When it's late
Don't mess with sticky notions
Don't fool with dangerous spaces
There is no peace in such locations
And time shall have all traces
Of the needed restraint and sobriety
To see us to our dotage

But then
How else are we to grow?
And then again
Who  wants a dotage?

Because when it's late
Mocking caverns of reality yawn
And toil tedium and trivia
Are in the eyes of statues
And these cry glass marble tears
Because they cannot move
They cannot leave the ground
Their lowered heads like ageing flowers
Sadly shrunken and dried
With a gluttony of hours
And all love of life long gone
That's when it's late

                                 By Phil Roberts

These days it seems
I remember my early childhood
Better than the contents of my last meal
Dementia creeps.......

Right now,
I'm remembering one early evening
With four of us small boys
Sitting on a wall
Discussing the realities of the world
As we knew it

The moon was pale but visible
And a subject for discussion
As serious as old men playing chess
We wondered how far away it could be
One lad said it was farther than London
But we knew that was obviously wrong
After all
We could see the moon
No-one had seen London

                                       By Phil Roberts

When I was very young
Certainly pre-school age
I had a little tricycle which I loved
One day
I decided that I could ride it down steps
I was wrong
"Whaaaaaah! Me 'air 'urts!"
"He's banged his head. You're alright
You're not bleeding so shut up skriking."

A day or two later on the same tricycle
Tearing down the hill opposite our house
In the middle of the road
It was a time when cars were rare on council estates
Indeed, ice-cream men rode push-bikes
With big ice boxes on the front containing his wares
And there was one on the road
Of course, I managed to hit it
"Whaaaaaaaa!!!"
"There there, yer alright, lad. Have a free ice-cream."
"Whaaaa - oh, ok."

My parents kept the front gate closed after that
I wasn't tall enough to reach the latch
They wouldn't let me ride my tricycle
Unless there was an adult present
So now that I was safe
I promptly fell over the dog and banged my head on the gate
"Whaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!"

                                   By Phil Roberts

Coughing like a cold start
Wheezing like a bag
Spitting through the back door
Have another ***
Doing the dying thing

Filling up an ash-tray
Feeding a fat face
Drinking cans of lager
Getting in a state
Doing the dying thing

Reading ****** papers
**** and bingo cards
Have another lager
Another pound of lard
Doing the dying thing

Sitting watching game shows
Rattling paper bags
Looking bored and farting
How the sofa sags
Doing the dying thing

Working for a *******
For very little pay
Yes boss and no boss
For eight hours a day
Doing the dying thing

Safely empty headed
Dull of thought and eye
Ignorant and vacant
There are many ways to die
Doing the dying thing

                                       By Phil Roberts

On cloudless moonlit nights
When the world is silver and darkest blue
And silence seems to reign supreme
If you stretch your hearing inwards
You will hear the distant moans
Of long lost lonely dreams
Homeless and obsolete
Fading away
To become endless shadows

                                           By Phil Roberts

Those days are still around
Right there in the eyes
Small pieces of scripture
Spiritual desperation
Down all those long years gone
Gleaming
Needing
Seething
Spitting teeth and grieving
And a child still cries
In all the bleakest nights
Within the shell of an adult
Still cries, still cries
Still prays for someone kind
To stop the shaking
And wipe away the tears
To fill the belly
To count the injuries
And fill in the forms
But nothing ever -
Somehow never -
Helps

                By Phil Roberts
For Teresa....and the many thousands like her.

The desperado has crossed the wasteland
He is crazy and grinning mad
But his child-bride is almost dead
Burning beneath the bleaching sun
She tries to crawl in his shadow
Which he keeps teasingly out of reach
As his cruelty has sustained him
So her hatred has sustained her
And thus they have become one
Wedded in the pain of exile
They cannot be parted

Now the freezing night has fallen
And they stand together at your door
This hard and spiky man
As sharp as any weapon
And his shivering dawn of a wife
With tear marks scored into her face
They want your warmth and food
She pleading and he demanding
They crave the shelter of your home
Can you turn her away
Dare you let him in
For they can never be parted

                             By Phil Roberts

We were both wounded when we met
And, like fools
We thought our heat would heal us
And the heat became fire
Consuming us in full flame and blinding smoke
But we are too alike, you and I
Both wild and crazy
With matching dualling tempers
Until healing became fresh wounds
And reasons to part

Now we've been here before
And one time too many
I'm too tired for the battle
If we ever meet again
What you always said will be true
We'll meet in the flames of hell
Good-bye Faded Blue

                            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

He bursts in through the door
Most would have opened it first
But they're all the same
These radical fundamentalists
Standing alone and angry
Like blistered thumbs

Each sulphurous quotation
Boomed with idiotic solemnity
And such slobbering enthusiasm
Such glassy eyed acceptance
For every steaming edict

He insistently invades you
Because he needs to persuade you
And he longs so much to save you
Poking prodding and nagging
Pulpit punching and finger wagging
'Till your will to live is sagging

"I know and you don't !
I'm right and you're wrong !
You have to listen to me !
I am the man with a plan !
When others can't, I can ! "

So, I ponder this man with interest
His certainty speaks loud and clear
It speaks of making dreams reality
And delusional hopes that really can be
But most of all it speaks to me
Of an utter pile of ****

                  By Phil Roberts

All of the shining mad ones
With their heresies of reality
And other visions and other voices
Are not diminished
By the multitude of choices
That is their truth
Upon each waking day

They are woken by the howl
From beyond the first ear
And into the deeper mind
Where there is other language
And blinding colours of emotion
For madness has the purity of pain
That martyrs can only long for

                                           By Phil Roberts

Doom laden
Light my way
With candle of blackest tallow
And flame of brightest white
I follow my nature
My gravitation
Without question

Godless and lawless
Out of the wild I came
Still wet and trembling
Hairless and bared to all
I lived off the fruit of the land
And open to the sky
As is the way of my kind

What did I know of fences?
Or of lines on a map
All I saw was plenty for all
I knew nothing of money
I knew only being fed and being hungry
So they called me thief
They called me savage

Doom laden
Light my way
With candle dripping tallow
And flame of dimmest red
With hesitation I follow
Stumbling and lost no doubt
Yet still I follow

                              By Phil Roberts

Protected by a suit of dreams
And armed with a smile
He came out of nowhere
And went his own way

Seemingly believing nothing
And walking in no-one else's footsteps
He follows no rules without reasons
But he knows right from wrong
And he knows that's what matters

In a world of easy hypocrisy
Where compassion is stifled by fear
And belief is a reason to hate
To hate and destroy other beliefs
He goes his own way

                              By Phil Roberts

Writing half-hearted love songs
To no-one in particular
And singing them in public
For a few beers and a pocket full of change
Just fun, after all
Then
Down the long years
And days of broken hearts
The words were lost and forgotten
So, when a song of love was heard
Of course
It was a lie

                            By Phil Roberts

Mr Warrington lived up the hill
He was very big and very round
With a big round wobbling face
Guiness loomed large in his legend
When he used to come home from the pub
He'd say to us cheerily
"Give us a push up th'ill kids!"
So we'd gather round
Pushing him and pulling him up the hill
Like a tiny fleet of tugs
Nudging a liner into position
"Yer good kids!" he'd say "Ere y'are!"
And he dug into his pocket for small change
He threw it on the ground and
We scrabbled merrily
With every penny a blessing

                                        By Phil Roberts

I came out of the north-west
Staggering from the storm
The surgeons had repaired my body
And my mind hung by one hinge
So I headed for the coast of Wales
To assume the healing rhythm of the sea
And breathe the briny air
Where no-one knew me
Nor called my worn out name
Sweet freedom in isolation

And so, in smiling solitude
I walked and smoked too much
Staring at the moody ocean
As we all inevitably do
As though it holds answers
And indeed it does
The answer is "being"

One hot but breezy day
I followed the coast from north to south
Not too far but far enough
Until I came upon a harbour
Tiny and insignificant
But a harbour nonetheless
With a clutch of small boats
Bobbing and swaying lazily
On the backwater slack water tide
And somewhere close by
A nautical bell tolled the rhythm
Of an endless heedless movement
And an oddly comfortable melancholy
Rocked me in it's arms
Lost and found
Beginning and end

In as much as everything matters
Though nothing matters much
This place was nothing to me
No more than countless others
But that harbour bell
So patient and so constant
Touched something deeper than knowledge
Perhaps it was the state of my health
Or the glowing heat of the day
But some vulnerable receptor
Vibrated to that gentle toll
I've been in many places in my life
And seen wondrous famous sights
All seared into my minds eye
But their memories will last no longer
Than the haunting harbour bell

                                                By Phil Roberts

Nothing drastic
Nothing pure
Noble stains
Distinct liquid drinking
Slipping and seeping
Coming calm in the world
Knowing nothing
Calling into air
Surviving
Discovery
Certain and uncertain motion
Always motion
Interior rivers pulse
Ancient wisdom
Reawakening
Slowly
Irresistably stretching
Infinitely entwined
Endlessly on

                           By Phil Roberts

In little over two years
I have had more scans
Than a supermarket checkout
There is more of my blood in path labs
Than I have in my body
I've had nasty painful biopsies
Things up my **** and cameras down my neck
There have been countless appointments
At four different hospitals
As well as being hospitalised five times
Including one minor operation
And two major ones
I now have ******* up kidneys
Veins like ropes and arms like Twiglets
And more scars
Than a bad knife-throwers assistant
But what the hell !
I'm still growing old disgracefully
HA !!

                               By Phil Roberts

I felt this primal urge
This trance-like instinct
To set things right
In case I have to leave
Move on, so to speak

So
I took my jaundiced eye
And rolled it from corner to corner
Of this, my situation
And I felt so very small and hard
Lost in largeness
For cynicism is a tight thing
Which allows little movement
A strange kind of chastity

And then, you see
Changes
Honesty demanded that I see more
Grow, so to speak

And oh, my poor sore eyes
See how the children starve
All over this bitter world
This bitter, sickened world
And cynicism did this
Through the slack hands of millions
Who still refuse to believe
That things can be changed

                                    By Phil Roberts

Colder than death
A pendulum heart marks time
And a brain spins in timeless circles
All around an anonymous mind
And something probably matters
Though not much
Because nothing matters much
As the planet continues to turn
And life goes on

                                      By Phil Roberts

This night is beyond you
Just out of control
Grins and curious eyes hit you in the face
And you are staggering again
Get to the bar and try for sanity

Don't think too much
Slow down your mind
Get another drink to soften the edges
You're asking for a gin and panic
Everyone's a stranger
And everyone knows who you are
And  everyone's talking

You've seen all this before somewhere
This is some kind of reality
And you are outside of it
No-one warned you that your words
Would be taken down as used as trivia
Don't laugh, you fool
It's not that funny

And those faces are staring again
There's a table to hold on to
Something to stop you from sinking
Keep swimming through the noise
And the smoke and the eyes
And the wet mouths
And the liquid glasses
And the moving walls
And the approaching floor

                             By Phil Roberts

You can call me hapless,
Hopeless and feckless
All true
You can say I'm irresponsible
disrespectful and disreputable
Fair enough

But don't call me a liar
Not because I'm St Phil  of the Truth
Or because I crave purity and integrity
It's because I'm too ****** lazy
To remember what I've said
So if you think I've lied
You've read what wasn't written
You may have seen what you expected to see
And read words you thought I'd write
But it was not lies
Believe me

                        By Phil Robert

Remember when, as kids
We just ran and ran
For the sheer joy of it
For the rush of it
Dashing and racing to the next adventure
No time to waste
And energy to burn
Running and running
And never seeming to ache
Barely panting
Hardly sweating
And always ready
To run

And now I'm running to stand still

                           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

Dripping with gory sarcasm
The sharpest tongue cuts a dash
The house speciality is cruelty
Naturally
And so, gathered revellers
To the evening's main course
An innocent
A babe amongst blades
Who'll carve?

With glinting teeth and cutlery
Feasting on the lamb begins
An ideal from each bone that's chewed
Is spat upon the floor
And they're snatching and snarling for more
More succulent and pure
Fresh blood for the body politic
Come to the party
Who'll pour?

                                By Phil Roberts

I knew he was dying
I thought maybe a few weeks left
So still and so quiet
This man whose laugh made us all laugh
The man who always had ideas
Where to go, what to do for a laugh
Always a laugh
Sharer of adventures
Partner in crime
For thirty-six crazy years
Dying before my eyes and
Taking much of my life with him

He'd had a massive stroke a year earlier
They said he'd die then
But he defied them and recovered a lot
Proper conversations and learning to walk
Then they discovered that he had cancer
And here we were five weeks later
"How long are you gonna be in here?" I asked
He turned his head and looked hard at me
"I die next week," he said
As though he had an appointment

He got three days, not a week
I cried seeing him dying
But I was relieved for him when he did
Now my old friend is gone
And it's a duller world without him

                                       By Phil Roberts

Dusty dreams clutter my mind
And my past litters the present,
Crippling the slender future.
I walk in the shadow of rumours
And uncomfortable truths
Follow me doggedly
But I refuse to lie
Or hide who or what I am.
I ask no forgiveness for how I've lived
Nor do I seek salvation
Because the truth is, you see
I've had a ball!
And if I'm ******
I'm ****** if I care

                                 By Phil Roberts

A name is called in the deep of sleep
Hanging in the night like a star
From the subconscious to the surreal
Memories and myths collide here
All smoke and mirrors to mislead
And mystery
Always mystery
Until reality slips and slides
And the only truth is doubt

                                      By Phil Roberts

She cries tears of mother's ruin
"Look at me!
It's been so hard
All of my life
And I've had to fight
For my own patch of light
Still, no-one ever looks at me"

He turns his eyes to the floor
Saying nothing
Feeling stupid
And his words burst like bubbles in his mouth
He is desperate to say something
Anything to make her happy
But he cannot turn disappointment
Back into youthful optimism
Or bitterness back to hope
As she sinks into smeary sobs
Wet and bleary loss
He takes her home

He undresses her and puts her to bed
Then he holds her as she cries
And he holds her as she sleeps
He hushes her when she stirs
And calms her when she starts and cries out
When the dreams become too real
And he shall never be more than this
Never more fulfilled
Caring for her is his only purpose
Making her happy is his holy grail
Willingly trapped within her pain
He is nothing else at all

                               By Phil Roberts

Slender and tenuous reasons
Run through the droplets of motive
Which impel us in our actions
Direct us to  our self-fulfilling fates
Our cleverly devised mistakes
For we each bear the scars
Of our own fatal flaws
Victims of our own design
As I have been of mine
Haven't you?

I am the saboteur of my dreams
Picking at the seams
Of a braver me
A wiser and unlikelier me
All my tendencies and traits
Conspire and defeat me
To subtly beat me
About my empty head
With every word I've said
Every thought I've had
And that's why

                       By Phil Roberts

Suddenly the humble
There is one eye again
Smears
Smoothly down and quick
Spaced
The silent teeth
Graveyard slabs
All scared to white
Bright full-moon night
Glaring like a naked bone
Water taps and drips
Shaped so perfectly cold
This bleakest of light
Casting long and sharp and deep
The wailing pathetic
Are silver shards of shapes
The graveyard owl screeches
This must be someone's dream

Nowhere to go
Still strong currents pull
The places of despair
Towards and away
The tonality of moods
Warming layers
Blending with the background
It's nobody's business

A sigh that trembles
Lives balancing on whims
And then a silver-grey sky
Soaring on a song
The grace of an artless child
Smiles your eyes to smiles
The crystal tumbling stream
hallucinations of diamond water
The endless beginning
Sliding on rolling moments
Changing even truth
Even truth

                By Phil Roberts

I turn on the music
Light up
Lean back and close my eyes
And I leave here

I swim and surf through the sea of sound
That is my life
My life inside my life
The constant friend and lover

From the rhythm and energy
That makes my old bones move in time
To the exquisite pain that can make me weep
There is music for all moods and occasions

Old loves are remembered through songs
There is music we find
That even helps us through grief
And, of course
Music is at every celebration
But most of all
It feeds my soul

                                     By Phil Roberts

***** from fishes, we
We crawled out of the sea
I wonder if we're any happier

                                  By Phil Roberts

Things get broken
Hearts
Minds
It's no-one's fault
It never is
Not really
Butter fingers and distraction
Without malice or forethought
Things
Like hearts and minds
Slip
And shatter on hard contact with reality

                                 By Phil Roberts

Death patiently files his nails
And smokes a casual cigarette
Grinning and eyeless
He says so calmly
"Catch you later
Brave little dreamer"

Despite such brittle certainty
Men and women build
Despite such small mortality
Every space is filled
In the midst of death's destruction
Men and women build again

Fear, like a cringing bowel
Exudes an acrid stench
And whimpers and whines
Simpers and cries
"Don't you dare
Don't you ever dare"

Despite this clinging dread
Some will need to dare
Despite the bursting head
Dreams insist on birth
In the midst of our stupidities
Something wondrous strives

                                    By Phil Roberts

I do not speak in sombre tones
Not for me the gentle echo
Hushing through hallowed halls
I shall growl my way to the grave
Be ****** to the insignificant
And to hell with the indifferent
There are no rules or rulers
There are only fools and foolers

I need no-one else's straight lines
I have imagination enough to swerve
And spite enough to spin
Snapping snarling and seditious
Spitting venomous and vicious
Flamed by the world's injustice
And humanity's indifference
Not until I am dead burned and scattered
Shall I rest assured

                                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

My friends abroad think I'm peculiarly English
My English friends think I'm peculiarly northern
My northern friends just think I'm peculiar
But at least I've got friends

                                             By Phil Roberts

There are times in my life
Just occasionally
Out of a clear blue sky
For no reason at all
I become overwhelmed with sadness
And I could not tell you why
It does not last long but,
While it does
I could choke on my heart
And I really don't know what I'm sad about
After all
There's so much to choose from

                                      By Phil Roberts

Come here and listen to me
There are ugly deep shadows
Where things could be leering
Snarling and hungry
Heavy and threatening
****** in the wriggling damp
The age dripping damp
Where dead leaves rot and fatten the earth
Come close and listen to me

Don't go down there
No, don't go down there
They're doing strange things in the dark
You shouldn't have come to the park
On your own
Don't go walking alone

This is no place for one so young
And soft
Delicately tremblingly white
And soft
Run home with your soul gripped tight
Before someone
Some muddied gritty  someone
Touches
In the shadows and shrubs
And the night

                             By Phil Roberts

The wind shuffles the long grass
And the broad green reeds
Shifting and rattling
By the rippling black water
Chuckling water fowl splash
Swans and cygnets hurry past
And the weather is on the turn
It's time to be heading home

The last of the daylight creatures
And the very first of those of the night
Are sharing this half-way hour
The sky restlessly moves and changes
And bruised clouds rush over head
Like the rubbed eye-lids of a child
A weary teary child
Going home and ready for bed

The slack and glossy water
Laps at the stone beneath bridges
Echoing with the ghosts of barges
And spits of rain flick the air
Studs of cold hitting the face
Turning a collar to the cheek
And urging aching feet
Home-fire yearning me home

                               By Phil Roberts

I have been mayor here for many years
Do they call me Pedro the Mayor?
They do not
I have built half this village with my bare hands
Do they call me Pedro the Builder?
They do not
I am a lay preacher in their church on Sundays
Do they call me Pedro the Preacher?
They do not
You **** one sheep..........

                                    By Phil Roberts

They lie warm together
In the afterglow of torrid love
Her head on his chest, he says
"Sing me to sleep, my love"
So she hums and croons
A tune he does not recognize
With soothing sounding words
In a language he does not recognize
"I love you," he murmurs as his eyes close
"I know," she says smiling
And so, as he sleeps
She lies open-eyed
Imagining a future he will not recognize

                                        By Phil Roberts

It has to be said that
I've always thrived in dives
And stumbled in polite society
You see, I tend to talk too much
And laugh in all the wrong places
These modern eternals hate me
Because I smoke and I'm still alive
And I constantly smell of tobacco
So I'll stick to the dives
And the undemanding low-lifes
Who, like myself
Simply do not care

                             By Phil Roberts

Misty words billow in the cold
Pluming from their mouths
Quiet swearing and first *** coughing
They walk close to hedgerows
Kicking the dew from the grass
As birds squabble over breakfast
And mushrooms are still socialising
They whistle the dogs to heel
All panting and wagging tails
Stirring the dawn damp air
For happy is the early dog
In these sumptuous fields

Now the business of dawn begins
Low sharp commands are uttered
Bringing the younger bounding learners
To a proper sense of purpose
And that high-toned cross breed
The sleek and swift lurcher
Is eternally proud and primed
This long-sprint racer
Takes inevitable chase
Without sentiment or concious cruelty
An ancient craft is practised here
With the dogs at dawn

                                By Phil Roberts

Look at me
Look at me
I'm scared into flames
And I feel there ought to be a joke round here
Somewhere
Hold onto me
Hold onto me
I'm flying into space
And I can't find anything that matters here
Nothing really matters

Flying high
Flying way too high
With nothing to hold onto
And needing nothing at all
Because everything is possible
So, let my wings glisten in the sun
For tomorrow I crash hard into the ground


                                           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

If something needs to be said
Don't let it stagnate in your head
Don't chew your lips or bite your tongue
Just sing it out 'till your song is sung
It may end in love or even a fight
But at least you'll know the truth in the light

                                   By Phil Roberts

I have moved to a different drum
With odd and peculiar rhythms
Dancing awkwardly through life
On my two flat clumsy feet
It is not the way I chose
To step on innocent toes
But the wildness of my dance
Has had no easy flow
The blame lies entirely with me
It's a genetic thing, you see
I am no more than this
The son of the gypsy's kiss

                                By Phil Roberts

My mood is foul and I'm feeling vile
I curse anyone that I see smile
It's after noon and I can't wake yet
The rain has stopped but the air's still wet
The dog has dirtied what once was clean
I swear at the TV to vent my spleen
If it wasn't for anger I think I'd be dead
Best start again and go back to bed

                                           By Phil Roberts