Paper Portent

When the poet from Porto
lost his treasured notebook
his head started to feel
like a blood-filled bath.

It wasn’t the loss of shopping list
or the plot for his next novel
that most preoccupied the mind,

just the writerly thought about the
paper-based metaphor for death.

Asparagus Dreams

In my dream
I was attempting to
eat asparagus
without cutlery
or a full set of teeth;

a futile exercise, as it turns out.

Henry is a writer, poet and mental health essayist based in Somerset in the UK. He has a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Birmingham. His latest poetry collection, Psychobabble and Snake Oil, is a collaboration about mental health with Dutch artist Marcel Herms and is available from Egalitarian Publishing.

Ouroboros

Hermetic thoughts rampage

down corridors of uncertainty.

Weather-beaten corners

and fragmented stalactites.

Ouroboros. Benzene ring.

Moon phase dog days.

Hippocampus. Seahorse,

double dragon,

talking underwater.

Silver plated dribble

running round the side of a coin,

drops into a black hole.

Foreign tongue says omnucrescence.

Unwound watch sitting

on the edge of time,

communicating with the dead

through nicotine haze.

Tricked into the wrong answer,

the clock winds on.

as an insomniac

sleep is elusive

so as you lie there

in your bed you

allow your mind

you wander through

the streets of Prague

or the Venetian piazza

and then sweat through

the New York streets

on dog-day parades,

all of which is better

than wedging your eyelids

open with a used toothpick.

Henry Bladon is based in Somerset in the UK. He is a writer of short fiction and poetry with a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Birmingham. He is the author of several poetry collections and his work can be seen in Poetica Review, Pure Slush, Truth Serum Press, Lunate, and O:JA&L, among other places.

Hidden Truth

I said I wanted to know

what was really going on.

He said he found it hard to say,

it was like he had a splinter

in his tongue that stopped

him from telling the truth.

I countered his mysterious metaphor

by telling him in that case I felt

like I’m hidden between

the pages of a novel but I’m not on

anyone’s pile of books to be read.

He said that was too obscure

even for him. He said he thought

it was typical of me and it

sounded too metaphysical

to make any sense at all.

I nearly said, what a hypocrite, but instead

said there’s something illiberal about your attitude,

because I read the term in the paper

and I thought it sounded intelligent

even though I’m not sure what it meant.

As I left, he said nothing.

Which was a first.

The Pain Remains

Cristina’s a weirdo, they would say.

She’s fat and stupid and a schizo.

Then there was this;

set in stone.

Names never hurt you?

They so do.

So, when you are

throwing poisonous darts

from the other side,

think about this:

the pain remains.

Just an Ordinary Experience

I knew I shouldn’t have told you my dream about the gravestone. As usual, you wanted to sound clever and said that the apple was a representation of my desire for wisdom, and that the hat was about my fear of power. The mirror was a little too obvious and I was disappointed in you. You can’t say ‘That’s about taking a look at yourself.’ You may as well have said it’s about introspection and searching the soul. I’ve come to expect more from our chats. The bird? Freedom, you stated, with no small amount of confidence. By this time, I was getting weary again. And I shouldn’t have mentioned the candle. That set you off on your usual path of criticism about religion; how you don’t trust it and that it is only there to control people. Stop worrying, it was just a candle.

Luckily, I forgot about the bow, so I didn’t have to listen to your suggestions about my childhood and whether I might have been teased because my mother bought me shoes with bows on and how that has created a subliminal block and led to psychic conflict.

That’s the trouble when you have friends who are psychoanalysts, you’re not allowed to have an ordinary experience. Call me reckless if you chose, but I like sleeping in my box with my red blanket. It’s the place I feel safest of all.

Henry Bladon is based in Somerset in the UK. He is a writer of short fiction and poetry and teaches creative writing for therapeutic purposes. He has degrees in psychology and mental health policy, and a PhD in literature and creative writing. He frequently writes commentary about mental health issues and his literary work can be seen in O:JA&L, Tuck Magazine, Mercurial Stories, The Ekphrastic Review, and Spillwords Press, among other places.

The Paradoxical World of R D Laing

Nighttime Rambling Man by Marcel Herms (Netherlands, marcelherms.nl)

You, who talked of a heart full of ashes and lemon peel, you swept through the world in a flurry of words you pulled apart and reconfigured. You, who wielded an unconventional mind and stole fragments from the universe. Sometimes the journey of your existence looks like one long paradoxical interjection. Your maverick rhetoric was synchronized chaos washed down with a tide of LSD and claims of insight and breaking through. Smoking your way through session after session, you once said that existential psychiatry was just: ‘talkin’ to a bloke and listenin’ to what he says.’* You knew it was never that simple. It’s good to challenge, though and you questioned what is real. You even said that expression of distress was the way to real self-knowledge, that it was the way to change and develop. Yet you left some people more confused than they were before, and I can’t help wondering whether the whole thing was a huge double-bind.

*This is a line from the book ‘Zone of the Interior,’ by Clancy Sigal. Sigal was a good friend of R D Laing, and fictionalised his experiences with Laing in the book.

Henry Bladon is a writer of short fiction and poetry based in Somerset in the UK. He has degrees in psychology and mental health policy and a PhD in literature and creative writing. His work can be seen in Potato Soup Journal, Entropy, Mercurial Stories, thedrabble, Tuck Magazine and Spillwords Press, among other places. His novel, Threeways, was published in 2017 and his recent collection, Donald Trump’s Hair and other stories, published by Alien Buddha Press, came out this year. Henry also runs writing support groups for people with mental health issues.