We're sand, you know
Slipping through splayed fingers
Our hearts,
Are but ash filled bubbles
Carried upon the lilac,
rough winds of May
Blown by peach faced children
Sensitive to the human touch
Grasped too hard,
And a poets heart
Will burst
Should we fall,
As we so often do
We can't be caught
Promiscuous in our words
Faithful, in our dreams
We,
Ash filled bubbles
Eternally in May and lilac~A

I feel that there are times
when I could reach out my hand
and touch my own death.
This causes me no regret or fear
for I have lived in my own way-
Godless and lawless but
with a belief in knowing
what's right and wrong.
So, as my ghostdom awaits me
I shall not tremble in my shoes
I'll greet him with a wink
and my best angelic smile

                                      By Phil Roberts

as we
loom
our hands

tethered
like a
cat's
cradle to
the sky,

a slight shift
of foot and
the landscape
scatters
drunk
as the blue
seas of the
cloud,

the tide
strides to
the open shore,
wind in her
arms,
salt on her
breath,

every step
decadent and
rebellious,

every sip of the
wind an icy
storm,

and the sky
hangs like
a pendulum
in an old
grandfather
clock,

calling out
crazy minutes,
breathful
seconds,

i stand next to you,
knock on the door
of the airy sea
stare out,

curve like
an echo in a
cave,

a handwritten
poem, carved
out of air

while you,
boy of dream,
kiss me like
a wild sea,
restring the
broken violin
of my heart.

After the parade, before the rain
The homeless reclaim their streets
Amonsgt the discarded plastic tri-colours
The sweet papers that fall at children's feet
You can feel the ghosts of ******* babies
From Tuams' religious care home
Dancing in some purgatory parade
No coffins ever granted to rest in peace
They rise from a decommissioned sewer pit
Free now to march as they eternally carry
The burden of a society's Christian sin
Look to today, why dwell on the past
An oft cried refrain as we do it again
Where the pubs overflow with national pride
For a fifth century Welsh missionary man
Who bestowed upon us an organised religion
From a politically divided Northern hill
Inside the boys make the noise in Celtic tops
Singing old rebel songs of English wrongs
Children outside, whose to seek, whose to hide
A national passage as another mother cries
She prays for the end and for morning again
To sweep through these fractured streets
To wash through these wretched sins
For after every parade once more must come
A forgiving frontal rain to make way for the sun