I'm compartmentalizing my thoughts and delivering them to you on my tongue. Gift wrapped in a silver metallic paper, with a tiny pink bow on top that bounces jubilantly with every step I take. Waiting to be opened and heard, the gift sits on my tongue.

Sometimes no ears are lent so I swallow the thought and redigest it.  It falls into the black and finds itself trapped back in my head. It ricochets from wall to wall, eager to be released.

          One day I found out no one wants to listen.

So I bottle it all up, and the thoughts start getting crowded. I become scatter brained, my head hectic with inmates, jailed without a crime. They riot, burning me out each time. My head sizzles like road **** in the heavy heat.

                         It's time for a jailbreak!

I pick up a pen and release the inmates into my veins. They pump through me and fill me with life, violently pounding their way through my fatal heart. Once I channel their energy, they flow out my fingers, into the ink and onto the paper.

          They bleed as they're released, finally free,
singing the song of a man compartmentalizing his thoughts.

inspired by e.e. cummings’s 'into the strenuous briefness’

how many hellos
has the earth heard?
how many beautiful beginnings
has she seen?
how many roses has she bloomed,
and how many of them have been gifted?
how many hellos
have given way to friendship and
love,
how many of them have turned into light?
she keeps them all,
the roses and hellos,
turns them into poems
and turns them into time,
sunrises and sunsets,
beginnings and farewells,
you and me
in between it all.

"Your arms feel like home." I said.
"Yours are heaven." He replied.

i want to get high in foreign cities
travel to places i have yet to lay my eyes on
pack a bag and take off, my only motive to feel free
i want to kiss lovers on pavement my toes have never touched
beneath trees rooted with legends in their leaves
ensuring everlasting love
and i want to feel light, rather than weighed down
anchored to one small town
i want to drop everything and get away
to places where time is altered
and the stars are always present
whether it be in the night sky or people's eyes
i want to fall in love with strangers, cities, and scenes
i crave so deeply to feel free
to start anew

but at the same time
i want you to come too

s.s

As I lie here
With eyes closed softly
I think deeply of you
And I inhale stars
The scent of twinkling light
So fresh and alive
Sparkling gentle inside me
And I want to write this feeling
So tentatively
As it must be
Like writing words on bubbles
Delicate and precious
Begging them not to disappear
Like dreams in the morning

                                        By Phil Roberts

how do i filter out
the poems about love

Freud says tattoos
Are
The Manifestation
Of a
Trauma

Every point
A
Separate pain
We
Have
Suffered

It took
Two
And a
Half
Hours

To complete
The
Diary
Of my
Trauma

And half a million perforations

To convert
Those
Memories
Into something

New

And

Beautiful

To finally
Let go
Of the past