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

When the night is calm
There is tenderness
Within a dream I have
And the dream
Remains the same

Down through the years
Through pain and fear
And the spite of heedless fate
The tenderness abides
Right here by your side

And there will come a day
When the landscape will change
With the blending of hills
Which I bring with me
And your sweet valleys
Making the pathway smooth

                                        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

Those who are expecting
A metaphor for life here
It isn't

This is about the slides we made as kids
One of our winter sports
When the snow was on the ground
We would pick a place
And tread it down over and over
Until it was compacted and hard
Then we would slide and shuffle our feet on it
Until it became shiny and slippy
Then we would slide on it
until it became longer and glassy
By then it was a proper slide
And you could charge other kids
Usually marbles or conkers
To use your slide for a while
Capitalism starts young

So one day I was up and out early
Working diligently on a wonderful slide
And it positively gleamed in the morning sun
But I had made an unfortunate error
My slide was on the public footpath
Right outside our front gate
And along came Mrs Cooper
Naturally, the inevitable happened
It was, after all, a very good slide
Some might say.....lethal

Well, her shopping bag flew into the air
Closely followed by her feet
I don't remember much about Mrs Cooper
But I do recall that she was rather rotund
And wore enormous pink bloomers
Which in itself was rather scary
Obviously, I tried to help her up
But her weight took us both back down
She shouldn't have used language like that
In front of a kid my age

You won't be surprised to read
That I suffered the consequences
I'll bet my **** was sorer than hers
And I was made to pour salt
All over my beautiful slide

                                     By Phil Roberts

Back street brawling
Gutter crawling
We did it all an'
Then did some more

                              By Phil Roberts

I made my way
Through the raging years
To a certain tenderness
And I've known
A grown man's tears
And the agony of emptiness

And in my time
I have done and seen
More than I could stand
But what was then
And wherever I've been
I'm just another tired man

                             By Phil Roberts

Just in the pubs and clubs
******* our own gear around
Seemingly, always upstairs
For weddings and birthday parties
Sorting out miles of wires
Well-worked practise

But when those amps were turned on
With an audible amplified thud
As switches are flicked
And their lights gaze like tiny red eyes
That's when I am ready

First number and the drums and bass
Connect to create new heartbeats
And now I'm into it
Not the man in the mill anymore
I'm the frontman for the band
And the music soars through me

As the night goes on and grows
The crowd has grown and is dancing
Gaining energy from the music
And feeding it back to us in turn
Now THIS is being alive

And so it was

                                 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

It seems to me
There's no reason to be
Now I'm too old
To be as bold
As I used to be

My legs are weak
And I can hardly sleep
My race is run
When it comes to fun
Now I've begun
To think too deep
:/

                       By Phil Roberts

Again, the middle of the night
Awaiting the morning's light

                                          By Phil Roberts

In the morning I awake
With the after-taste
Of a half-remembered dream
And a barely formed face
Shadow of the past
And emotions that last

And some of these dreams
Would make a hero cry
And some of these dreams
No matter how I try
I know will stay with me
Until the day I die

                                   By Phil Roberts

On my profile is a picture
Of a place I used to go fishing
I would sit there for hours
Staring at the brightly painted tip
of my carefully balanced float
Watching for tell-tale signs
Of greedy little fishes
Which were caught and returned
Without much harm to them

This place was a wide part
Of the local stretch of canal
There so barges could turn 'round
And, obviously, known as the wide
Other than in the minds of kids
Who called it "Dead Man's Cove"
Although, in living memory
No-one had died there at all

Many pleasant hours I spent there
Sometimes chatting to other anglers
Or the occasional passers-by
Some would be walking their dogs
And some just stretching their legs
"Having any luck, mate?" they'd ask
"Not bad," I'd reply with a smile
And, do you know, I never noticed
The beauty that was there all the while

                                                     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

It was a Thursday night
As dull as mud
And the guy I was with
Was as much fun as a broken tv
Then this bloke came into the bar
Who knew my companion
And came to join us
He said to our mutual friend,
"Eyup, Brooksy.
D'yer fancy gettin' ******?"
Brooksy sat there moaning
With a face like a slapped ****
"Nah...I'm workin' in the morniin'"
I, who was also working next day
Said, "I'll get ****** with yer."
And a lasting friendship was born

Now, my mate and I
Both needed the kind of friend
Who would calmly say
"Now hang on....that's not clever."
But instead we were both the sort
That said, "Yea, let's do it.
It'll be a laugh!"
Which led to dubious adventures
Sometimes things got dangerous
And others just plain daft
But I have to say, on the whole
It usually was a laugh

                                      By Phil Roberts

When I was little
My mother bought me a tiny sailor suit
Why?
We didn't even live near the sea
However
She and grandma decided to take me to town
To show me off in my new suit
And so I was scrubbed up shiny
My unruly hair was plastered to my head
And proud smiles were exchanged
But
They must have looked away for a second
Because the next thing they knew
My sailor suit was stuffed down the toilet
And I was doing a runner up the road
Completely naked
My first protest made

                               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

Beyond the rolling bones
Of memory's myths
And the ancient sounds of laughter and tears
Something mystical exists
Something deeper than marrow
The seeds of our ancestor's dreams and fears
And at a level beyond our knowing
It still rules our actions
And leads us to our fates

                                             By Phil Roberts

Now that I am more sober
Than those who judge us
And straighter than
Those who would lead us
My eyes see clearly
And my ears hear
The fallacies of generations

Now the age blazes
For new definitions
And more honest realities

So now it's time
To imagine the unthinkable
To forget the age-old rules
Evolved by those
Who had selfish reasons
And traditional means
To keep us in ignorance
And in our places

                                       By Phil Roberts

How's the new car goin', Mickey?
It's brilliant, man
It goes like **** off a hot tin blanket!

                                                   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

Self imposed delusions
And external intrusions
Heads and hearts dislocated
Dreams and nightmares mingle

Reality has no place to call home
With outcome and direction unknown
The infectious mania drives
With weariness of political lies
Strangling the status quo

And now at last I find
My aging senses and mind
That always felt faster than the world
Are ready to be left behind

                                                By Phil Roberts

Wistfully
Wishfully
My daydream drift
Takes me eye to eye
And hand in hand
On a sunny morning
Somewhere
Settling dust
Step by step
And side by side
There's a tide close by
Responding to gravity
And gravity of sorts
Draws our souls
Fatefully
Inevitably
Together

                     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

Here am I
In the middle of the night
With a deep deep feeling
That something's not right

Or maybe I'm wrong
After all
They're singing my song

There I go
With a call for change
A hope for difference
In the establishment game

But did I want this?
A billionaire
With bad rhetoric?

                                   By Phil Roberts

He wakes in the morning
More tired than when he went to bed
He makes his coffee with too much milk
The TV news is pretty much the same as yesterday
Just the faces and names may change
The rain pours outside his window
Washing the colour from the day
And he is reminded of a phrase he heard
So often in the mills
A catchphrase of despair
"If this is living, roll on death"

                                             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

When I was a younger man
Time moved so much quicker
There was always something happening
Always something changing
Somewhere to go
Something to catch up with
Or even to escape from
People came and went
Then came and went again
"Where's he living these days?"
"Who knows what's happening?"

Now things are quieter and calmer
In this age of ghosts
In the land of the lost and lonely
Where once there was speed
There's nowhere to go
And nothing much changes
Even my dreams remain the same
As, with an unaccustomed patience
I write poems
And wait

                              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

Some things are indelibly written
Where mysteries and fates dwell

                                      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

I've been lucky over the years
And I've saved enough money
To last for the rest of my life
As long as I die on Tuesday
                                
                                      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

Shiny bricks and skeins of yellow grass
Barely perceptible colours
Hung with liquid haze
Dog **** and thunder
Heavy close and thick
Miasma
Clings to sweat
Running with drizzle
Clings to damp
Drowning the pores of the skin
Making collars clinging sticky
Rubbing and abrasive

In view of the towering flats
The greyly awaiting wait
Standing at the bus stop
Speaking quiet weather talk
In the distantly English way
So safely meaningless
This polite evasion
Ignores their damp dilemma
Soon, as they sit inside the bus
These bodies shall steam
Like cattle in a byre

Kids hang around the shops
Emptying and kicking cans
The younger ones
Run and shout manically
Their elders spit
And swear casually
All hoods and shadows
Asking adults to buy them lager
Because they can't get served at the "offie"
Rain changes nothing here

A bedroom guitar plays
Weakly electric
And the Turneresque sky
Swallows the sound whole and flat
Sophisticated trash
Crying into a cloudy breast
Shaded darkly round
Full and swollen
Grey and sodden
The distant rumbling
Tumbling closer to home

                                    By Phil Roberts

I sit here looking through my window
At the early morning mist and mizzle
My mind is still sluggish and half dreaming
Drifting through memories and images
Without purpose or reason
And from nowhere
I remember a night in the past
When I awoke crying a name
And my secret was betrayed to the moon
And the name was your's

                                               By Phil Roberts

Edges of shadows
In the corners of eyes
Too fast to see
It might be me

Is it true
What you see?
Is it real?
Is it really me?

You do not hear my voice
Or know the colour of my eyes
You would not know me in the street
Or recognise my accent
Should we meet

And yet
You have seen my soul
In the words I write
And even the spaces between them

Those who care to look
Can know my story
My frailties
My vulnerabilities
My reality

This may be my curse
And my gift to you
Whatever it may be
You know that it is true

                                   By Phil Roberts

Born of the sun and earth
And kin to the moon and sea
Life's immensity
Exceeds humanity
And the planet needs us
No more than fleas
So don't be fooled into thinking
We will always exist
In terms of the universe
We are no more than dust

                                           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

Through a broken window
Covered with dirt and cobwebs
And from within an empty house
Crumbling and derelict
Even the bleakest landscape
Can look fine and good

When the water runs in
Through the sagging old roof
It makes the rain outside
Seem healthier and clean
So that drafts blowing through
Cracked and buckling walls
Make the harshest winds
Feel kind and warm

Because when the interior
Is so desolate and empty
It makes the worst of the world
Seem pretty much good enough
So why bother to change
Anything at all

                                               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

Come softly, stranger
Step inside the light
Here is home of a sort
Here is nowhere else to go

Such staggering ambiguity
Such all-consuming cruelty
I see it all so clearly now
Wide-eyed and unheeding
Unaware of double-dealing
I was an innocent
And then I was born
Wise to the lies of the womb
And with a grudge for being disturbed

                                           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

Naked as Spring
Several propositions,
Like life,
Offer themselves to you
And to the heart of you.
They make themselves available
As naked as the newborn Spring.

It's your choice.
Several propositions,
Like your life,
Become themselves of you
Or of the heart of you.
Some make themselves inevitable
And you believe it's your choice

And now a silence
A crushing roaring silence;
As those propositions,
Chances
Become fewer and fewer
And in the heart of you
Some things become inevitable
And this very loud silence

And now this silence,
This bruising numbing silence,
As these dispositions,
Attitudes
Become stiffer and stiffer
And in the head of you
These things that are inevitable
Are getting slower and slower

Those naked Springs ago,
All those propositions,
Your life
Fasten themselves to you
And to the heart of you
You're getting older and older
And you're as naked as a bone

                                 By Phil Roberts

When I was thirteen
I had guilty secrets
Greasy hair and ***** mind
Pockets were always full
With pen-knives and matches
And pictures of **** women
And it was so good to be in long trousers!

Everything was halfway
Between the man and the boy
The devil and the angel
And I could not laugh at myself
For looks were so important
And the girls might see
They could make me blush
As I try to look so cool

My voice had broken
But my body was still growing
Nothing had been settled
And the things I took for granted
Were to change radically
But when I was thirteen
It was important to smoke
And not go out with my parents
Not to wear school uniform
And always have my jacket open
And never laugh too loud
In case I was the joke

                                    B y 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

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

A spider crawling down my wall
Met me crawling up

                                 By Phil Roberts

Spinal necessity exists
Between ludicrous *****
And the pulsating brain
Lumbering and slobbering
Separate from the mind
Which is tuned to distraction
Feeling every nuance
As a ricochet
For this sensitivity is not delicate
But damning and demanding

Tentative toes step around
Lightly sleeping memories
Which will bawl upon waking
Demanding delivery
Into the light of recognition
But, evading perspective
They become demonic in aspect
Causing crashes
Stamping all over corpses
Bringing them alive
And each of these ghastly debutantes
mutters softly
"Dream of me"

                                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

Hey, old friend
Remember the days?
The times we got so drunk we could barely crawl
What a laugh!
Other nights we'd be so wired
We chewed our lips to shreds
And do you remember that opiated Nepalese
While the rest were throwing up or falling down
We kept right on smoking
'Til we could barely find our feet
Haha!
And then tripping out at Fool's Nook
Thinking the water in the stream was diamonds
The mushrooms weren't so magic if you got a bad one
But wasn't it fun!
Going to dodgy Manchester pubs for the gear
Haha, remember that night I nearly got myself shot?
I've never talked so fast in all my life
And now that we're middle-aged
Where are we now, old friend?
You're dead and I'm falling to bits
Such fun

                            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