Meta Mag I: Mental Illness

Welcome to Meta Mag [the zine within a zine]...because every zine should have even more zine; because Charleston's creativity should be flaunted...creatively. Every month. One theme. Writing. Art. Photography. The talent of Charleston in one collective. 

 

This first month, our theme is mental illness. But with each different monthly theme, be prepared to brave the dark, the bold, the delightful, the decadent, the strange.

 

Submissions open to anyone in Charleston or the surrounding sprawl: poetry, prose, short stories, excerpts, digital art, mixed media, photoshopped photography, analog photography (both are hip now, anyways, right?), anything you can argue/haggle that fits into the categories of writing, art, and photography. 

 

Submit to annadorotheahudson@gmail.com and become super famous now.

 

And cue. 

 

Barefoot in the carpet I am a floating insect. Not a human. Less than, hollowed out, empty clam shell. 

Dry and crunchy, edges curling up, left out in the sun. I'm ants, ass to mouth, lining up, always on the look out. 

Watch me carry this burden away, three times my size, I hold it with urgency, but with restraint.

---

 

"Insanity" by Delany McConnell

 

A soul

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Watch this. It's a piece of mental illness that airs every night: 7EST.

The character's a schizophrenic and also a detective.

His head is ugly; his face is handsome. Watch with your kids: it's family friendly.

 

Mature content. Anorexia is just a buncha words, pushing around food; saying

“See look at me confiding in record time because these lines don't carry much backstory. “

It's sexy when she strips to show off that pretty skinny suffering called self-loathing .

Of course she has a carnal appetite; what's a greater hook than juveniles fucking?

 

Don't worry, they wrote in a stock therapist, and he can totally relate. In a flashback

There was a little girl that he personally failed, and if his decade of psychiatry is not worn 

Thin to paper dolls in 2d stories, he really wants the victim to climax.

 

What a romance to be a character imbalanced!

No pain; just silly sitcom games where fighting lasts 90 minutes.

Cut! Kiss and make up. All's resolved in a sex scene because

Weeks of stress are not actually realistically... Entertaining.

 

Drug abuse is so exquisite when everyone's okay the next day.

Hangovers foreshadow frustration; otherwise there's no such thing. 

Cable said that bender was rejuvenating, pop music said to keep going, 

Suicidal tendencies are just an act; not an appalling statistic.

 

Let's see the struggle of an actor depicting autism, and 

Applaud for a job well done. The critics are raving. 

Thank God for rich parents & deus ex machina.

 

Television lies,and they pay millions into levity so the public will never see 

Anything but addictive personality intervention inventions of filmography.

Fact is no one cares if you have seizures or palsy or that you can't sleep for PTSD

The right people will build you into the normal behavior of mental irregularity.

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Devil with Angel Wings. Dorothea Hudson

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"God is a Schizophrenic" by Dorothea Hudson

[for the schizos, manic-depressives, and otherwise psychotics to know they are in good company, no matter their faith]

 

God is a schizophrenic, spinning fanciful tales haphazardly 

out of the webs of chaos entangled in his almighty mind,

a master creating his own reality –  

unchecked by preset law or sense or reason... 

gone mad with absolute power. 

A genius drunk on his ability.

 

God is a schizophrenic and that is why 

butterflies cause hurricanes, and 

atoms contain atom bombs, and 

you and your soul mate might never meet 

if you decide against going for a walk 

on that 

[un]fateful day. 

[Or however the fuck love stories happen.]

 

And that is why there is that great unknown cliffhanger 

called Death, 

heralded as the ultimate terror, or triumph,

or 

anti-climax; 

and no one can decide 

and the absurdity of it is that 

the only certainty is uncertainty.

But maybe 

God just had writer's block.

 

God is a schizophrenic and that is why 

the human soul craves to never be 

alone, 

but is confined to a single human body. 

A single human body which can 

touch, 

caress, 

taste, 

another, but 

can never inhabit another. 

A body condemned to be alone, all the while craving love. 

Alone, even in death. 

[Except in death?] 

[God is a schizophrenic.]

 

And yet…

 

God is a schizophrenic and that is why 

the mad genius is the most divinely inspired,

raging with a torturous, hectoring beauty in her soul

a beauty that must be, must be, released 

or will so tragically self-destruct. 

[And so many do.]

And that is why 

the unfettered mind is the most creative mind

because it is fundamentally bound 

to the Ultimate Creator.

 

God is a schizophrenic and that is why

it is impossible to explain with words the masterpiece, Starry Night,

to a blind person – or even the very color blue 

for that matter…

Because existence is 

ineffably, incomprehensibly, psychotically sublime.

 

 

 

They say the idle mind is the Devil's playground, 

but I beg to differ.

The Devil dreams utterly predictable dreams: greed, powerlust, self-glorification, dominion. His playground is banal, dull filth – riveting as a bureaucrat on Wall Street.   

Because the Devil never dreamed up a poet, an all-consuming Malthusian black hole, and the dirt stuck between your toes,

placed them all together and said:

“Play ball!”

 

Glorious, isn't it?

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