Vaughan Rapatahana

who will speak?

  

who will speak for

    the teenagers raped flat

            by ‘boyfriend’s’ fistic ego?

 

                                                   I will.

who will parley for

    the indigenes ripped raw

            by ‘master’s’ rancid tongue?

 

                                                   I will.

who will talk for

    the invalids invalidated

             by bureaucrat’s grumpy stamp?

 

                                                   I will.

who will argue for

     the masses abnegated

             by tyrant’s wartorn gun? 

                                                   I will

I’ll stand.

I’ll korero.

I’ll be staunch.

 

I will

scrawl down lines in the sand

&

shout them relentless.

 

set them in stone.

                                                     I have.

 

 

[korero is New Zealand Maori for talk.]

 

 

 

 

friend

 

let me be your friend

your true friend

and on those dark days

when the hardness hits your heart

turn to me

&

I will soothe our path.

Vaughan Rapatahana: New Zealand Maori, married to a lady from Philippines, where we also have a home. We live and work in Hong Kong and ours' is a polyglottal family.

Published very widely in variety of genre: two books of poetry in 2011 being Home Away Elsewhere (Proverse Hong Kong) and china as kafka (Kilmog Press, Aotearoa-NZ.) Links as here: http://www.chineseupress.com/asp/e_Book_card.asp?BookID=3222&Lang=E and http://kilmogpress.blogspot.com/2011/11/china-as-kafka-vaughan-rapatahana.html

June 2012 will see publication of the significant critical work English Language as Hydra (Multilingual Matters, U.K.) Link as here: http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781847697493

Finally, yes - I have been through severe mental torment and affliction, being institutionalized at one stage many years ago. Being Indigenous and marginalized has also been a factor in this situation, as well as having had quite a few torrid family situations. Engari kaore nga raruraru (But - no problems.)

Annette Hakiel

Fluffy
 

I have a mind like a Liberty Bell, a curiosity
because it's cracked. I have a mind

that needs inspection like an Italian restaurant
filled with rats. When my mind wanders

out of my life like a broken tooth or cheating
boyfriend, a fairy leaves small change under my

pillow with a note saying, "These pennies
are for your thoughts. Swallow them

with a full glass of your pride. You're either
nobody now, or the Maharishi hiding in the body

of a giraffe." When my mind wanders
it descends down the winding staircase

of madness in a flamenco dress. My mind
is a nondescript piece of black luggage

I lose, presumably put on the wrong plane
of existence in an airline error. My mind

is the rottweiler that runs away from home,
wagging its tail as it chases reality

like a mailman to La La Land two
counties over. I was going to put up fliers

saying, Have you seen this lost
mind? Responds to the name Fluffy, but

guess what, Fluffy, that scrapper,
came home, and now every day like clockwork

at two pm on its new leash, my mind, barking
mad and broken, growls as it tries to bite

reality right in the ass. Forget reality. Never am I again
going to lose my mind, my furry, crazy friend.




Annette Hakiel lives in New York.

Kallima Hamilton

Bipolar Sunday


Red Hot Chili peppers strumming
through the ceiling as my upstairs
neighbor plays his fuzzy electric
guitar. Weird phrases
keep falling from my fingertips

and I rise, a baby phoenix,
from the fire and ice of manic
depression, crazed and alone.

Sometimes it feels like
peacock tails and dusty tumbleweeds.
The pace revved up inside
my well-greased and dripping brain.

Captivated by a sparkle or
brought low by an unkind word,

I turn slowly,
a broken-winged angel,
towards the musical face of the sun.




Kallima Hamilton's worked as an assistant museum librarian, ESL instructor and legal clerk. Her poetry has appeared in Mudlark, Sugar Mule and Shenandoah.

Austin McCarron

The Indispensible Guide to Unearthly Practices 
 

After a universe of time,
spring is a shock to my eyes:
the promise
of light in a chimney of air.

On hills or near gardens, baby
lambs offer kisses of new blood.
Beautiful animals glide on
colours and draw blinds of sound.

There is a gift of water, like breath
in open veins,
but leaves of skin gather like food
of inconsolable factories
around plants and trees and lawns.

Looking ahead I throw away the
blanket of its extraordinary aim but
it is not higher within, where graves
fester like flies around sweating pits.

The sun of fire returns a blaze but its
inner light is forked. In spiritual
green the doctors of spent deliveries
appear in shining
boots to unravel traces of the dead.
Roots of demonic earth I fail to revive.
I see into the mirror of its eyes and find
nothing but still
like worms in hair its silence is a word.

Tatjana Debeljački

Japanese Mountaineer



Filled up with lust

to quench my thirst,

shocked through the rays

of the tired sun.

Revived by the breath.

Ignited, you wake me up,

you kindle during my sleep

the last signs

of recognition.

Every ground letter

You bring back written

In all languages

In the dark lair.

Smudge again

The colors across the dead

whiteness of the night, smash the dawn

before the sun.

From the night, the flowers bloom

And the morning is glittering in the horizon,

Under the veil of the morning.

The eyes of the mountaineer,

The light of the sun

Japanese mountaineer

naked in the moonlight.




Tatjana Debeljački was born on 23.04.1967 in Užice. Writes poetry, short stories, stories and haiku. Member of Association of Writers of Serbia -UKS since 2004 and Haiku Society of Serbia - HDS Serbia, HUSCG – Montenegro and HDPR, Croatia. A member of Writers’ Association Poeta, Belgrade since 2008, HKD Croatia since 2009 and a member of Poetry Society "Antun Ivanošić" Osijek since 2011. Deputy of the main editor (cooperation with magazines & interviews).

http://diogen.weebly.com/redakcijaeditorial-board.html

Editor of the magazine "Poeta", published by Writers’ Association "Poeta"

http://www.poetabg.com/


Union of Yugoslav Writers in Homeland and Immigration – Belgrade, Literary Club Yesenin – Belgrade. Up to now, she has published four collections of poetry: “A HOUSE MADE OF GLASS “, published by ART – Užice in 1996; collection of poems “YOURS“, published by Narodna knjiga Belgrade in 2003; collection of haiku poetry “VOLCANO”, published by Lotos from Valjevo in 2004. A CD book “A HOUSE MADE OF GLASS” published by ART in 2005, bilingual SR-EN with music, AH-EH-IH-OH-UH, published by Poeta, Belgrade in 2008. Her poetry and haiku have been translated into several languages. Email/Websites/Blogs http://debeljacki.mojblog.rs/

Peter Taylor

Words

 

I want to say thank you
for welcoming me into your healing homes
even though all I do is dishes
and then I break a few—
eleven, I think; maybe six.
They are buried in the usual places.

I want to say thank you
for teaching me useful things again,
like eggs that have more than chickens
in them, frogs, cooking spices,
playing cards, and how some walls
that are hard and immovable
can be beautiful, too.

I want to say thank you
for listening to my poems
even though they made you cry,
and trusting me with your car,
and offering me kindness
I could not find on my own.

I want to say thank you
but dream, this is family.




Peter Taylor’s poems explore how time and imagination shape our perceptions of the world through creative expression. He is the author of three books and his poems have appeared in literary journals in Australia , Canada , the Caribbean, France , India , Romania , Sweden , the United Kingdom , and the United States . He lives in Aurora , Canada .

 

Sophie Waring

Bring Battle



To hasten the clouds that

charge the west in the dark. Light

of the red apple that peels

itself from the caterpillar

and crudely turns crimson.

Where are the babies now?

Are they turning flash west? Coconut

bluebells of African descent are folding into tulips –

a clown of great importance, an eel

in the bath.



She was a north-westerly,

diacritic situation, bringing gingerbread

to the house of Eden,

rubbing rosemary on her thighs.

Orange fever, bring me the children.

Let me feed them

my home, my sanity

in its own right. Great golden houses

with little yellow men. No crowns,

no leftover rivers

or open wound sores.





Sophie Waring: I am twenty-one years old and live in Palmerston North, New Zealand with my fiance. When I was eighteen, I plummeted into a dark and dangerous world. I was in the prime of my life, having just recieved dux of my highschool. I was studying towards a double major at Massey university and finished my first year with straight A's, but I was holding a dark secret. Following self-harm, substance abuse, overdose and a very close suicide attempt, I spent seven weeks in a psychiatric ward. I left hugely medicated and sedated and the next year was quite a battle. However, I feel like just now my life is getting back on track. I felt unable to write (though I had a massive output while unwell) until recently, and although my studies never resumed, I have just started a new position training to become a pharmacy dispensary technician. I am also engaged to my soul mate and feel like I am finally happy. For someone my age, I feel like an old soul. I probably know myself, as well as the ins and outs of life, more than a lot of people. My values have completely changed, but what's important to me now is family, love and happiness. 

Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Bus Station


Please don’t steal my bag.


Please don’t steal my blue bag
With all my poems in it.


Please don’t try to to steal my
Blue bag with all my poems
In it and a bag of pepitas
And the number for my caseworker
Then feign confusion when caught
Because you, too, have a blue bag
That says Downtown Mental Health Center.


Please don’t try to lift my blue
Bag with all my mom’s cancer poems
And the name of my caseworker in it etc...


It’s far too heavy.



Beaten


Every face
At the bus station
Is a torn
Lottery ticket.





Thomas L. Vaultonburg is from Rockford, Illinois, United States. He was diagnosed with both Schizoid Personality Disorder and Major depressive Disorder at age 16. Most of his adult life has been a battle against these disorders. Poetry has always been one of his great solaces. His poetry has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Chiron Review, Caliban, Bogg, Gargoyle, and others. 

B.Z. Niditch

Understanding

What signals
when eyes withdraw
their masks
and you notice
a light twinkles
on a mushrooming
face with expressionism
rebounding to thought
of choreography
covering themselves
in the air
of conversation
in ideograms of language
hidden from awareness
that only a poet
would comprehend. 




B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review,; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Jefferson Hansen

Schizophrenics

the people I know
with schizophrenia

are a far cry from “schizos”—
the stereotypical guy
drooling in his beard
who takes a break
from braying at the moon
only long enough to ask
for a quarter

as for violence
most violent acts
are committed
by so-called healthy folks

the actual dangerous category

if a person with schizophrenia
is violent
does the condition
have anything to do
with the act

why is it okay
for the TV news
to mention “a history
of mental illness”
when no relevant link
has been established
between the condition
and the crime

prisons are full
of the mentally ill
but what sane person
wouldn’t go crazy
there

time to consider cause
and effect

time to think through
the implications
of metaphor

would we say “drunk like
an Irishman” or
“stupid like a Polish
person”

why “crazy like
a schizo”

the people I know
most reckless with
others’ feelings
are horrifically “healthy”

you would probably
be surprised to learn
how many schizophrenics
you interact with
on a daily basis

what is it to stuff
a human being
into a sealed
metal category



wind of a reason


without
the wind of a reason
aimed in a particular
direction
started walking
like a root
curling and
branching its way
toward water—
it thinks
in its way

Jefferson Hansen has been publishing in a variety of contexts for several decades.

 

Austin McCarron

A City of Palms


The summer is eating
the colours in my room
with teeth of blue water.

The sea falls on my beach
with
stones of light. My blood is

amazed at the whiteness of
sand.

Birds drowse in shining trees.

The sky is on fire with matches
of gold
and like a visionary animal
it wrestles with some great hurt.

I sit at a loss, in a city of
palms, browner than faces of rain.

Tatjana Debeljački

Familiar With Insanity

– am I gifted person? Is it important, since I no longer exist?!
 

I was sailing through the endless space, still angry at the death that came in malevolent
time. The success was feasible. The space is so cold, and my physicus, which I imagined,
transformed into the powerful energy that has no use. I did not have a plan.
 

– Probably I do not need the plan here, – as if the thought was spotted.
 

From some star constellation, a man in white floated towards me. He was tampering
something about my bodiless being, and then suddenly disappeared.
 

People around me were freely walking in their pajamas, it was only me bound to bed

Tatjana Debeljački was born on 23.04.1967 in Užice. Writes poetry, short stories, stories and haiku. Member of Association of Writers of Serbia -UKS since 2004 and Haiku Society of Serbia - HDS Serbia, HUSCG – Montenegro and HDPR, Croatia. A member of Writers’ Association Poeta, Belgrade since 2008, HKD Croatia since 2009 and a member of Poetry Society "Antun Ivanošić" Osijek since 2011. Deputy of the main editor (cooperation with magazines & interviews).

http://diogen.weebly.com/redakcijaeditorial-board.html

Editor of the magazine "Poeta", published by Writers’ Association "Poeta"

http://www.poetabg.com/

Union of Yugoslav Writers in Homeland and Immigration – Belgrade, Literary Club Yesenin – Belgrade. Up to now, she has published four collections of poetry: “A HOUSE MADE OF GLASS “, published by ART – Užice in 1996; collection of poems “YOURS“, published by Narodna knjiga Belgrade in 2003; collection of haiku poetry “VOLCANO”, published by Lotos from Valjevo in 2004. A CD book “A HOUSE MADE OF GLASS” published by ART in 2005, bilingual SR-EN with music, AH-EH-IH-OH-UH, published by Poeta, Belgrade in 2008. Her poetry and haiku have been translated into several languages. Email/Websites/Blogs http://debeljacki.mojblog.rs/

Casey Creek

In Germany

a lion jumped out

of a swimming pool

and started hugging children

they locked the doors

and ran away

the crocodile snarled

because we stole

its puddle

the chimpanzee giggled

at the buffalo missing

its two front teeth

and the giraffe applauded

because the penguin was

throwing a tantrum

an elephant stole

my bicycle and

ploughed it into

a car the hole was

a banana shape i

had to pay the fine

i must have been back

in germany

where the buildings are

underground in a maze

where cakes are sparkling

on a table

where books in the library

call my name

caroline with the light brown hair

pushes it behind her ears

and ponders another maths equation

xxx

or

xxy

Casey Creek: I am eighteen years old, live in the North island of New Zealand. I have suffered from depression and anxiety for most of my teenage years due to prolonged emotional abuse. Part way through this year I suffered a complete mental breakdown from which I am still recovering. My worst symptoms were intense panic attacks, frequent suicidal thoughts and terrifying nightmares. Poetry has been a huge part of my life from a young age, in helping me to survive and explore who I am in this world. Poetry helps me to see the bright side of life and I look forward to a much happier future.



Jack Hodil

Digging

It could have only
risen from the dirt
by force,
breaking through and out
of the sediment.

But we were there too long.

What crawled out
from that earth
could never be reburied,
and, in the end,
the soil had nothing for us.





When not writing, Jack Hodil can most often be found avoiding school work, battling inanimate objects, purchasing cheap packs of cigarettes with loose change, or watching cage fights with his action figures. 

Jack Galmitz

Looking Out


Through the door
pass a hundred clowns or more
each with a dagger
through the door
A woman enters my room
eating her placenta
through the door
the ballroom floor covered
with prayer carpets
through the door
Men seen dying
in fictions
through the door
infants working
without compensation
through the door
troubadours
forget
their songs




Jack Galmitz is on SSD for 4 or 5 mental illnesses.

Nima Kian

BODY GUEST

I.

Body, I see you walk away.

Gravel streets recognize

my absence in your soles.

Did you learn a new language or did I

forget the way we talked to each other?

You grew quiet like a vessel, drained.

II.

We cannot emigrate out of skin

that holds us together.

Another language changed us

from the inside. We are

foreigners in our self.

I understand that

our body-guest rearranges our living

arrangement, removes myelin

sheathing you draped

around axons of our brain and spinal cord.

Your reactions—what feel like multiple

tiny legs running on my skin,

electric water pouches under my feet,

crumpled fingers like deformed paper—

alarm me.

III.

We possess a personal painter

who resides throughout our nervous system.

You and I, plus one whose abstract arts—

little white lines, narrow, scattered—

weaken us.

A new language takes time.

Fluency rescues.    

Nima Kian lives in Lincoln, NE, where he teaches writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in, Saint Mary's Magazine, Black Lantern Publishing, Mascara Literary Review, Mythic Delirium, Stone Highway Review, Strange Horizons, Blast Furnace, among others.

Linda Hunter

Torture

Racing thoughts run through my head,
I believe the demons are trying to keep me in bed.
Shake with fear all day long and hear a strange pop,
Please someone help me! make this stop!
I pray for the thoughts to stop tormenting me,
I feel like jumping high from a cliff into the sea.
Bad dreams and scary nights feel each day,
I wonder how long I will have to stay.
The drugs I take to make me well,
Fill my head so big I don’t want to swell.
So many tormenting years to come,
Why me? This torture is no fun.



Linda Hunter suffers from bi-polar type 2. She takes numerous medications.

 

Jade Wallace

The Vines

twine upon the wall, garlands

for brick red hair that falls

from the head office

how do you feel about that?

sand skittering across rock with the

sound of

wordless whispering;

but my mother had words for it,

and she said-

let’s talk about you

I’d rather speak of the white

bench, around which the

trees huddled in quiet

ceremony

why don’t you speak of yourself?

myself, lying

on woven grass,

small egg in a vast nest.

the sky is pearly

curving blue:

I am on the inside

of a seashell

i really think we need to work on developing your sense of self

senses: five:

radar by which

I receive images and

translate the transmissions

into paper logic

same time next week then?

thank you, doctor. 

Jade Wallace is an M.A. student in Social Justice and Equity Studies at Brock University. She currently has two chapbooks available for sale through Grey Borders books (http://www.greyborders.com) and has recently been published in (d)ead (g)end(er) magazine (see: http://deadgender.blogspot.com). She also has two blogs: http://madamedechevre.tumblr.com (her literary blog) and http://lasciviousort.blogspot.com (her silly but serious Star Wars-inspired blog). Also, Jade really likes her new eyeglasses.  

 

John Pursch

All-Out, Butyl Steerage

Mingle freely at the gala's vapor lock,

clamoring for jutting parlor tricks

and donut boys given over to time travel.

Popping out of the portal in antique gear,

marshaling too much reserve, holding back

when all-out, butyl steerage is called for,

relying on relics long submerged,

our hero plunges headlong

into the enemy's third tour

of dutiful, four-alarm fire,

only to be raked under the shoals

by fedoras and boas of a font

rarely seen in this century.

Such are the verisimilitudes

of warehouse work,

launching clerks and boxboys

into lies of brute, impending regret.

A cavalcade of wanton images,

soupy in its cluttered sawdust protocol,

delivers stringent, hyperbolic missives

at twice the regular clip,

unraveled and scented with lilac.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in Breadcrumb Scabs, Calliope Nerve, Camel Saloon, Carcinogenic Poetry, Clockwise Cat, Counterexample Poetics, experiential-experimental-literature, Four and Twenty, Orion headless, Puffin Circus, and vox poetica. You can follow his work at http://twitter.com/johnpursch . 

Christopher Barnes

Ungodly Piggling Anarchists

Foreign Office thinks we're a cut above
not knowing our raison d' etre
is persuasive deniability
they try to pin us down.

Our dynamite's in the diplomat's bag
a slap in the face to pride.
We're heirs to a set-up
that must be snared.
A front-rank flying start.




Christopher Barnes: in 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year I read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and I partake in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of my collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.

On Saturday 16Th August 2003 I read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.

I also have a BBC web-page www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/gay.2004/05/section_28.shtml and http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/videonation/stories/gay_history.shtml (if first site does not work click on SECTION 28 on second site.

Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored me to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. I made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about my writing group. October-November 2005, I entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty's Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. I made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords, it contains my poem The Old Heave-Ho. I worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, including a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic in which I read my poem On Brenkley St. The event was funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bio-science Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life. I was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children's literature building. In May I had 2006 a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People's Theatre why not take a look at their website http://ptag.org.uk/whats_on/gallery/recent_exhbitions.htm

The South Bank Centre in London recorded my poem "The Holiday I Never Had", I can be heard reading it on www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=18456

REVIEWS: I have written poetry reviews for Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine and in August 2007 I made a film called 'A Blank Screen, 60 seconds, 1 shot' for Queerbeats Festival at The Star & Shadow Cinema Newcastle, reviewing a poem...see www.myspace.com/queerbeatsfestival On September 4 2010, I read at the Callander Poetry Weekend hosted by Poetry Scotland.