Author: Ben Preston

Ben Preston is a poet washed up in London’s Somers Town. He’s worked as a bartender, factory operative, diamond controller, dabbled in philosophy and dropped out of everything. He’s starting again. He’s using the skills he’s developed in creative writing to forge a new life and a new identity.

Dan (for Daniel Marchbank)

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Dan
(for Daniel Marchbank)

You said you liked watching the rain 
running down your window. 
You can’t see why people complain. 
The movies flickered on your screen 
 
in cinematic dreams. You knew all the directors, 
like you knew all the bands. Oasis 
to the Chilli Peppers to the Wu-Tang Clan. 
I used to come round to drink cups of decaf. 
 
We swapped cigarettes, shrugged off regrets, 
had a laugh. We talked about the days 
when you partied in a haze. Clubbed it up 
‘til you went off the rails. The lows and the highs. 
 
The good times and the fails. 
You had a warm heart but you played it cool. 
You had a smile for your friends, no time for fools. 
Ray-Bans hid the sadness in your eyes 
 
the heavy melancholy, the turmoil in your life. 
I wish I could come around and see you now. 
Under electric light, the clouds unloading down. 
Watch the rain from the panes of Somerton House. 
 
That sad morning it all got too much. 
I miss big Dan with his human touch. 
With his reason and his rhymes and the love inside. 
You’d still be here if you didn’t take that dive. 
 
I recall that song you put on, Bat for Lashes: 
“Daniel, when I first saw you, 
I knew that you had a flame in heart” 
At your church service friends and neighbours 
 
lit candles for you. For the memories of Dan 
and the light that flickered in his heart.

Mental Health Thoughts, part one

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My name is Ben Preston. I have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by Dr Farah Anwar, a consultant psychiatrist. I have had this diagnosis since 2009. 

I have been dogged with mental health problems for most of my adult life. I have always understood my problem as depression. I dislike the idea that I suffer from psychotic illness with its warping of reality and its distortions of sense and reason. I believe it has nothing to do with the life I live and the person I am. I believe that it is harmful as a diagnostic category when applied to me. 

I have been admitted to psychiatric wards six times, I was once sectioned under the mental health act. If you added up all the time I have spent on wards it would probably come to about two years. I take an antidepressant orally and an antipsychotic administered by injection. I have taken these two medications (Citalopram and Risperidone) continuously for many years. 

I was admitted to a mental hospital for the first time in 2005 at the age of 28. My last admission was in 2018. I am now 48 years old. I live alone in a council flat in North London. I receive government benefits as I am classed as a disabled person due to my mental problems. 

In 2003 I was signed off work for two weeks with depression/anxiety. I have not worked since then, although I am trying to cultivate a career as a writer/poet. I have many friends in the area where I live and feel comfortable here up on the ninth floor of a block of flats.  

There are many different understandings of my illness among psychiatrists and psychologists. Although I have never read my medical notes I know they are full of contradictions and factual mistakes – almost as if the product of a disordered mind.

Fat Bum Song (for Dylan Grundy)

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Fat Bum Song
(for Dylan Grundy) 

He’s always on the lookout for those 
fat bum chicks. 

He reckons Eve had a fat bum, 
Eve who was tempted by the serpent. 

Her fat-bummed daughters 
swarm the streets of London in the summertime. 

There’s so many they should be given away free, 
a fat bum for you, a fat bum for me. 

He wants to get a T-shirt saying 
“I’m the monk who likes fat bums.” 

Although he isn’t actually a monk, 
just a Christian who studies the teachings of The Buddha. 

He looks like a cheeky little Buddha sitting there. 
A cheeky little Buddha smoking a Marlboro Red. 

A Saint Jude pendant 
hanging round his neck.

Rock Song (for Alan Wass)

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Rock Song 
(for Alan Wass) 

He’s got a great big crack in the screen of his phone. 
He’s got a six-string grin and a council home.   

He crashed through glass 
into my mind. 

He sank a pint and a shot 
and a shot and a pint. 

Feathered 
booted 
wearing a hat. 
  
Don’t give a fuck. 
Don’t give a fuck. 
  
The lights went down 
and the girls lined up 

he loves his Liza 

so he don’t give a fuck.

Morphine

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Morphine

A nurse squirted morphine into my mouth.
Hospital white. Light punches holes in the horizon.

"Shoulder surgery is quite painful I think":
the anaesthetist, before they wheeled me in.

Pills in a little plastic cup.
They look like an offering of Smarties. 
The brown ones are particularly potent.
London is outside, in the vacant night.
Wraiths in green smocks sometimes rise
and shuffle to the loo.
I don’t know if I’m half-asleep or half-awake.
The ward’s quiet traffic across fading hours.
The pain is consistent as a rock formation.

I must have made some kind of moaning sound,
some ghost gesture.

She is small, looks like she’s from the Philippines.
She has soft, kind eyes.
"Open wide!"

It still didn’t make any difference.