Tuesday, December 1, 2015

PHILLIP MATTHEW ROBERTS


Phillip MATTHEW ROBERTS


RESURRECTION ON A FRIDAY EVENING:


brief outline for an unwritten novella
transposing the afterlife into existentialist
terminology buttressed by a single allusion
A paltry sum of lines written
in pale rooms succumbed by memories,
many of them I'm certain
are not my own--
unconventional hazards known
well among the mentally ill.
Hallucinations intricate as the past
identical to what I recall.
Travel as a ghost proximal
to other people's precarious existence,
smothered by their lonesomeness;
reminders of my own failures
as they mumble reminiscences,
whispering doubts to the shadows
because darkness always listens.
Occasionally they feel my ethereal presence
bumping into me with uncertain expressions
contorting their normally blithe faces--
Horatio's wonderment at Hamlet
who elucidates the subtleties of heaven
and earth: a dutiful and astute thinker
surmising that one should not be surprised
when their dead father reappears
and demands revenge
most horrid.
The long solitary adventure
invariably forgotten,
unsuitable for a meager
sum of delinquent phrases.
Returning to my modest subterranean residence,
a furnished dwelling several odd feet under
observing as their imaginary lives dwindle
enveloped by reality's hard empiricism.

Phillip Matthew Roberts

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