still shines
There must be a rainbow
Somewhere

An old man nods in his chair
He came from nowhere
And went nowhere else
Journeying all the way

Now he journeys through time
Down the aching years
Things that he's seen and done
Some good and wondrous
And some of them terrible

An old man nods in his chair
Travelling
Behind closed eyes
All the things he's seen and done
The people he's known
All the things he's said
Within his nodding head

Tears pour down his face
Down the canyons grooved by time
And yet he smiles
Gently and softly
There must be a rainbow
Somewhere

                       By Phil Roberts

The cold steel blue sky
Gathers silence to her
As she prepares to don her widows weeds
The creeping black of night
Crawling all over the land

And hidden inside this blackness
Dreams drift and float
Invisible and upon unseen currents
Restless and searching
For a mind to nourish

Bright within the night
Is a new-born infant
A baby human too young to see
And dreams find their way
Into the open mind of the child

So visions from beyond and past
A million unseen horizons
Where hopes and beliefs are formed
Give light behind unseeing eyes
Making them see wonders

Then the dawn arises
Flooding the land with light
Overwhelming the light within
Burning away at originality
Making the child just one more

Fight for your originality
Because in the end
It is all that we are


By Phil Roberts