By Maisie Barlow The sun is shining but there’s a dull ache, I should be feeling happy but I can’t shake this strange feeling of emptiness, The tiny little hole that gnaws, opens closes beats in me and chews up stirs my soul. A pain so mild I can’t describe it but a void so big that I have to try and hide it. I’m on the outside looking in but this bug or this virus it claws at my skin. I’ve got the scars from all the other times I’ve visited, the times I’ve opened up myself t

By Sara Louise Wheeler Dr Sara Louise Wheeler has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, and she is exploring all aspects of her embodied experiences through a variety of creative mediums. She is currently writing a Deafhearing opera-ballet called ‘Y Dywysoges Arian’ (The Silver Princess), funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Sara is also preparing a bilingual poetry collection called ‘Confylsiwn/ Convulsion’, reflecting on the lasting impact of her febrile convulsions. Sara is a Visit

By Safiyyah Altaf You were growing on me Like moss awakening and attaching Mass awakening and hatching Divine orchestration of the tectonic plates beckoning Placing pressures on my body Leaving a grotesque purple yellow brown dotted bruise As they cruise over and under my body, the muse I am caught amongst the energies shifting, their uncontrolled drifting please pull me out, away from Gwynn Let’s see the soil debris left on my skin as Freckles and birthmarks Which we can dus

By Gemma Green I ask that you keep me around as a courtesy And that courtesy keeps me as pristine as she found me Spry, and with a bundle of twigs clenched in my indigo fist I ask that you see me as a trophy All that I am is to be polished And inscribed with achievement arbitrary Looked after once every two months Looked upon with a nostalgic eye and a pang of false superiority I ask to be caught the same way heavy blankets of fog absorb tendrils of red smoke Bathed in a wash

By Zaphkiel Feathers ruffled, the bird sits With friends, though they are alone. They want to go home, It is too hot here in the Sun, But the cold is too painful, Too bold of an expression to handle. Not yet. The seasons are set, They will pass, Because in the end, Nothing truly lasts. We are all temporary, Permanent in pain. We are all hopeful, Feeling the same. So the bird flies off, Away from the Sun Back home. And though it is a Trek, they do not Mind to roam alone #darkp

By C.J. These are the words of a drifting mind. My pride, my pain, my guilt...my ever distant muse of fortune. Through the sear of regret a fragment has fallen from the mirror of my soul. The true visage within, monstrous. It seems cruel to be such a self-loathing creature. An unfathomable entity bequeathing such sorrow to ultimately adorn a smile. A curious curse to appear fulfilled but choked with sadness within your very essence. If the path to Hell is paved by good intent

By Barbara Harris Leonhard What is healing but the stabbing to death of pain, the banishment of shadows, the release of sorrows, the burning of poison arrows? Healing requires arbitration & litigation. as illness takes possession, the uninvited occupant in our temple. It strips away a clean visage, creates squalor & decay, plants bramble in the garden, makes infertile the soil; evades eviction. Illness commandeers the ego, becomes its own soul. This loathsome dweller deceives

By Lucy Pettigrew History is repeating itself, stuck to the cracks in my wall and festering because I don’t want to face the clean-up. Movement is still difficult, the sound of cracking bones makes me flinch even though I can’t stop bending back my own fingers, the clicking unlocking a part of me I thought was long gone. Yoga promising flexibility but not how to stop feeling guilty for a milky cup of tea afterwards. My body used to be a graveyard for excitement but now it’s t

By Kameron Lo A carousel of misery Twirling in throes of regret Release me from this burdened flesh And self destructive intellect #darkpoetsclub

By Jonathan Fear I crushed a wild rose, in my hand In my hand The thorns cut deep And the blood flowed fast The pain decreasing The numbness didn’t last I spread the crushed petals, on my bed On my bed The sheets, they ran red Overflowing and red Life slowly ebbing The sadness is going I crushed a wild rose, in my hand In my hand As the sheets ran red Nothing was said The wild rose, will soon be dead The wild rose was me The delicate Damaged Beautiful Wilting Wild rose Was me

By David Valentine I choke down a hundred placebos, Row by row they weekly go, The sugar sweet pseudo-psychosis . . . O Novacaine! plodding mindlessly along The narrow straits of my nerves Like the invading Messiah. O the hundred reminders of death! O the hundred strangers And the beauty that lurks in their bodies, Waiting to work its treachery! A hundred incisions and intrusions; A hundred plans and changes; A hundred contortions and confusions; My dream rearranges; I stomp

By Sara Louise Wheeler “The ear is important”, said the tutor – several times. “You hear the stressed vowel”; the hearing, always the hearing. And so, although we bent our knees, to feel the stress and recognise the penult, the epiphany came to me, like unexpected rain on a sunny day – to thwart my poetic ambitions. I’d reconciled, somewhat, with the idea that I will probably lose most of my hearing. “I’ll write” I said – in my silent bubble. But the ear is important, in orde

By Elina Tasioula ditched in the alley gimme them cigarettes got 'em paid for holla kid mamma's on the phone she licks the ashtrays bathes with dirty towels shiny? no, that ain't the word for what it was gimme those peanuts stalks the whites with washed out wallets glutted flesh starving bones gimme that money once in the alley it's a shrillin' light that is, well, not for nothin' gimme them cigarettes got 'em paid for #darkpoetsclub

By Dorota Chioma In the moment of a defeat, In the crisis of a mental breakdown, Abused by its brutality, Left exposed, Vulnerable, Hollow, Estranged, Deflated, Horrified by my inability to function, Aghast by my own unwillingness to try, In despair... #darkpoetsclub

By R. Moores Space, wind, trees Breathe in while you can — _little one — _the worst is yet to come Alone you are not safe, alone you are vulnerable to the void At death: blackness, nothingness, empty and bleak And then rest in the bosom of the earth Your body holding your soul intact Your sleeping survivor resting until the planetary son returns: Adam — a perfected genetic being, tall and radiant, purple light emanating timelessly And then Eve — _a beautiful, erotic creature

By Cait Price they take me to see the bone witch stick out your tongue, she commands. I dream of black tar flooding my mouth. wet-mouthed witch on my neck, blood on my teeth. you will be ill, she says seeing things like that. she is a small thing. her elbows jangle I feel l could pinch her out like a match why do you stay here, she asks- my face shuts like a desk. Maybe she can learn to love me, I say The bone witch laughs out-loud at that. oh yes? and what would that teach y

By Allan J. Manson I lie a lot. Only about important things, to people I love. I cheated on your mother but to be fair, she cheated on me. Maybe? I was a coward, and never asked she was braver than I, so she knows what I did. I'm not even sure if you were mine. She never wanted you, but I did I think. I'm confident I do now, but not sure I did then. She says she doesn't think about you— or us but she was always full of shit. I say writing’s a dream, but it's

By Jade M. Wong If I hang from a chandelier of ice, Will the cold seep into my bloodstream first, Like the harbinger of a frozen curse? Or will the oxygen that escapes In panicked gasps through faint blue lips, Usher in my life’s eclipse? Gazing up at the chandelier of ice, Perhaps today, I will only Admire how it twinkles so magnificently. #darkpoetsclub

By Tyler Ray Black Water washes on the shores of my mind. Searching but not finding, forever blind. Vast empty beaches stretch to the infinite. Peaceful dreams only belong to the fortunate. Weeping shadows make their presence known. Watching me over the years, as I have grown. Sand covering my feet, keeping me still. Stealing my compassion, stealing my will. And what have I done to deserve this? I have asked for wisdom and traded my bliss. As we scrape through the pictures of

By Marina Zrnic In the woods the summer dies. It howles and whistles as broken dignity, such is the night of the autumn equinox. The church bells provide us with a shallow feeling of our existence echoing through our souls and teeth. We walk and we sleep without talking, we´ve replaced the talking with the suffocating breathing that I had not known, not even in the darkest times. Forest is such a suitable place for a lady like myself. I lick my wounds among the wolves, sprink