Her scream is fire blazing
in the corner of her room
is a mother’s mind on fire, a brilliant
brain burning
is a little girl, “stay away,” “stay away,”
there is danger,
is the pathway of a mental disease so contagious
it walks from decade to decade, generation to generation, destroying
is mahogany furniture, elegant drapes,
crystal and china from another time
is the sound of breaking glass and china vases
is dollhouses and horses being destroyed,
reflected in the center of a child’s eye.
is the edge of a wall made for fingers to grasp
and hold onto delusions of beauty and safety
is echo, voices, screaming 
is searching for peace
like loose change
is tripping through the world, 
trying to find my way,
is praying,
is walking forward even when 
it’s too hot and too loud.


Author Bio:
Marie Turco is a poet. Poetry keeps her alive and breathing. She is also a psychotherapist, a mental health advocate, and someone who lives well with a mental illness and tries at every opportunity to state that so the stigma that surrounds mental illness is chipped away. She lives with a German Shepperd service dog and other pets. She is determined to live a life that is creative, outspoken, healthy; one that adds something to the world before she leaves. 

​I watched as he moved in and out of their orbit as the boys taunted-- throwing rocks, splashing,
shouting.  The lifeguards finally said “stop” just as I contemplated intervening.
 
I watched as a tall girl hit him hard with a stick three times, and then tossed it at him. He limped away, his silent head bowed. He stopped walking and began drawing a five-foot pentagram in the sand.

I could have said it will get better or try not to let them bother you or ignore them or I am sorry this is happening to you or trust that you will be a man someday and this will be a memory and it will sting but not make your heart gut head roar like an open wound.
 
I say nothing as he circles, stick-in-hand, head bowed toward the pentagram in the sand.

​
Author Bio:
Laura Urban lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is raising two young boys and writing, sometimes. She studied English at the University of Mary Washington and spent three years serving with Americorps in Boston, Massachusetts, where she administered literacy and arts programming to inner city students. She is drawn to the margins of life and hopes to return to a career in social work sometime soon.

Kids O.D. and cause a family grief 
over the marijuana plant and the coca leaf
or a bunch of pills
to try and get their thrills
over a drug you shoot
because you think it’s cute.

Over something you smoke,
man, it ain’t no joke. 

Over something you drink,
homeboy, don't you think?

Over something you snort 
like your playing a sport.

One day you'll go too far, 
and you'll come up short.
Some people out there don't seem to get my point.
Telling people crack kills
while they’re smoking a joint. 
But the point of this poem is to tell you the facts.
Some people die from smoking reefer
like they die from crack.
Not any drug in particular, but drugs in general
they’re no good for you, like a vitamin or mineral
they come in liquid, powder, pills and rocks.

So, don't snort that powder.
Don't pop them pills.
Don't take them drugs.
Listen to a song--
don't pick up the bong 
Go outside--
don't do another line. 
There are better things in life so
just say no.



Author Bio:
Selena Morales is a teen who uses her words to work through some of the obstacles of life. 

​To slough off
The sophisticated and the conventional
For the simple yet elegant
Domains of pleasure

Pure water
Gentle breezes
The trees moving like a swoon of ecstasy
The backyard comes alive

And you become rejuvenated
By what was always there for you
Without industry
Without productivity or synthetic charm

The never-ending source
Of these experiences
Only serves to further
An already glorious summer afternoon


Author Bio:
David I. Mayerhoff is an emerging writer while being a practicing physician and psychiatrist for the last 35 years. His areas of specialty are in Graduate Medical Education, the chronic mentally ill, and academic research with a focus on the heterogeneity of schizophrenia disorders. His current work involves caring for the mentally ill within the developmentally disabled population. 

Selected poetry of his can be found at drsyke.wordpress.com, allpoetry.com, poetry.com, as well as published selections at PoetryBay/ Long Island Quarterly, the Paragon Journal, The Voices Project, GNU, and elsewhere.

7:00

My apologies for your tears
And for your wasted time
I'm sorry if it felt like years
And if waiting was a crime

8:00

Forgive me for I wasn't there
And left you alone
I'm sorry if I can't make it
I thought you'd make it on your own

6:00

I begged you to stay
But you said, "Good bye."


Author Bio:
Blesszya Jones is 13-years-old and an aspiring writer in the 7th grade at Miami Arts Charter School. They share a house with two siblings and their mother. They never really thought that they'd become an actual writer until they got to Miami Arts in the 6th grade. 

If I tiptoe away,
shattered heart in one hand,
red sandals clutched in the other
slipping through the back porch door,
how long will it take ‘til
you notice I am gone?

Will you suppose 
I had run an errand
and forgot to leave a note?

Will you rub your eyes,
frown and wonder why 
I hadn’t said good-bye?

Will you leave the kitchen light on
when you go upstairs
waiting for me to tiptoe back?

Or

Will you slump
in your overstuffed chair,
ignore the fears 
churning within you
and hide behind pages of your book?

Will you bow your head
to your chest
knowing the day 
you’d been dreading
had arrived?

Will you wonder, 
as you blink away your tears,
if I’ve been as lonely as you,
trapped within patterns 
of hiding that
we created years ago?

Will you wring your hands together,
look backwards into time. 
wonder when
I stopped opening 
my heart to you?

Will you slam your heart’s door 
against me,
fortify that
invisible, 
every-growing wall 
of anger and pride?

Will you see the sliver of light 
beaming through the opened door 
I slipped through

or 

will you hide 
behind shadows 
of yesterdays’ memories?

When I tiptoe away,
shattered heart in one hand, 
red sandals clutched in the other,
will you hear the deafening silence
I leave behind?


Author Bio:
Thalia Dunn fell in love with books, reading and her local library as a tiny child. Then she fell in love with writing when she received her first red diary as a third grader. Since then, she has filled volumes of journals with her poetry and short stories. 

Decades later, in 2014, she became more intentional about sharpening her writing skills and offer her poetry to a wider audience than her captive family and friends. Her themes overall are driven by her love of nature and relationships. Ideas for her poems usually start to bounce around in her mind when she’s on her morning walk in the local park. 

She writes and reads poetry for self-expression and deepening self-awareness and most importantly, because she believes that poetry can offer an intimate and profound connection between poet and reading. Writing, playing with and shaping words into a poem is a creative art that keeps Thalia smiling! 

When not writing, Thalia stays busy teaching Spanish at a High School in New Jersey. 

Instead of imagining you will never love me in the way that I love you 
(The way my heart drips with its perspiration. The way my soul moans for you to inspire its next breath...)
What if I could spin into creation our togetherness?
What if I were to manifest, from my mind’s eye, you telling me that your heart was wailing for me too? 
That would be okay. 
It would be okay to think, even for a second, that you have fallen in love with my spirit. 
My feminine. 
My essence of being. 
Perhaps I could survive the tiny moments of yearning that thump around in my days. 
By dreaming of you, loving me. 


Author Bio:
Dori Lewis is a psychotherapist living in Fort Collins Colorado. She has been on a quest for love, connection and spiritual wholeness which has led her to a life of exile in Colorado. After traveling through Asia alone, moving away from family and friends in New York, she continues to embark on a journey into the unknown to find herself, heal herself and come home to her own heart. 

​In an hourglass, 
sand flows slowly,
grain by grain
separate
unnoticed
all together – deadening.


Author Bio:
Kayden Clare is a teenager living in Pennsylvania. She writes for self-expression. 

this thing that i am good at
the product of a fractured mind
mended awkwardly
with gorilla glue, baling wire and Scooby Do bandaids
the rough repairs mostly invisible to you but not to me
not to me

this thing that i am good at
lives in the spaces of that brokenness
the interstices where the parts no longer fit neatly together
the smooth slip of one thought
to the next to the next
in a cascade of certainty
now a faltering slide down a scree-strewn slope

this thing that i am good at--
doesn’t care what speed my thoughts can achieve
or whether I can recall people’s names
or wonder why words regularly elude me
me, the word-smith of the family

no, this thing that i am good at--
it can strike like a kingfisher
breach with the potency of the great blue whale
drag me over a cliff slowly
like molasses in the dead of winter
and the motion is everything until it stops
and then it is nothing


Author Bio:
Patricia Wentzel is a mental health advocate for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). She started writing poetry in late 2014 and it played a central role in her recovery from a severe episode of Bipolar Disorder. Her writing has been nurtured by the Sacramento Prose and Poetry Meetup, the Women’s Wisdom Art Program and many of the poets who call the Sacramento Poetry Center home. She has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Neutrons Protons, The Light Ekphrastic, Sacramento Voices Anthology and others.