This year, The Dark Poets Club had a new and interesting competition. The rules are simple… impress the judges with a dark poem, using fifty words or less.

This was a serious challenge for me as I’m usually quite loquacious in my pieces! I had to take a scalpel out and cut the words to its bare bones.

I trimmed and trimmed until I had a scribble called “Track 13”. It’s not for th faint-hearted, so please keep this in mind.

TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide

Track 13

My brain’s a broken record,

Skipping on the same cracked groove.

“Just jump”, it whispers, “what’s left to prove?”

The rope, a promise. The chair, a stage.

One last breath before turning life’s final page.

A silent film fading to black.

No rewind.

No coming back.

(c) Bob Christian2025

The sky cracks open

like an old photograph,

each flash a sharp reminder

of the silence we can’t outrun.

Fireworks are just bombs

with better PR,

but we still stand,

mouths agape,

staring at the chaos above,

wondering if we’ll ever

look at the sky

without waiting for it to fall.

(c)BobChristian

This piece was originally written for the Dark Poets competition III where it went on to achieve a shortlist. It’s an incredibly personal scribble, but my dark poetry is like that; I guess it’s a form of therapy. (Since then it’s been featured in a number of other publications.)

“Hello Old Friend”

I’ve met you in hospital rooms,  
Where the air hums with the rhythm of machines,  
And the fluorescent lights paint shadows  
On walls that remember every whispered goodbye.  
You sat in the corner,  
Silent,  
Patient,  
While I tried to bargain breaths for a chance at life.

I’ve seen you in the rear view mirror,  
A flash of headlights on rain soaked roads,  
The roar of a motorcycle cutting through the night,  
Your touch like a lover’s whisper,  
Close enough to feel the chill,  
Yet distant,  
Like a promise not yet fulfilled.

We’ve danced in the space between heartbeats,  
In the pause where life hesitates,  
Waiting for the next pulse,  
The next inhale,  
The next moment that says,  
Not today.

You are the stranger at the end of the bar,  
The familiar face in the crowd,  
The one who knows my stories without words,  
Who nods in understanding,  
As if to say,  
I’ve been here before.

So when you came to my door,  
With your suitcase of silence,  
I was not afraid.  
I opened it wide,  
And welcomed you in,  
Like an old friend returning,  
After years of wandering.

We sat together,  
In a room that held memories like stars,  
In the quiet where breaths become echoes,  
And I knew,  
This was not an ending,  
But the echo of an embrace  
That had waited lifetimes to be felt.

(c)BobChristian2022

Love isn’t a highlight reel, 

Or snapshots of sunsets and brunches, 

Not the perfectly staged, ‘spontaneous’ moments  

With hashtags like #SoBlessed, #LivingMyBestLife

As if happiness can be filtered.

As if joy can be photoshopped. 

It’s the messy, gritty reality.  

The late-night debates 

That spiral into arguments.  

Where voices rise and hearts race.  

Two souls colliding in a storm  

Of passion and frustration. 

Fighting over small things,  

Like who forgot to take out the bin  

Or the way the towels were left. 

It’s in those moments, 

When tempers flare and words cut deep,  

That I feel the heat of our differences.

The tension that reminds me  

We are alive. We are human.  

Love is not a made-for-Disney fairytale,

It’s a battlefield

Where we lay our armour down  

To confront the truth of ourselves.

It’s in the silence that follows.  

That heavy air between us,  

When I realise that beneath the anger, 

The hurt, and the misunderstandings,

There’s a truth that holds us together.  

A core so solid it could withstand the fiercest storm.

And at my very core, in the atoms that make me, 

I truly love you, beautiful.

Not just when we’re laughing,  

But especially when the world feels heavy.  

When our perspectives clash,  

And we’re left sifting through the rubble.

Because that’s when we grow,  

When we dig deeper than before. 

And find the roots of our connection.

Love is not a hashtag. 

It’s a commitment to stay,  

To fight through the noise,  

To embrace the chaos,  

Emerging on the other side

Holding hands, hearts open,

Knowing that every argument  

Is just another step 

On this winding path we walk together. 

And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  

Because in the end,

It’s all part of the beautiful mess  

That is you and me.

That is our love. 

And it is ours forever.

(c)BobChristian

They told us the revolution wouldn’t be televised,

But they forgot to mention it might be live-streamed.

Might be a screenshot, reposted, tagged.

Buried beneath brunch photos,

Then resurrected by a hashtag.

Truth is, sometimes the front line has a comments section. 

We used to pass flyers.

Now, we pass tweets.

Used to march down avenues,

Now we march through algorithms,

Dodging shadowbans like tear gas.

Do not call this Slacktivism.

There’s a difference between

Performing and platforming.

Between the click

And the consequence.

Because somewhere,

Someone is holding a phone to the sky

Like a torch. Like it’s the last thing

They have to prove they exist.

To prove that what happened

Did happen.

You can ignore a scream in the street,

But not a video with 5 million views.

You can silence a person,

But not a movement made of code…

When it goes viral.

This isn’t the solution, but it is a tool.

And tools build things. Or they tear them down.

So when I post, when I speak into this void

Which is disguised as a feed,

I’m not just chasing likes,

I’m looking for you.

The you who might see your struggle reflected

And someone else else’s bruise.

For you, who has forgotten that solidarity

Starts with listening.

We don’t log in to escape the world,

We log in to confront it.

And sometimes, all it takes

Is one story, told with enough clarity

To cut through the noise.

That’s not a miracle, that’s strategy.

That’s resistance,

With a Wi-Fi connection.

(c)BobChristian

Years ago, I learned some truly shocking statistics about suicide – 800,000 lives lost every year. That’s one life every 40 seconds. It’s a deeply uncomfortable topic for many, but it’s one we simply can’t keep ignoring.

The truth is, suicide is the leading cause of death for men between 20 and 49. And while this affects all men, over 60% of newly-diagnosed autistic adults report having suicidal thoughts.

These numbers are devastating. We’re finally starting to talk more about mental health, but there’s so much more to be done to prevent people from reaching that point. To remind them that they’re not alone.

I nearly became a statistic many times in my younger years, and I’ve put down my thoughts in a scribble.

Every forty seconds
Someone ends their own life.

Not a metaphor.
Not a number on a website.
A person.
A real, human soul…
punched out like a clock card,
because the noise in their head
was louder than any help offered.

Forty seconds.
By the time you finish reading this poem,
someone else is gone.

But we don’t talk about it.
Not really.
We whisper it behind closed doors,
Use soft words like “passed away,”
or “lost them,”
As if they’d just wandered off into the woods
and forgotten to come home.

Mental illness is still a dirty word.
Still something we hide in drawers,
with old medication bottles
and family secrets.

We tell people
to “reach out”
but give them nothing to grab onto.

We applaud strength,
but punish vulnerability.
We ask, “How are you?”
but only want to hear:
“I’m fine.”

We romanticise broken artists
but ignore the broken people.
In our inboxes.
At our dinner tables.
In the mirror.

Some of us scream in silence.
Perfectly dressed.
Perfectly functional.
Perfectly invisible.

The truth is we lose more people
To quiet despair
than to war or violence.
And still, we treat therapy
Like a confessional booth,
Instead of healthcare.
Still, we treat emotion like weakness,
And stoicism like bravery.

It’s not brave
To bottle up the storm.
It’s brave to name it.
To say, “I’m not okay.”
To cry in the daylight.
To take meds,
See a shrink,
Open the wound,
and to not apologise for bleeding.

If you think this is heavy, good.
It’s fucking supposed to be.

Because someone you love
Is already counting the seconds.
And they don’t need a pep talk.
They need a world that listens 
Before the silence becomes permanent.