By Shwa Laytart Poison all water And charge us to Drink With dehydration It’s hard to Think Fattening us up With sugary Treats With malnutrition We’re easily Beat Gradually Firing up The pot Turn our planet Into a desert They like it Hot! Destroy our dreams So effectively They don’t dream So neither Should we Deplete ALL Water It’s not Our right To drink De-hy-drated... Hard To Think Hypnotized Into Defeat Soon to be The species They Eat #DarkPoetsClub

By Amelia Broome Her wails pierce The relentless tears persist Pounding against soaked floorboards Their obnoxious thuds deafening She, unmoving For a time, I had lain beside her Too, consumed in ceaseless grief Fixed on the past state Mourning those I’d met and those I hadn’t Places I’d been and would never see Mourning myself But that time has passed. The ring gripped onto her finger A tightly bound noose Choking but not killing Taunting as I thrash Bound and suspended

By Elizabeth Shanaz How silly to wash the very feet that loathed another step But Allah says walk to me and I will run to you I don’t know of a return route from the well of hopelessness Allah says I am still a believer Water pebbles down the forearm like falling dates Maryam begged to end her life, too Don’t cry so hard, you just washed out all that snot And Maryam is among those Allah loves the most Watch the runoff circle the drain Allah promises ev

By Ainsley Hayward The grip of your bite stings like a malignant cancerous cell, blossoming the destruction of sanctioned virtues, blood remembers what I tried to forgive Your fingers are like sitting on a beach of lamentation at night, surrendering calloused soles into the skeletal ashes of sand, presenting your body as hollow so I couldn't stand Those rosy pink lips innate the soil beneath my forsaken indifference toward individuality, bringing silence in thunder and darkn

By TM Pain. It builds. Rolling like a storm, building pressure in your chest. It’s too much. The emptiness. Enveloping everything is what it does best. You scream. No sound escapes. A wordless cry. Friends don’t see. Family won’t ask. You look “fine” on the outside. Harm. The externalization of the internal pain. A reprieve. Suddenly the storm, It stops. Fading away like smoke on the breeze. Stillness. Short lived. But even then, With dissipated pain, That’s when I knew, I’d

By Dorian Nightingale Body-bagged. Toe-tagged. A cadaver-stanza knitted together by a Hagedorn pen-needle. Note how the wrist-rolling action of its bevel-tipped nib Is interwoven into this skin-thin, grey- pallid paper. See the carefully threaded word placement. Look how this semi-colon has been clamped; each syllable of sibilance strategically spun. Observe the contracture of the syntax. Rigor mortis within its grammar. Document the dead lines, nylon

By Ada Jenkins I saw you before you came, your tiger eye, bright, pitiless, your death-belt loaded jewel loins. When you broke into me, constellations wept, bleeding stars from my womb, tearing me from myself, mastered by your universe. You withdraw, a shard, a shimmer of self splintering as you leave me, hanging loose, a driftwood shadow. Added to your collection of corpses, your kingdom, your cloud of dominion. You didn’t notice my soul, as it fluttered, delicate; fragile,

By Sophie Daly-Atkinson My chest cavity is torn in two as the moon grinds her white chthonic thumb, glutting on air thread through wooden lungs, slipping over earth like a fat unseeing god. I dream of wings peeling my back, a soar that soaks up the sky, cleaving blue with my two-pronged swords. I think I am dying, or I am already Death, my flesh a century of prayer, a cemetery of dirt swallowed by the tide, my body a bloodless dartboard for Time. #DarkPoetsClub

By Simona Volpe There's no one here at night Only the wind that shakes my body I have only my sad story to recall You, alas, have many macabre tales to tell. Sometimes you come back here, To that tree in the woods, Where my forgotten corpse swings, Innocent prey of your misdeeds. As you walk in the woods, I watch you With my empty, blind eyes That look painfully into the past As I think back on my unfortunate life. I was born close and familiar to death I saw women weep over

By Gabriel Knott-Fayle The snow came today. Which meant we had time to dig your grave yesterday – before the earth froze. Under a tree. By the river. For now, we are close. I walk past the rock that marks your spot. One day I will move. And your bones will bleach under a distant sun. #DarkPoetsClub

By Ann Reeg Adamson I want to lie on my back on a bed of pine needles, Feeling them oily, sticking to my legs, And breathe in their cleansing scent. I want to breathe deeply under the looming trunks, Their towering columns framing the night sky, Giving a stage to this starry night. I want the air to be so cold that my nostrils Stick in slits when I attempt to inhale, And my teeth chatter, masking my fear, The night silent as the pause after a gasp of air. I want to lie perfec

By Veronica Meredith Sam doesn't wear PPE in the lab. No gloves, no goggles, no mask: much to Anthony's distress. Canisters hold vanilla protein powder, birthday-cake- and orchid-scented, deceptively sweet, truly artificial. Swallowed, it promotes growth. On skin, though? Living tissue liquefies, turns people to molten sludge. Anthony saw it happen, once. A sprinkling on an exposed inch of wrist claimed a lab tech's hand. The rot smelled sweeter than he expected. "Work out th

By John Ganshaw Arms outstretched with palms bent, fingers pointed to hell. Wrists arched to the heavens above. Veins erupt, and the holy being of my most eternal ground sprays to reach the angels above. Oh, crimson nectar I’ve held so dear, show me the way to gain my fate. Faucet of life has no shut-off valve. Pain of past loves taken away, empty of the hurt that boiled beneath my sheath. Dreams of tomorrow are hidden from me, behind a wall of misery. Hope was gone, and lov

By Donna Dallas Did you hold the swan?? Only to offer its long tender neck with glowing pulse to the bull with steel hooves and blood cinder eyes Does the swan ever truly know?? It knows it is honey and soft down opens like Mother Earth succulent and divine Why does the bull gorge upon the swan? As man doeth and so it is written in the scrolls across time sunk in the Dead Sea how the beauty of things is sucked upon and pulled apart for no real reason and the simple reason tha

By Hannah Watkins I see myself in their grain Moulded into existence Not by the hands of humans They have been released from their steely confines And they remain upright They move in circles Over the soft bodies of worms Transmuting the decaying flesh, of sour grapes And ungodly creatures Into rich soil at the feet of mountains Free to weave the liminal spaces between No mortar holds my body bound Stiff, pious men have no place inside me And their words cannot touch me I am

By K. A. Warwick Inheritance is inconspicuous. It is not the jewellery you pocket or the deeds you wade through. Inheritance is the way your body flinches before your mind understands why. It isn’t given, and it isn’t asked for. It is learned. The way you listen through walls without thinking. The way you fold your anger into smaller, softer shapes easier to carry, harder to see. The way you apologise for taking up air. Inheritance is learning to predict the weather of the ho

By Ruth Hutton Your house loomed above my garden, Your dead, wolf eyes stalked me through the windows. Even in sunlight, your house was dark. Flowers flailed, like leftover innards. You invited me in with a misleading humour and down to earthiness that I admired. Charisma oozing, impeccable chitchat, offering stories of a shared life. A vile, handsome couple. The crunch - we work with kids. I was prey from the outset. We live upstairs in this house. Sunday afternoon drinks. M

By Rosie Bogumil i’m doing well yes, sleeping better (the later i wake, the more meals i miss) taking my medications as prescribed the intrusive thoughts remain intrusive i’m eating more regularly (mostly caffeine) yes, three times a day i’ve been leaving the house (less often) and getting used to being alone at home in and at one with the dark (that’s probably part of the problem) when God invented sleep it was to give us a taste of death as a treat (i kn

By Nicki Blake even at my brightest the old hurt remains it lurks, palliated by the past, swathed in epochs of defence distinct as geology – a little wound become a little world the glow you so admire is symptom of salt, of silica my value - my response to ceaseless torture the trauma has changed how I appear, and what you perceive as beauty is a scar #DarkPoetsClub #DarkHumourBitterIrony

By Millie Graham The grey looms upon the horizon Morning graces the grisly gallows. The hangman, hooded, haughty, Checks the rope, sets the trapdoor. Boots upon cobbles, A shuffling step, Soldiers bring the condemned, Wrists bound, eyes hollow. On the scaffold he stands, Mouth tight, soul dead, His first taste of fresh air in months Tainted by the bitter rope scratching at his neck. Drums hold a steady rhythm, the song of his death. The trapdoor drops, so does he. There’s a c