Yes the trees are dying
Leaves withered and brown
Now litter the ground
In unsightly rotting piles
Not the autumnal hues of red and gold
But the hues of dying leaves
Who have given up the fight
The roots of the tree are withering
But many leaves still cling on in hope
The sap now barely rises, no more strength
To feed us
The cancer is spreading
And the cure is yet to be found
And so even more once healthy leaves will fall
To be trampled under the feet and forgotten
There is yet hope for many of those falling leaves
Landed on fertile soil
And the tiny tendril roots of new life took hold
You might say that it's only one tree amongst many
And a few leaves don't matter
But every poet who falls, every poem that withers
On the branch
Is one poet and one poem to many

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

There is lava at the core,
It beats hot thick.Red.
bubbling calmly at the centre,
Sometimes it rises slowly, daring to erupt,
but it can never be,
the mighty eruption could not tame,
its a danger to the villagers clutching at its side.
A cool shudder forces back down.
The bubbles boil away.
It will not erupt today.

You can not feel the temperature in the pools of my soul,
The cool stare peers out onto the life I could not have,
the life I did not lead.
sometimes I grieve.

Behind those open lids lives a history of wishes and dreams,
never accomplished but no longer missed,
childhood sparkles like glitter and gold
my stories untold.

untold stories of parks and rivers linger in my mind,
trying to find the roots, thats where it all begins, i think?
in a time or place that child was me,
it was not here, I was not free.

What I ink to my page is not poetry,
There is not rhythm or rhyme, nor reason.
The empire state is no structure to my art.


What stains my page is not creativity,
Squiggles and lines leave marks from my mind.
The blank canvas does not lead to my masterpiece.


Words are my patchwork quilt,
Adjectives and nouns thread together my memoirs.
There's no glamour in my prose.


What I ink to my page is not poetry,
nor is it my intellect or wisdom.
What I ink to my page is life.