By Z-Louise Poetry Despairing at the voices bouncing off walls and back to pierce my ears, trumpeting Angels, Vibrational pipes, A conveyor belt of noise and phrases on repeat, Anguish and fire, A harpooned mind caught in nets enraged, Of provoking horrendous tongues, I find refuge in the sharp steel blades, Sawing motions back and forth, Trying to numb the pain, Yet I can’t stand the metallic red paint dripping, The tightening of skin, Squeezing my soul out, Evil laughter p

By Aiden Wylder A dark glistening object catches my eye, Reflecting the sun like polished hematite. Black diamonds shimmering in the sunlight, Horripilating and trembling in the zephyr. My inner magpie is drawn to this shiny entity. The vision becoming clearer as I draw closer, Jiggling bejewelled beings attached to something Bronze and furry, and lying maddeningly still. On the track, half a fox, Dead on its’ back. Coating the barely visible splaying innards were hundreds of

By Synodinos-George Paraschis Absolute downfall leads me through daedalian labyrinths. Within my cells, I search for traces of solitude. The clock’s relentless ticking warns me — time to depart. Upon soft velvet, I drifted into slumber. I was swept away by the beauty of crimson rose petals. A ladder I build toward the naked truth — hoping perhaps to awaken. Madness bombards me, for the sun no longer bathes Valencia. I glorify the sinful passions that torment me. The soul’s ow

By Alex Oliver It paints with textures moss, thistle and grist; crushed stone, mushed pulp pigments and petals; calcite, feathers, blood and bone and thumb-crumbled moorland dung It scrapes at animal skins stretched on deadbone frames with tooth and claw with grind and chaw tangled with thorn shorn shreds of sheep-shed wool The wind grates sky-scoured stories And farmyard slip slaps a lap-water louvre, in puddles and ponds reflecting alien script. Scrivener-scrawed nail

By Sam Moore I start to see floaters drift in and out of my vision, Traversing the exhausted landscape of my sight. There are two or three at first, Wavering in that liminal space between the noticed and the ignored. But then they begin to swell, Like parasites gorging on my vision, Sucking out the ocular marrow And growing fat with it. Their wistless wandering decays Into something more aggressive as they Plunge, pierce, bludgeon, break into each other – Or else stalk

By Annys Brady “You have a little girl now?”, I asked. All light tone and lighter smile. Your eyes, like stars in an ocean, Betrayed you. “Yes, I do”, you said. (To replace the boy I lost) You didn’t say. In that moment, Next to packets of rice and jam jars and coffee biscuits Words hung empty like brittle bones and I wondered how you had Drowned all these years Without dying. #DarkPoetsClub

By Mairéad Maguire With confidence born of vodka, I cup his chin in my palm. My thumb languidly, and less than gently, left to right, drags. His bottom lip. He kneels beside me faceless. In the garden of a stranger, on a night of unknowing. The starless sky under us and- deep earth above. I am nothing but my hands. He is nothing, but he opens his mouth. White picket fence. My thumb crosses the boundary line. Trespasses a while, inside his skull. I own his ja

By Beda Higgins The Christmas jumper my grandson bought me needs to go back. Orange and yellow stripes aren’t for me but he’s young and it’s the thought that counts. Return policy is complicated with blacklines and rules for a specific drop-off depo to use that is shut closed for three days strike action. The present has to be returned by tomorrow. I like a daily task since they

By LJ. Bleddyn I cut myself open and compare my heart strings to others read the blue and red veins like lines on an open palm mitigate the differences and twist at the similarities same same, but different in my vein paths I wonder why all I've done is chase my own tail for a decade circling in on each other like some destructive rat-king their paths show brick, foundations and funds: security I can scrutinise all day, until the young moon waxes across the sky but the realit

By F.G. Liauw Within the jungle, she runs. Tumbling under foliage, listening for bird song, knowing that any other animal, will only mean the end. Between the cracks, she waits. Radio pressed to a shuddering chest, Protected by a sling and a heart, the only means for a girl, learning to be a boy, learning to be a secret. Inside her home, she seeks. A memory of a smile, of a time when her mother worried about who she’d marry. Before, scissors met long dark hair. Before, sh

By Kiley Baker A user, I believe the term of choice was. At least that’s how I remember the sting of the alphabet arranged in a way like no other. Especially potent when chosen and uttered, by one’s own regretful mother. I thought my health problems were parasites. Turns out it’s me. I’m the bug that needs eradication from houses that aren’t mine, and places where I apparently take more than I give. Just don’t step on me – I might make a mess. I’m pretty gross after all.

By Georgina O'Neill The tears fall like blood, Thick, deliberate, unforgiven. She weeps the pain that almost died But pain never dies. It sleeps beneath her ribs, Waking when the night forgets its stars. A corner of her mind festers Black, swollen with hate, hurt, anger, death. No light dares touch it. If it ever broke its chains, Freedom itself would bleed. The paws of darkness claw through, Raking the walls she rebuilds in vain. Each barrier crumbles, Each scar hums with me

By Jess Chua The Queen gazed upon her loyal ladies-in-waiting selecting a trio of virgins renowned for their beauty unblemished skin and lustrous locks she concocted a powder out of their bones as part of her anti-aging regimen— they loved her, after all #DarkPoetsClub

By Isabel del Rio Daily deeds in self-defence have this perfect symmetry: they mirror what has been done and demand penitence where it is due. No sin and no surrender. What acts our own, which the harvest of persuasion? Guiltless by birth, we are born of old and if we are guilty of any sin, it is uniquely the oldest sin of all: I will not be bound. We sin for others, bear others’ sins, and each event is judged on its own failings: do we transgress, then, when we say rando

By Grace Asharah You were a gatekeeper to all that I had kept hidden. Hades inviting Persephone into her own depths. And in that underworld labyrinth I picked up all my pieces again. A broken little girl who longed to be loved, A priestess battered by too many lifetimes spent silent, An oracle with wide eyed vision and prophecy, A wild artist who breathes freedom and passion Gremlins and monsters of insecurity, The face of the dark Goddess standing before me, Whis

By Jenni Thorne Dig. Dig deeper. Not with hands, but with the hunger that consumes its host, with the black-toothed maw of want that tears at flesh without restraint. Do not fear the deep. Gold is not for you, no riverbed glitter, those pallid flakes that catch the sun for shallow hearts. You seek the pressure-born scream, the jewel that bites through silence, that learns its name in pain. Gouge deeper. Deeper still. Like time forgot your shape, like the earth owes you a bloo

By Elizabeth Reames Vines are crawling out of my nose. I am vomiting roots. I gag, and a taproot splits my brainstem, spears its threads through my synapses—out of my eyes where tears should be, morning glories. My sweat is petals. My breasts leak honey. Vines are slithering out of my cunt—I am birthing. A lotus head rocks in the bowl of my pelvis, it breaches the birth canal, my walls strain, I push—bog water splashes out, warm as womb— I bear down again, I am caught in th

By Liz Kendall I ride the wolves, nestled into the hollow of corpuscles, borne on their bloodstreams, eddied and swelled. Borne to the muscles for tension and flex, borne to the organs for satisfaction, borne on the breath, the chasmed tongue a wadi for blood. A wolf’s tongue is oasis, sand-rough sucking poolshielded by night’s ridged palate, each ivory tooth its own bleak law of gravity. Dark wet heat in the heart of the forest, ice melts at the thought. What is instinct

By D. Dea My most unsettling thought is not about death or monsters, but it is this question: what if nothing is real? Not the coffee cooling in my hand, not my hand holding the coffee, not even this poem I'm pretending to write. What if we are all phantoms living a dream or avatars in someone's game with no memory of entering? What if there is no god, no devil, just us, wearing many skins learning to live different versions of ourselves while the rest fills the void, s

By Poppi Hmlenitsky For Ellie It has been raining for eternity. Somber trees creek. Plumes of silver escape my parched lips, Cracked as stone ruins of a gothic cathedral. I creep from my crypt: Life-depraved, sickly-creature that I have become, Whimpering on the edge of oblivion. The air shudders at the sight of me, such a young thing with Ancient blood painted along my shackled spine. It gushes from my orifices as if engorging aqueducts. Great clods of molded leaves pi