By R.D. Salmon A toast to us, Darling, in absinthe and tears, Let’s open our throats to our next hundred years. I’ll loosen your chains as your eyes become glassy- That retro-consumptive look’s always so classy. What’s this? Something ails you? Just stay awake! I demand and command it, so make no mistake. Another drink, Darling? Don’t dither, just down it, I’ve told you: with sorrow, the best way’s to drown it. I’ve kept you down here for a century past, Don’t anyone say love

By Alex Oliver Susurrating whispers kneel told, black laced and sobbing Black coach and six trots feather-bold and janglebrass: a late bride of sorrows, a grim groom’s last gasp A glass of sand toasts the unslaked roses wreathed in a grinning halo Death-head colours in savage salute Stare a dead-pecked gaze with gritted teeth - in the Shroud of the Monkey sheet-wound, linen-folded Pose in repose Pucker-sucked, under the tongue a pebble hides in the maw above double-crossed fi

By Yati Ramli They said it was smart. It found its target in the dark. That’s what makes it clever. The target was a building with a name like Hope Clinic or Something Elementary - details pending verification. The screen showed a white square breathing in crosshairs. A video game with better funding. “Minimal collateral,” the spokesperson said, as if grief can be itemised. The bomb did its job. Clean. Surgical. Very professional. The crater was symmetrical. The children were

By Megan Benham Student midwife - last call of the day. She must regret being sent my way; she called and greeted with “Congratulations!” Too late for calls and confirmations. Blood test done after a case of spotting, told that bad luck had come a-knocking. My patient file had not yet updated, so instead of condolence, I was congratulated. For a moment I think it was just a mistake, or it’s all a bad dream and I’m about to wake. Instead, she doesn't know what to say. All the

By Ann Reeg Adamson The saying goes Don’t cut off your nose To spite your face But my face is only pasted on As a shield to my heart Where the real spite lives Digs Ingrains Like when you left me Without the scent of your soap The grease under your nails The salty sea of your sweat Bathing me in you So screw this nose— I’ll tear it from the mask of my face And go on— One sense less In spite of you #DarkPoetsClub #DarkHumourBitterIrony

By Susan Aurora Irvine You know those little coffins They bury babies in? The ones they make as white as snow To show they’re without sin? Well I have one inside me A lightless bloodied lair And from time to time I bury A small white body there. From time to time I bury A body white and red, But now the time is coming When I must join the dead. This burial ground they’ll bury Beneath a slab of stone Whiles thinking that they lay to rest A woman all alone. Then half-formed gh

By Daniel Sowa Five days a week. Forty hours. Meaningless greetings exchanged like small change in a machine that gives nothing back. “How are you?” “Fine, thanks.” The fluorescent lights hum a lullaby for the living dead. We sit in our cubicles, each a well-appointed coffin with excellent ventilation and a photo of someone we used to love. Quarterly goals: Pretend this matters. Annual review: Exceeded expectations at pretending. The spiral of loneliness keeps tightening

By Mark O'Neill In amongst a cesspool, A diamond in the rough, Who took upon or under wing, What you’d call a scruff, A pure of heart and selfless soul, Pulled down a trodden path, Who listened hard with open ear, And spoke of this and that, Through endless nights of pointlessness, And running out of day, He found it all for nothing now, Under six foot, he lay. #DarkPoetsClub #DarkHumourBitterIrony

By Just Chrissi This was the year that was supposed to be better. Where I left broken limbs and life's anxieties behind, the sun caressing me, skipping away from existential highways. “Welcome to a new year, huzzah!” I crowed, casting out demons and despair. Not quite... Welcome to death, more pain, and collapsing with a heart rate awarded its own speeding ticket. Perhaps it didn’t love me anymore or craved a ‘wild adventure’. Or the masochistic me was playing a sick joke. “I

By Gopi Selva Like a deer in the headlights I am a man in the headlights Thinking of a deer in the headlights As the car inches closer Am I frozen like a deer in the headlights Because I am a deer And there are headlights Or is it because I’ve been told Of deer in the headlights And how they freeze So now I too am frozen Just like they said I would. And the car inches closer Like a deer in the headlights I am a car in the headlights Of another car in the headlights Again. Li

By Morte Ashgrave They say the first cut is the deepest, that a good death is the sweetest. Mine would be an old horror movie— distorted, bad acting, everyone running the wrong way. My life was an old rock song, uneven, messy, turned out wrong. Lyrics and rhythm out of sync, a one-hit wonder with no comeback planned. I lived like a victim in a wrong-turn film, always choosing the house over the road, mistaking noise for safety. On Elm Street, I’d survive. Not because I’m brav

By Deborah Humphrey A doctor tells me you can assess the level of a woman’s depression based on the stickiness of her kitchen floor. I walk barefoot by the cooker my feet stick I stand for years A lingering examination of the torso the doctor declares depression psycho- somatic hysteria Uncurable After a time I am placed in the museum for wax-work dolls Doctors pass sometimes they poke watch me blink a new doll arrives Feet raw from years on kitchen floors doctors smile admi

By Tina Andrews A game between two lovers unfold There is no winner, it’s untold Roll a dice, pray above three One, two or three, a cut to thee Four, five or six a needle stick Heaven or hell the choice before us You roll a one, cut your flesh, with no fuss I draw up a fix, rolling a six You roll one, another cut to your wrist With a second six I decide to twist Rolling again I land a two I make a deep cut, now bleeding fast like you Draining blood, energy low, you roll a fiv

By Anthony Gorin of Beauty In Normalcy The core fault to kindness, is that far too few partake in this. A person kind, amongst a sea of those so monstrous, is a candle burning amongst and beneath the ocean. This is the true fault to kindness. Something it cannot outshine, it can only. Wait to be snuffed into extinguished nonexistence. #DarkPoetsClub #DarkHumourBitterIrony

By Virginie Bernard My boyfriend worked at a women’s shelter One night, Josiane’s ex-husband sneaked in And pressed a gun against my man’s forehead Desperate for his wife back, high on cocaine To protect her from that lovelorn gunman She was moved to a top-secret address A flat where she let in a bunch of bums The stage for raw Dionysian chaos At some point, they sobered up and killed her Decapitated her, stole her money Next dumped Josiane’s head in the river Leaving her dea

By Jared Frank I couldn’t help myself. I would click on video after video of him speaking even though it created new forehead creases, and I’d rant for days after. Hours were spent pointlessly debating with his persona inside my head until it hurt to think. Like so many of us I was ecstatic when they announced his mysterious disappearance. Puzzled of course; the hidden occult library in the west wing and the pentagrams of blood in the oval office were strange (even the pundit

By Amanda Crundall Sunken eyes hidden within moonlight circles lost in a viral haze Replicating fast uncontrolled powerful strain on the living Nailing coffins in the already dead they just didn't know #DarkPoetsClub #DarkHumourBitterIrony

By Selven Raine I wait for the drops of rain To wash away my... paper boat What? Did you actually believe I was going to master some brilliant metaphor? I never do And when I do... I don’t. I wait for the first light of morning Or perhaps a higher entity could light the way and show me where I’m going As I said I am not one to be profound It is merely that I am drunk... And this appears to be an unsteady ground I wait... for my prince charming Galloping on white horse My sav

By Eleanor Carpenter Patter-scratch it went, up one leg, deviant stroke of silk on fur, before a nightmare skirmish of claw and tail in my sleeping man’s nethers. Next day, there it was, with soulless fish-egg eyes and pink hand-paws, awaiting me. Before I could scream— its eyes bulged marbly, nose distended shrewish, legs unfolded roo-ish, jaws voided—oh, oh, oh— an undead soprano. In its own echo it withdrew, under my skirting. No sign for weeks and then—snap— the trap!

By Peter Devonald By a peculiar twist of fate he replaced his lover with a brick. It was easier this way for him, for her. The brick was reliable, amenable and dependable. The brick always turned up for football, never said anything silly or controversial. She never disagreed with him or was difficult, she didn’t buy a round, but neither did his ex. They were inseparable, his brick and him, did everything together, cinema, pub and exercise. He’d found his perfect match and th