Monday, February 1, 2016

PHILLIP MATTHEW ROBERTS


Phillip
Matthew Roberts


VICISSITUDES AND THC

Smoke stale breath stoned
in psychedelic contemplations
revered in quiet ecstasy.
Fires that burn neuronal,
luminous as Christ's
crown of thorns emblazoned
and smoldered around
my dingy brainpan
opened up and resembling
an upside down ashtray cranium.

Pale walls absorb electric silhouettes
speaking rabid tongues
at sunset.

(Am inquisitively uncertain
what I mean as if the metaphors
have forgotten
or just left behind
whatever load they carried).

Recollect saddened men
who stared through tortured faces;
aftermath of the unexamined
life or gruffly told graffiti
bullshit stories that tally
excuses at gambling tables
and tales of late night domestic violence
echoing Thoreau's foretold desperation.

Thoughts scattered in sulci deserts
once gloom tempered now forgotten
without a past rather
an omnipresence
connecting quantum
cradled atoms
to a fiery sentience
mistaken for auroras
grander than stars
counted in a child's
boundless imagination.

O my old friend hyper-
bole how I prefer
your image multiplied
by mirrors that glint
and reflect immaculate
when I'm blessedly high.
__

MADNESS REMINISCED
WITHOUT A DSM INDEXED DIAGNOSIS

One:

Fatigued by spent passions
and imagination's boundlessness
that sleepily overwhelms
this misunderstood elastic thing
generating thought and sometimes
mistakenly--at the brink of delusion
--the entire cacophonous world
or when engulfed by hubris
our uncharted cosmos.

Insanity studied late into bleak nights
when fictionalized doctors complete their notes
about what they believe I've become
or what I lost long ago,
around the time I'd retrieve
my sour milk scented metal lunchbox
from a cluttered cubbyhole
redder than my sanguine origins.

I do not really recall innocence
this word composed of echoes.

No eternity for flowers
and some fragile blooms
are born midwinter.

Two:

This long courtship with schism
leaves vacant facsimiles
of my remembered self
asleep beside tomes
filled with promises
made by dead men.

In dreams I'm uncertain are my own
--that is to say, I cannot authenticate
their wild provenance,
I've witnessed obscure figures
wander through rippled symmetries
but then, faintly as a congested whisper
saw it was only my charred silhouette
reminding my remains to awaken
or maybe just light this pyre
that resembles my bed.
__

Among the ten thousand anonymous
things I add a few more before departure

In a bare blue winter room, I wait.

Pale sun fades through veils
imagined as a bride's
these raggedy curtains draped over
childhood's window where wonder
first glimpsed into the unknown.

Yellow dawn and day submerged
in a subconscious entranced
with the boundless heavens.

Stars, doorknobs--entrances
and exits disguised
as metaphors
and unnecessary
euphemisms worn by fear.

Evenings darker than forgetting
--memories and ashes;
fiery impermanence.

Eventually even the shadows
will be left behind;
garbs from the world's
oldest roles embraced
by the newest ingenues.
__

 Phillip
Matthew Roberts

1 comment :

  1. Two of his best poems and bravo to you for featuring this original and special poet whose work deserves to be front and center! For anyone who wants to see more of Phillip Matthew Roberts' poetry you can buy his book: Lost and Found on lulu.com.

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