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

Rise softly, rise gently, waking dawn
And let the drowsy sun yawn a while
Beside me, my love sleeps in peaceful bliss
With crescent eyes and a crescent smile
The morning breeze may tease the blooms
That wait to unfold with the sun's blush
- But softly, blow gently, oh morning breeze
Let the wind chimes be still, quiet, hushed

Rest your melodies, singing birds and bees
And cease the fluttering of your wings
The hum, the drone, the medleys
Quiet the rustling and the whispering
Why gurgle so loud - river- change your course
Flow far away, past the mangroves
For how lustily you gush, bubbles and froth
Shhshh...love sleeps - eyes closed

But alas - the river stays, making its music
The birds from their songs shall never cease
And the morning breeze breathes free
Tinkling wind chimes, hustling leaves
Rise - the sun shall and burst in gold
And the world'll be in daylight's warm embrace
My love will waken yet I still revel -
For sun lights the grace of my love's face

I am in a room filled with language,
       My life is in another room
Identical
    Depopulated by the world,
The verbiage overflowing,
    One day it is love,
The next, a draft of storms.
     Sorrows,
The million year old emotions.
    Poems come and go
As I decay in the syllables,
   Enormous verses,
The horizon breaks down,
    Lights lightened,
The sky gathers at my window,
     I get more and more secluded,
And the words petrify in my eyes....
    
    The spectre of the unwritten.

I'm not entirely sure why
But like a sleet of ice
I got hit with a wave of emotion
And I think it's the transition
The not knowing and sorting through
Hats that look graceful and neat
And although I balance
With a captivating joy
At times it wells up
And becomes much too much.

So I left my new boyfriends house just now
He kissed me with such love before I went
And pouted as I put my purse over my body
But baby I've got much work to do
I know you got it covered baby
But I don't
Not yet.

I wrote in my phone
A thought I'm ashamed to admit
That just said
"I'm not so sure that I matter"
So I left to go battle my own
Inner demons.

My health insurance is about to end
There are 20 thousand possibilities
But I'm back in that abyss
That black hole of not knowing
Unsure where to turn
I sit and stare at my computer
It piles so high
I couldn't even sexually release myself with my love today
So I didn't even really try.

I read a few articles
That I end up skimming through
Because it so deeply hurts my soul
What we women have to go through
And at times I'm guilty
Of taking it all on
Like because of my blessings
I gotta carry all the weight
So I do and I fight through
Sometimes leaving my own carcass
And needs to be forgotten
Because I think and hum
I don't really matter.

Perhaps I should be on medicine
Or see a therapist
But at age 25, almost 26
I reschedule my dentist appointment
Because I don't want to have to beg for more money
And long to be self sufficient
Doing what I love to do
So yeh
I'm impatient and pushy
Bossy and exponentially determined
Because the father who made me
Raised me to never settle for less

But it's not even about him
Or the silver spoon that still hangs out of my mouth
Or the I love you's that cascade from our lips
Like coiled intricate sincere fables
We always longed for
Your 17 years of waiting
And my eons of thinking I need a prince

You say it and you say it true
I am no princess
But a queen
A queen tired of what we have been given
And I know I don't joust alone
But often that weight
Fills me up like the tub
I metaphorically fill with expressive sorrow
And a beauty that can only be expressed
Verbally
As papers are thrown down tumbleweeds of what I know I can be.