Featured Poet - Anthony Ward

DECOMPRESSING

I want to feel the rage that once burned me,

Spurned me to jump into this depth.

Where I dissolve with involvement.

Instead of azure thinking, I’m submerged,

Hoping this is merely a period, like Picasso’s,

That will come to pass.

While the past pulls me around cycles of sentimentality,

I find myself going round in circles 

Bearing the Sisyphean feat of having to push myself.

Weighed down by triviality,

Enlightened by darkness, 

Fulfilled by emptiness.

All this space making me claustrophobic,

Hearing nothing but blindness, 

The silence deafening



ABOUT THE POEM: This was written to convey the weight of depression and trying to fight against it keeping you down.

IN ALL LIKENESS

Although we’re all the same

We’re each individual

Going about in our own little world

Equally separate in our differences

Familiar to ourselves alone.

A compliment of colours 

Combining the spectrum 

Into one specific light.



ABOUT THE POEM: I wrote this in response that we shouldn’t get too hung up on ourselves for feeling different.

OCDING

This taut frustration

As if attempting to count all the pine needles on a tree 

Incapacitated by routine

As if attempting to count all the pine needles

Indigested thoughts repeating on me

As if attempting to count 

Checking time and time again

As if attempting…



ABOUT THE POEM: This is about the debilitating pressure of living with OCD.

ON THE CONTRARY

Do you enjoy being me when you’re taking the mick?

Presuming to know how I think and feel.

Telling me to get a life

Whenever I’m feeling most alive

Saying that I’m sad

Cause I’m assertively happy

Calling me a loser

When I’m not even competing

Thinking I’m simple

As I tend to think hard.



ABOUT THE POEM: This poem is written in reflection to the hardships endured by people with mental health issues who don’t fit in with expected norm.

VARDØGER

I’m just sitting here 

Minding my own thoughts

When I see myself enter the room

Equally surprised as I 

To see me there

Thinking what I must be thinking

About myself

And how I came to be there

In the first place.



ABOUT THE POEM: This ditty is about the absurdity of thought.

DISQUIET

Condemnation runs behind my eyes, 

Where no-one can witness the condensation build 

To a black mould that suffocates me.

I refuses to open any windows to circulate air through my lungs,

Letting the silence extol violence through vespers,

With the situation of my mind carried from the North Sea,

North, north-west,

A squall of thoughts I’m unable to moor.

My mind like a radio not quite tuned in.

My organs externalised,

My heart clenching like a fist,

The clots in my veins bulleting to penetrate my brain.

ABOUT THE POEM: This is written in response to when my mind is overactive and it’s easier to just let it ride rather than try to get it to stop.