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