Discussions

People want to talk about mental illness now
while I sit in my living room, thinking about
how much easier life would be if I just
didn’t exist. Not suicide, though sometimes a
flash of it in the moment makes sense. But to just
not exist? That sounds sublime. No more worries,
no more stress. The anxiety alone. The emptiness
would have to find somewhere to go. The compulsions
would form up around other brains. So maybe it’s 
a public service to stick around, hole up, give 
the neuroses a place to stay instead of infecting
anyone else. Let’s talk about neurodivergency,
about pretending everything is normal
so nobody thinks you need that sort of vacation.
Making your head space take up too little
reality. Making your feelings hide until they
show up in the wrong places. Taking up less space
until people don’t bother anymore.

​

The Logos

Heaven? You would bat your eyes at Death as though ‎some lightened form
Preserves against a worméd state- yet still expect to have ye flesh disposed of
In an ugly stomach; and this to me is eternity, for I make no company with an identity
So powerfully as flesh- 'tis all I know of me. Spirit? Flesh.

​

Piece 2

This competition will endure until the end of time
After I’m long gone and she’s immortalized.
Possibilities gone, fluttered into outer space.
I’m the antagonist who won’t leave a trace. 

I’m ill-suited to be in her divine shadow
Of every gold standard she set in tragedy.
Bad fortune that it was her life to give. 
Fate she had to die and I had to live.

If suffering was a will, I was the main benefactor.
It’s not a contest, and I’m not the winner.
She is an angel, frozen in time - 
I’m left here with devils, out of my mind. 

I’m a poor man’s version of her- 
Scrutinizing myself to fill an empty place.
It’s misplaced - I’m led astray, I’m lost in this world - 
This phantom rival has left a cruel space.





Piece 3

I loved you in a marijuana-induced delusion
Stoked into life by an inhale of a blunt.
You were my idiosyncratic belief
Someone worth my conviction

The devil’s lettuce made me think
That you were meant for me
Obsessive nature took my head
​an abnormal fixation on what could be.

My false impression stayed with me
Until it pulled me down and made me sink
Scaring my loved ones away with my obsession
You were the object of my psychosis
Fallen prey to my dark delusions.

I was out of touch, out of my mind,
I scared you away, I’m not surprised.

I needed to put you out.
And discard the roach.
Breathe clean air in.
And breathe you out.

Manic and spiralling;
Voices telling me you’re the one.
I was deciding fate. 

You left as a ghost,
Haunted me ever since.
Stayed high to keep you alive.

You were as good as dead,
I put down the bong and lived life instead
Realized the love story was all in my head

You were a desire, one that couldn’t be
How could I not tell that you were not for me

The only way to keep you away was to tell you I loved you
So, I did
And I never heard from you again,
It was the smartest thing I ever did.




Piece 6 

I sit very distraught, looking out my bedroom window. 
I am smoking a joint and holding a black coffee filled to the brim.
I am weeping
Feeling helpless
Not sure why

The body has its reasons.

​
​

                Richard P J Lambert CC



earth 

when my middle sister was a child, she would sit
strawberry-blonde marshmallowed
in the dining room and eat earwigs.
she’d cut them in half with her fist, and
thrust each bit into her mouth,
swallowing them down to sit in her stomach with the
pureed carrots and powdered milk. 

I thought of this when I watched the woman
fill her mouth with soil.
I understood that primal yearn,
the need to return to the dark and fertile –
the oozing secretions. 

if I – she – we – are the natural, then it is
of us. give me the legs of a millipede,
the supple sliming worm.
I will swallow it down
gullet-full stomach-stretched.
fill my mouth with mud, with earth,
fill me full.
hold my hair whilst I vomit.
wipe my brow, I am contorting.
watch me writhe. 

soil is a place of birth & death & birth again.
it nourishes and starves – it teems and contains.
it heaves.
it is heavy.
let me lie here under this.
​i am empty. 




Slivers 

there is a moment
when the late afternoon sun
slants through the pines
that everything stills. 

it is a landscape
of verticals – 

a renegotiation. 

language bursts berry red
against these slivers of gold,
but the silver birch stands,
a poetics of possibility. 

you close your eyes,
smell the settling frost,
and think maybe –
just maybe. 

​
​

Alice is a female-identifying, London-based, queer dramaturg, script supervisor, poet and performer. As a script reader and supervisor, she has worked with Theatre503, Finborough Theatre, & Katzpace, and has performed her poetry at various London venues. She is currently collaborating with The Actor’s Box on performance-poetry workshops, writing a performance piece on queerness and liminality, and studying for her MA at Goldsmiths. Alice’s poetry has been published by Ghost City Press, and is forthcoming in GoldDust and Factory Magazine. She can otherwise be found reading a book with her 5 dogs somewhere. [Pronouns she/her].

                 Richard P J Lambert CC



Memories and Reveries

Memories of memories of memories
Fade back and back and back

I recall a moment
A feeling
The sound of laughter on a Saturday morning
Seashore spray on a shore raised face
Sunshine 
Splashing waves
Winds swept across sand and shell

I am a reverie
I am the past
I am brighter days 
Colors vivid
Experiences fresh and new

When life was a bit more...

What are the words
The sights
The sounds I’m searching for?

How was it that my younger self felt?
What was that thought
That creative, chaotic, contemptuous thought 
Lost to time’s eternal grind
In the back of my eighth-, tenth-, twelfth-grade mind?

I am the child
Peering around the corner in darkness after bedtime
I am the teenager
Yearning for the day I can drive away
I am the grounded 
The disgruntled calendar counter
Ticking off days until graduation

My friends and I are bored again
I guess we’ll ride bikes in this well worn town
I guess we’ll jump fences and steal a few waves
I guess we’ll sit around after curfew 
Long to X our eighteenth
Our twenty-first
What comes after that?

We just can’t wait to grow up
To leave
To be free

But will this growth bring wisdom?
Will we ever arrive?
Will we be too late?
Will the world give up the wait and close the gate?

Is it even possible to liberate?
Or will we just stagnate
Procrastinate
Commiserate
Pay homage to nostalgia
And then to fate

Until the future is all used up
Until then and there merge to one
Until all that’s left is a setting sun

From the clutches of time we cannot run
We only have here
We only have now 

But when is now?
Is it even real?
Is it something you can feel?

The past holds my memories
The future my reveries
But neither holds me
Neither holds we
Neither holds anything the eyes can see

We spend our days dreaming
We spend our days dwelling
We spend our lives locked in a loop

We can never be free
We can never be we
In a memory
Or a reverie

Until we set those dreams on fire
Let fate and nostalgia expire
And let the universe conspire 
To bring us back

Back to a child like knowing
A sense of living and flowing
Upon a stream we are constantly going
And if we let those phantoms keep growing
We will have no seeds for sowing
No paddle for rowing

The current
Or the path
Just victims of time’s wrath

So I say to myself
And to all who will listen

Let go of those ghosts 
Let your present self shine
It’s not a perfect path but it’s undoubtedly mine

There are no better days
Not before and not then
We rise from where we are
From the blood and the dirt
And don’t expect to feel alive and yet be free from the hurt

Cast off your false pretenses
And your mental defenses
Life is only lived in present tenses.

​


Taking Space

I can’t deny that I take up space
And not a little bit

The footprint of my shadow can be
If I am presenting unconsciously
Like the shaded hues of an impending storm

From horizon to horizon
In all four directions
Clouds dampen every contour in sight

It is not that I intend to take this space
I do not demand it
I do not find myself incredulous at the presence of others

No

I balk at self-important men
Straight white men with mortgages and advanced degrees
Suits and suites at the Sheraton

And yet I take space still
Sometimes with words or mannerisms 
Always by the weight of my born identity

People just believe me
Take me seriously
Offer me praise
Jobs
Zero interest loans for which I did not apply

This is not because of who I am
It is because of what I am

I cannot deny what I am.
I cannot deny that this construction shapes the world around me.
I cannot deny that I rarely feel 

Threatened 
Excluded 
Passed over 
Judged unfairly

At least not in ways that compromise my physical safety or my ability to pay rent

I cannot deny that I have used this privilege to my advantage.
I have hidden in the wide open spaces of my own shadow
I have relied upon this space to edge me into opportunities I didn’t deserve

I cannot deny that I have been fragile when these clouds have been peeled back to let in the light
The light of other people
People who I Love
People to whom I have professed unwavering solidarity and allyship

I have crumbled under my own weight
I have turned the grief of comrades, lovers, and friends into a story about me
A story about my inability to be an ally

I know this is because of my conditioning
As a settler
As a man
As a white guy
Tall and handsome
With good grades

I was born into the normative narrative
I am the unconscious violence of race and class
Gender and colonialism

This is what I am

The question of who I am can be a different story
If I am willing to make it so
And bring fire and fury
Light and space
Into this cloud covered world.


​

Learning to Cry

Poised
Confident
Put together

Hours and days and years have been spent accumulating certainty
The right words and arguments for things I know nothing about
Analyses of books I haven’t read
Definitive answers to questions upon which I have barely reflected

It’s important to be right
It’s important to know what you’re talking about
Well, it’s important that people think you know
That people think you’re right

That’s how you get praise
That’s how you get prestige
That’s how you rise to prideful pomp and prompt promotion
That’s how you reach perfection
That’s how you win

When I was 32, I learned how to cry

I learned how to fall apart
I learned how to grieve
I learned how to lie upon floors
Hair disheveled
Eyes pouring out decades of accumulated manhood and perfection

I learned it’s not important to know everything
It’s not important to pretend
It’s not important to be a man

Falling to pieces is the only way to be whole.

​

                  Richard P J Lambert CC




(Ador)/(Deplor)able


Once upon a time
my odd behaviour / strange way of thinking / outrageous antics
were endearing:
everyone loved me and my wild ways
(perhaps even because of my wild ways)

Once upon a time
in a busy supermarket
on a Tuesday afternoon
I climbed into a chest freezer
with the chicken nuggets and pies
and closed the door tightly behind me
because I was so tired and needed to lie down
and the shop was too noisy and scary and I needed to be cold
because I thought my blood was on fire and I just wanted to be dead

Omg you’re sooo mental hahaha / What a nutter, you’re so funny! / Lmfao I fucking love you, you crazy bitch! / You are SUCH a legend / Girl, you psycho! / Wowww batshit cray
 
You’d call 999 if I did that today.
You’d scuttle away from ~the scene~
shaking your head, failing to hide the embarrassment on your face
but not before telling the crowd of dismayed onlookers she’s been that way for years
 
Because now that people have a “greater awareness” and “understanding” of mental illness, my behaviours are appalling / tragic / sad / dangerous / pitiful / distressing / such a shame

The idiosyncrasies of mine
that were once adorable
are now utterly deplorable

and I’m still just as sick as before
but at least you “get it” now, right?
At least that’s something:
at least some good came out of all of this bad.





(This) Isn’t It

I don’t know what I want in life
But I know this isn’t it.

The more perfect you become
The less you seem to fit.
And surely something must be wrong
If life attached feels just as shit
As it would do if we were to split.

I don’t know what I want in life
But I know this isn’t it.

I’m waiting for a stranger to admit
That he still loves me more than a little bit,
Chasing that glorious high I know exists
But knowing that, whatever I find,
It’ll never, ever be as good as that first hit.

I don’t know what I want in life
But I know this isn’t it.





To Love X Y and Z

Most of her sentences begin with, “I used to.”
She used to be / to go / to enjoy / to do / to love x y and z.
Now she dwells, angry and bitter, writing furious lists
of all of the things that The Thief has stolen from her.
She used to enjoy painting. She used to dance
in crowds. She used to wear dresses. She used to be
smart. She used to do sports. She used to enjoy
the sunshine. She used to have
real friends. She used to be pretty. She used to travel
abroad. She used to enjoy sex. She used to speak
several languages. She used to throw parties. She used to make
people laugh. She used to be skinny. She used to be
popular. She used to be able to do
anything. She used to be a daughter,
a sister, a niece, a granddaughter.
She used to be brilliant.
She used to trust people.
She cannot get over Her [old] [true] [real] Self;
she misses Her and grieves for Her.
The person she is now is not a person,
rather a half-human living a half-life.
But The Thief cannot be caught nor punished.
Already locked up in the prison of her mind,
The Thief paces day and night, making her brain ache
while waiting for an opportunity to strike,
destroying her dreams before they can be realised,
converting her hopes into fears, stealing her life
one memory, one chance, one possibility at a time.
The punisher cannot be punished.
You can’t hang the hangman.
The Thief will only leave when there’s nothing left to steal.
The Thief will leave soon.





Things You’ll Find When I Die

Is this what’s left,
                                what is left of a life?
                                A human being
                                boiled down
                                reduced
                                to a handful of possessions.
                                I think about how
                                and when and why,
                                and the pieces of me
                                 that you will find
                                 when I die…


Rusty hoop earrings. Melted daffodils in a Kronenbourg pint glass. Note that reveals the secret ingredient of my guacamole. Two winning scratch-cards. Hunting knife wrapped in a bloody tea towel. One million kirby grips. Punnet of overripe nectarines. 3 x deer skulls. Pile of cigarette ash. Several hundred books. Diet pills. 5 x rabbit skulls. Flutter of coke on a copy of Vogue (Paris, December 2015). Rosary blessed by Pope John Paul II. My Hit-List. Fancy dresses that I’ll never get to wear. Emergency £50 note. 1 x Black Ibex horn. Tangle of leggings. Custard-cream crumbs in the bed. Array of plastic carrier bags—various sizes (under the sink). Bowl of ‘easy peelers’ that are not easy to peel in the slightest. Shoebox of acrylics, watercolours, inks. Academic records, including my prize-winning essay on poetic energy in William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All. Shrine to my father. Broken Rimmel lipstick (colour #30). Two vintage Arsenal scarves. Box file filled with cards and letters from family, friends and exes. Empty notebooks. Enough filled journals to (hopefully) explain me away. And finally, a locked wooden box containing The Truth—my truth, and yours, too. The keys are inside the Buddha.





Lent

I don’t know what to give up for Lent…
carbs? cutting? cheese? cocaine? chocolate? crying?
casual commitment to Catholicism???
I am not afraid of Hell:
it is here, at home, in my head:
Hell is at home in my head.

​


HLR is a 20-something writer of CNF, short prose and poetry. She writes primarily about her own experiences with mental illness, grief and addiction. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Gravity of the Thing, streetcake, Dear Damsels, Dust Poetry, In Parentheses, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Lunate, Re-side and The Hellebore, as well as several UK and US anthologies. HLR was born and raised in north London and is yet to escape. Read more at www.treacleheart.com or @treacleheartx

Precious Pieces 
​
“I’m sorry for everything that has ever hurt you," I cry out.
The pain you feel, I feel, bleeding from the same wounds that afflict you.
“Know I am deeply sorry, but know I am patient and strong.”
Believing in something far greater than me, I press on with courage.
To fight for you, for me, for what is right, for what we believe in.
I gently clean your open wounds, bandage them so no scars remain.
I help you back to your feet, steady you as you stand, walk again.
But there is something still not right. 
My head hangs in shame.
Then I see it, your broken heart shattered before me on the floor.
The pieces stain my fingers as I carefully gather them, pick them up. 
You look at me, wonder why I’m here.
The tears stream down my face as I put each precious piece back into place.
“I am here to mend your perfect heart with my imperfect hands.”

​

For You Blue

I pick through grass in the yard like a dog. 
I tell her in confidence I’m destined to make 
meaning from nothing. Her pride is splitting
her through in two; I flee from sight. 
That which I cannot control must be my own fault. 

Don’t look as I empty myself into
the hollow bowl of her ear. She tells me 
the future but only the bad. That cold 
slick feel in the heels of her gut comes in
round her ears and pulls her down. We’re growing 

like mangroves, rubbing dirt in our ears. When did 
I start to fear for her? It trickles 
down her neck, slow shame, dried
saltlike, a film of bodily terror. 
In the morning we sit and forget what the night brought. 




Salad Days

My rage, steel-toed, and you’re sobbing. The light 
slips and shatters from under your door. Through 
my fingers, just out of reach. I wish 
for a kind of learned deliverance I know 
will never come. And now I am afraid 
of forgetting these things I’d felt 
in the past, how the blood under my nails tasted the next
morning, how my stomach flipped. Oh but I want 
to be buried inside the moment, always. I grasp at 
a night on the roof with you, tapping ash onto 
the railing. Breathing you in then out. We listened 
to the nothing of the street and felt peaceful.




Silt

I’m walking uphill
when it starts in earnest. 
Things flood past before
I feel them, faces that gleam 
white and dissolve, gone, and I 
can never stitch my hands together
like a fisherman’s net and catch them
fast enough. I chance a moment 
without my umbrella. I examine 
my glossy reflection as 
it’s shattered by a car:
I’m surrounded 
by rivers. 




Makeover

I was so alone today that 
I cut my own hair with a 
pair of scalloped scissors
tucked away the gore in 
a plastic bag and felt no one 
would notice my digression 
my mother had a fringe 
over her high forehead 
like a helmet of soft velvet 
until one day she unfurled and 
it seemed she had never hidden not 
once I walk now with half of 
my expressions veiled I am sick 
of having a face

​
​

               Richard P J Lambert CC



Tartarus Eastern State Penitentiary 
​
We are the ghosts.
haunting these
rust-charmed remains
we want to see
what torture looks like  here in the sunlight.
what humans can do
to the damned.
 
oh how Tartarus looks lovely
cresting,
steeple crushed into its place
oh how the ceilings arch .
the stench of us lingers
we have propped up the dead
to sing for us
and won’t we suck the silence
from their bones
 
there are skylights
in the cells.
heaven is above you.
You cannot touch it.
it is the sun’s blaring eye.
your sins, wallow in them.
supine. prostrate.
and we will bag your head in the sun.
you. are grain to be reaped,
and burned for the old gods
incense for their cavernous halls.
 
smile.
don’t you know?
This is freedom.




Phoenix-Borne

I used to think that people who love
when they know
it’s killing them
wanted to slowly kill themselves.
slowly,  one magnificent
blue smoke signal after another.

But love is not about dying.
Love is about truly embracing life.
Listen to the long sighs of a lover as they exhale.
You will hear a red smolder
riding the coattails of their indigo breath:
I am love. let me flare.
Can’t you hear the 
Roar of flame rumble in their vena cava?
your love has nicknamed you “Kitty”,
you say. “Yes, let me arch my back for you.”
you say. Can’t you hear the bloom of their soul.
souls, murmuring in deep
deep ripples under porcelain skin
pink smoke swirling around our heads. you say,
oblivion. (has got me).
I say, no it doesn’t. Hold my hand.
Today we spit in the face of oblivion,
and bear down on the nape of god.
The chapel is burning.
And none of the mahogany notices.
and we are the arsonists.

​


Shiva Penweaver 

I was told by my father’s eyes today that 
I am weak.
I said
 
I am a wildfire burning the world in front of me today.
I said I am Shiva today. I have one thousand hands each holding a pen and I will break every one on you, today, Sir.
I said today I am a lion. I see now that I
am the whole PRIDE.
Weakness? I swallowed giants that tried to break me and I spat their splintered bones at the foot of my Molten throne.!
Me, weak? I lived with monsters under my bed for DECADES. I climbed into the darkness and hunted them down
One
by.
One.
Their blood is nothing but warpaint to me now.
I am a gladiator in my own rib cage.
Weakness hasn’t been in my vocabulary since the age of three.
Tell me I’m weak again. I dare you.
 



Mental Illness as Tempest

I am holding fast at the helm
sky black and brooding
my pale face spattered scarlet
wind lashing my blood
swells the horizon line
embolism become mountain
mountain become pantheon.
 
My name is God-killer
Today I will cleave the impossible in two.

​

David Sabol was born in San Diego, and flipped pages to kill his thumbprints in Ronkonkoma, NY. Now, he’s studying English Literature at SUNY Geneseo.

At the Gym

As the treadmill dowels spun 
I had a recollection of you

A dream I had last night; you were in it
It was you, but it didn’t look like you
You sported a wire-brush moustache
but it was you

I also have a dream where I’m unfixed 
down a path in the woods
This occurred to me while I was running on the treadmill too
Naturally enough
I recollected it

And it doesn’t start there, on a path
It just is there                

My slumbering-self isn’t interested in thinking, or deciding
It’s interested in doing 
Or at least patrolling a path

And that’s funny
Because all-you’re-doing when you’re dreaming 
is thinking or deciding
You’re not doing anything. 

​

Simmons is a lawyer and a tenured professor at the University of South Dakota School of Law whose scholarship and teaching focuses on trusts and estates. His poems can be found or are forthcoming in, inter alia, El Portal, Corvus Review, Nine Muses, Thirteen Myna Birds, The Showbear Family Circus, Amethyst Review, Nebo, and North Dakota Quarterly.