A Divorce in the Gut of the Sun We used to be drawings of lipstick clouds And Strawberry hearts We lived in our diaries We loved, we bled Atrophied the stems from the flowers What memories are left? Imprinted in my scars Come read them like a palm reader Do you see the many awakenings? Blurred out the moon in this desert heat I’m absorbing Thru this skin, these bones I’m still to you, no words for you We’ve said all that we don’t mean But now it is enough Your masculinity is waning Your bravado is short circuiting You’ll bring your sour breath to the bar Bite the lips of a midnight sundress and her vodka strut While I’m in frozen depression Children away with my mother As I burn all our old letters And I burn all of my wardrobe The clothes I wore during my “trying to impress” years I just want to swim in these fires across the floor Shall the universe eat my soul right now, I’d be fine Eat away the old regimes of barrels, bourbon, and brutes Now in a shell I am A dark closet that my soul is weeping behind I stare into my imagined reflection and my feet become warm by the heat of my tears Falling and puddling til my badly polished toenails just stand inside And I don’t care I am in fear still though, You’re no longer here You have the dessert and no entrée I see all the medications that I’ve been given Even more recently than before More medication, less feeling But no motivation, and I know you are more worried about getting a fresh cup of coffee And I’m going to have to settle on the old black & white photos of our marriage Light that shit to flames I have to be pushed into my old body, and cradle my mind, and hold me Til I can shake away the disease of you The Ballad of Clay Huntley (profile of ego series) In the smoky Ale House Let’s call it Murfreesboro He’s got the swaying hips of a murder machine Slick backed hair, a sex appeal predator Collecting numbers, spreading diseases, I’ve known him to be a birdwatcher, a greaser witch Stepping up to women like a movie star In a masochistic leather jacket He runs up mountains without the fear of the plunge A wind-up talking crash of dark caramel ale breath – to a lost soft cheek You become his stage For all his radical jokes Unnerving smiles You become his surgery, For all of his dissecting thought Or so he thinks A point from going macho to a drunk Then he’s your neighborhood brute A traveling circus riot Wants you to become his scream queen victim As he challenges all – to watch his demise to – being a bar wrestler, A real Vaudeville bullfrog And he wants you to be his dancing daisy While impersonates a Rudolph Valentino Now he knows to mimic an operatic wind A gust of bravado to a riverfront Stuck in a canvas frame, from the beating heart of Ambroise Vollard But soon his oil stick is broken in the engine And the hood is falling off From the Ale then the pills Now he’s turning to the surgeon for good Baiting you to a show, a one-man cult display Like swarming buffalo gnats – to a jar of Wild Maine Blueberry Jam Clay Huntley, a vivid swerving waterfall While under his spell, a master weaver An electrician pulling all the wires of our bombs together. In 5 years He doesn’t breathe free When lungs are wooden, Set afire from all the tobacco digesting tumors – in the Superior Lobe Guillotining away at the Pleura, becomes like Mayonnaise A sick interception from ego back to man Now as death awaits Imagination and nature became the object – of his lamenting eyes He likes to stray the fields, giving each bird a personality Funny, how he never saw that in the women on his pinup calendars Time is a fickle demon So, can we pray in the arms of what is timeless? Psalm 46 Haze In mornings when most kings dine In a sweat of night, the heat clutched To the skin In mighty robes Yet, like a wet mop A tide of anger A misguided dreamer Of thievery, wanted all the treasures All the lucid wanderings Gold coin eyeballs Designed in statuesque build Shallow, there will not be any crumbling in my march through civil breakdowns One king, death on rapid waters The rocks like the clouds, depends on powers of the wind To move us from the heat Like a Psalm 46 haze He breaks the bows and shatters the spears And cartoon kings start to smear Paint begins to clump, like a clogged artery Stains through to the canvas, Blasphemy blankets purity And in oceans and rivers There aren't any fresh fish Smudges of floating ink, like blood Ships keep moving in the night The lighthouse light reflects only former royal shadows You forget false righteousness And you brand in the tattooed crimson to sea bottoms.
Stone Walls in Trailer Parks
I can really feel the Geodon today. And my head is bashed in like a stone wall. Underneath the sickle of the trailer park. My heart just wants to crash. As firm as an old peach. Leave me alone in this black room. I've been trying to paint White Angels while in the mouths of all these dragons. Although my head is on fire, It is too cold to paint. Quivering birdbone hands. My hands tremble in overdose. I rest in the mutiny of the day. I can only wrap myself in a scratchy blanket. And listen to all the screaming arguments from mothers to children. And my walls remain the lunatic. Stressed and cracking the foundation downward.
Trippin’ Crawlin’ Learning to Fly
Crawling out of his crooked shoe His mission is to fly He swallows one raindrop From storm cloud after storm cloud He shadows his face and hides. In his ears, the harmonious peasants sing of love He disappears, A fading tumble into seclusion Why does the wind play tricks on the brain? Acting as though the whispering is real. It is another game We laugh at the fool "Look at him stumbling out of his shoe" Trap him, corner him Into submission Bury his dreams in with the oblivious Pull apart the blue sky to devalue his freedom. "What is behind those blue curtains"? Just air, smoke, unbreathable distance? Whistling echoes from the well He has fallen into his long unwinding spell Now lord help me, all that is mighty! Give me a hand, let me stop the blind crawl I can't see or hear the visuals, the auditory bleeding missions. Searching for guidance The hand that cradles you into thought To no longer fear the frightening. We are not a puppet controlled by the flirtatious mind of mercy Flames become invisible If you want to fly, You must first run into walls. The skin, the heart must thicken when struck by the whip of evil. Time and time again. Links: Poetry: They Had Sadness in their Eyes ( Like in Littleton) from David L O’Nan Collaboration poem from Merritt Waldon & David L O’Nan A Quicksilver Trilling by David L O’Nan : Poetry & Writing style lyrics inspired by Dylan In 1961…In 1961 by David L O’Nan (from Before I Turn Into Gold Anthology) Collaboration Poem “Bleeding Summer City Sidewalks” by David L O’Nan & R.D. Johnson Poetry from David L O’Nan in the Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers The return & revised version of “New Disease Streets” by David L O’Nan Poetry and stories Poetry : A Castle Melts by David L O’Nan Poetry: The Parody King’s Castle by David L O’Nan Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today! Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog. Bare Bones Writings Issue 1 is out on Paperback and Kindle
Fevers of the Mind 