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

                                                   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

I'm that record player that keeps going on,
Playing the same old, outdated song.
I'm sorry.
All my poems spout the same cliches now.
Hell, I'm the embodiment of those cliches now.
I don't know why I'm suffering from the disease
Years after my exposure to patient(s) zero,
But here I am, sick, bed-ridden and sleep-deprived,
Scratching sores I thought had long healed up.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry that I don't see colour anymore,
Just the monochromatic shading of decay.
I don't know how to pull myself back up again,
Can't remember how I did it the first time.
I was a ticking time bomb without even realising it,
And I don't even know if I've exploded yet,
Or if this is just the precursor, the countdown
To ripping apart everyone in my vicinity.
I'm sorry.
They say pain makes for the best artists, the best art,
But I'm too repetitive to make anything good.
Even the violent strokes of red have turned dark grey,
And they get darker the further down the abyss I go,
Where the darkness is so dense that light can't penetrate,
And I don't see the nightmares that have come back.
I'm sorry.