October 2022 – Fevers of the Mind

“Roman Candles” inspired by Elliott Smith online blog Anthology

Tincture of Opium by David L O’Nan

A  saddle strapped and swallow down the tincture.
Assimilation over these years worth of crashes to curves of corners.

It is much heavier than before
It is much heavier than before
I begin to resemble a caricature of a zombie-
drawn by the superficial you.

Under a slightly warm night sky, barely alive
I was dreaming of you dancing on unbroken bottles.
Then again, they break again, and you're always surprised.

Much heavier than before is the cutting
Much heavier than before is the failing
I watch you fainting out a smile while bleeding away onto the floor.
I watch you believing in which heaven you have restored for this day.

The evolution of the tincture.
What is willing and what is wading
You’ve tried to prove yourself almighty.  But 

It is much heavier than before
It is much much more heavier than before
Wishing I was inside that mind with you.


Poems about Elliott from Afta Gley

Untitled

hillbasement 
musician, from your 
soughtfor transition,
your oblivion ambition, 
may you never, never
land


October 21, 2022

dear Mr. Smith, twelve
years ago I was too sad
to go to work, but

decided to work 
through the depression. there
by the Dumpster: a cat.

who knows? maybe you
guided your namesake to me.
so very grateful 

TWO FROM FOUR DAYS AGO

lighting a candle 
for 34 minutes, youre 
missing Elliott 

nineteen years ago 
I knew everything else 
meant nothing to me 

Elliott Smith waltzed 
with his metaphors, partnered
by no one at all

SO UGLY BEFORE by Lynn Elliott

A great man once proclaimed
He was damaged bad at best
In my heart of hearts
To know him I feel blessed

There was beauty, truth and honor
In his troubled soul
People clammered just to touch him
and it took it's toll

I see him in the morning
As the sky is turning blue
I feel him in the stillest night
Sometimes as if on cue

I mourn his loss quite often
Celebrate him even more
For bringing out the beauty
In what was so ugly before.

XO. Lynn Elliott

Unknown name poem by Lynn Elliott

It's so easy living in the past
Sleep walking through each day
Living where I saw you last
Pretending I'm okay

XO Lynn Elliott

My Elliott Smith story is a little different
I broke my neck and suffered a traumatic brain injury water skiing. For 5 yrs I was pretty much a zombie. The only thing I could feel was fear. I'm not a fearful person at all but that's how all tbi ppl feel
I was listening to everything's OK by Elliott
and it made me feel safe. It was the beginning of my recovery. I listened to Elliott almost every hour of every day.
It inspired me to start writing songs and poetry, which really sped up my recovery even more. I'll never be like I was before but my injury stimulated my drive to write and share what I write. So I was in my 50s when I started.

My bio

I rescue special needs dogs. I did extreme sports most of my life. Surfing, skiing. diving, soccer, tennis, gymnastics, etc. I worked for the airlines so I did a fair amount of traveling. I'm an outdoorsy person. Elliott Smith is more than a great musician to me. He is my safe place.

Ripples by Khadeja Ali

inspired by ‘Everything Means Nothing to Me”

days start and end in blank white and solid black
shapes that will not harmonize rigidly exist in my eyes
when finally touching, the sharp lipped edges cut 
and me, wanting so badly for lines blurring, insides blending
But there is no chance of grey. No body electricity to make it work.

was I once a kaleidoscope of magnetic color
shuddering with vibrating life, dancing constantly? I think so
if not singing, was I humming to natural silence?
now is there a piercing screech in my ear, or nothing
No ears-plugging or opening my mouth anymore. Frozen.

lying down is not an option; when did I start standing?
since when can I not move? This is not me. Is it? walking I was
but stiffly erect and standing at once. When started my movement’s death?
my mind’s edges are so sharp, but inside empty as air
Squinting hard. There’s nothing to see.

my energy; drained by a taunting echo of everything
wavering glass below me reflects my iron face
So glorious am I, yet—I’m nothing to me.

“Junkyard Full of False Starts” by Jennifer Patino

I'll refrain
from the
'gone too soon'
sentiments       Instead,
I'll boast of your intellect

There's a way back to blue
& to you, but we couldn't
remind you in time

& wasn't that you,
that one time, pounding
your chest
like a barbarian?

You couldn't speak
truthfully
to people
without scaring them

I know, I know, I know,
the burdens
you tore from
your aching shoulders

I know, I know, I know
how terrified you were
of even the vague idea
of growing older

You were only one, ever one,
little inside, unnamed,
but mighty            Someone
we'll think of
while
staring at flames,
hearing your phantom drunken
crooning on repeat,
when we're tired
of fighting,
or just tired
of the taste of the
city streets
where your ghost
lingers on
beneath neon lights
& in the silhouette soul
of every
ragged musician
in a beanie
we happen to meet

I'll say it, I'll pray it,

               RIP

Little Mr. Socialite by David L O’Nan

We’ve all been strapped to and strapped by the spellbinder
He walks up to you and expects you to drop the ceiling down to become his platform for a show.
Handed the keys, by osmosis you become a local legend.

To the city that continues to decay,
there is only so much here to reel in.
The cocaine socialites keep barking for you to leave their hipster colonies.
Fuck you! Fuck You! Fuck You!
You can’t talk sense to the overconfident.

They want the world, and they want the life.
They want the respect, Rifles and knives.
They want to joke and manifest a spiritual world in which they are absorbed of their behavior.

Hell to the homeless, hell to the mental health
“I don’t care about your personal lives” I care about my termination.
Your words will never get past these windows because I’ll just run out
And bark out orders like a witch in a bad dream.
Blah…blah…blah Fuck You! Fuck You! Fuck You! You can’t talk about our prince and princesses
That push the drugs and sex behind bars and counters that blow up this neighborhood.

You will vanish as soon as you appear.
Hours later you’re in another chessgame. You’re in another straight line socialite walk.
From one blink to the next you’re game changes. Drawn to your fuckin’ pawn.

He is in charge of our children. Teach them well.
Teach that future well.
Afraid of a soured reputation.
Bullying has never left your privileged brain.
And your story will never be told as long as the socialite holds the powder and the power.

Roman Candles by David L O'Nan

I’m feeling tricked in this cold October rain
The entire town are shooting Roman Candles in masses
Hypnotized in another wired dream.
Nauseated and feeling blind, worthless
The rain burns the cuts on the skin.
The friction drowns me with the idiots.
I’ve never felt this tired. I’ve never heard this much screaming.
The Roman Candles, Firecrackers, the Halloween monsters.
The shoes are beginning to sour.
The red just keeps getting darker, yet feeling thinner
The slitting and sitting with the rattle again
Have I ever been real?

The Kill of the Darlings by David L O'Nan

Another abused evening. Copper skied and bloodshot eyes.
The kill of the darlings reads on a flashing screen.
I was introduced to the spilling and polishing of my sweat to the sheets.
It must be raining, raining in my death.

I’ve been waiting, smelly and divided
On a pitch black night with coal mine moons.
I’ve been asked inside to feed the tiger.
The locomotives keep moving slower through the brain, through the cast.
Through the fade, they praise the ugliest ghost after all.

Becoming so angry by medicine and shiver out new fears.
I wait and wait and wait. Just knowing you have his name tattooed in your blood.
I wait for you on the inlay filling of broken sidewalks that have survived the earthquake.
I wait for you to come home with him.
To bust him with this chain or break a bottle over his skull.

Yet, I should realize you’ve the not caring if I ever lived or died.
Adaptation, realization and broken, a crinkled tarot card.
I’ve been calling another busy signal suicide hotline.

Winnemucca by David L O'Nan

Days of being dazed, drugged, and dangerous
Now in Winnemucca waiting for a new train.
To rescue me from the lights of the cities to the deserts to thaw.
Not feeling the jazzy hope that all these horns convey.

I’ve been travelling like it is a system wondering
If the honey was ever laced, were your smiles ever more than pain.
You played beautifully being beautiful and being muddled at the same time.
You played beautifully being heartbroken and wearing a new ring from another lame maniac.

Wafflin’ drunk on something, traintracks shaking.
Winnemucca gives me the eye of some crook.
I’m asking for tickets, asking for wishes, I’m asking for some powerful graveyard dirt.
I’m washing my hands of you since yours are covered in the outlines of sweat from the burns.

You’ve been a cough, to send away the clouds
You’ve been a leap, through the meek and the lack of sound.
You’ve been admired, but admiration wasn’t enough.
You’ve been dashing, dashing straight into the wreck.
And I will fall and eventually so will you.

I may fall sooner, but tomorrow is a full moon.
I could still be in Winnemucca, I could be dead,
or banging on pots in the streets of Chicago.
You could still be married to the errors,
you could be flooded out of house and home.
Digesting more fertile dirt.

Catharsis (collaboration poem K Weber & David L O'Nan)
also part of the Empath Dies in the End series

1. (David L O'Nan)

I was in the process of purging the ideas of you
The wrens, the beetles, and the crabs we’ve been energized by
On days of smiles. The parks, the oceans,
the imperfect apartment ceilings.

In the middle of a catharsis
I was fast to the falling down the mountainous zoo.
In the deluge of rain I remember smashing against your dress.
Umbrellas breaking, wind straining, yet in the distance we see a sunset.

Now I’m wondering are you ever really leaving me?
Will we meet again in this organic hex that has been swirling
From the ground to the trees.
To the shearing of my humility, my impulses are pulling with each inhalation.

With palms on head, a robin stares at me from the ground.
Right against my boot it seems not fear my 50 foot shadow.
Just searching for some worms through the puddles we reflect in.

2. (K Weber)

Winged leaves breathe
Between fingers of ashen
Branches where birds’
songs rest. The pulse
of a rain-tapped dusk
counts down the last
snippet of sun. Light
gets drowsy as windows
on one wall yawn
to a close.

Red Ant. Black Ant....The Stars (collaboration poem with Jennifer Patino and David L O'Nan

1. (Jennifer Patino)
They spoke of interior silence.
A way to navigate cacophony
with a smile on your face.
These forced emotions, pulled
to the surface, daisies squeezed out from beneath the grime
of disconnect.

One has to die to hear advice better. A portion of the self must be sacrificed to allow change to claim new roots. I think I'll bloom in winter. Switch the expected at the last moment so the patient ones can be satisfied. Those drought souls have waited for a resurrection long enough. They will have their day safe from the blinding sun. They will feel rain on new skin and be quenched.

2. (David L O'Nan)

I’ve been searching for your footprints all over the place.
The joke is only red ants meeting black ants on my shoelaces.
I’m disgusted I can’t past this place. Scared to walk out to new noise.
I’ve feigned happiness and I’ve dreamt up new stars.
I’ve been alone and hid my aches away.
The nightmares absorb in the pillows, as long as I stay hid.
In the shade. I got to my tree.
And I try to remember the invisible me.

I know you’ve been waiting for me to at least show a hello
I can’t keep the creatures inside and the rush becomes a roar
And the hush becomes hypnotic and
my window becomes the source
for the entertaining eye.
So go on, and move on with what you want.
The devil is dancing and waiting for your soul.
You know you want love, but this will just be another gaslighting poem.

The lake, the flowers, the light. Go the distance and find what’s right.

I met you in a trance. I was scrawny and I was a mess.
I thought I was becoming famous. And you thought you’d be the root.
I would grow from you and learn to be a jolly shine under your foot.
It’s a shame I only can understand what is anger, snark and shame.
If I could cure myself, I would try to shave away your pain.
The scene won’t have any of it.

The Dark Aesthetic/Wives in the White Light by Jess Levens and David L O'Nan

1. (Jess Levens)

The sky is quintessential October—
wet without rain; dusk in daylight, blurring
any distant thing. Blurring what is real.
Desaturated evergreens birth out

dead leaves in every citrus shade, plus
plum and pear and red delicious. They
clatter down, loudly in the quiet fog.
The chill bites flirtatiously, without pain.

Outside my window, a lone coywolf in
the farmer’s clearing stares back at me through
this dark aesthetic—howling into my
home; into my head—barking out malice.

2 (David L O'Nan)

So you keep your wives in the White Light
And the mass is enchanted that you bring
The entertainment and the insanity from the mistakes.
Like paper we’ll fly with the crisping leaves.
Some cut just like that paper,
some just itch as the wind bites down on the skin.

The wives you hide in white light
Scurry like a squirrel trying to hide a direct hit.
From grey to brown to orange to green trees-
that squirrels will scurry from the pain.
So slip outside of your skin,
Watch yourself in the mirror with another angry grin.
Revenge glowing in your eye.
And the harm you want is the harm that’ll cause you to die.

There are wires just falling everywhere…the storms are brewing
And the we all become impaired.
Hiding your wives in the white light behind the shed.
Are they in blinking blue and red lights ripe for the restoration.
They are just waiting for you to fall asleep and give up,
in your irate dream.

Continue to pour yourself that drink.
Continue to pour yourself that wolf’s howl.
Continue to transition from the rake to the shave.
Repair is on the way.
But the bedpans and the creatures inside may be the cream,
and your body may just be the trough.
The Wives in white light are just looking for you to break.
The narcissism will eventually implode
And the darkness will be decorous with light as they take you aside.

Bled Out For Liberty (collaboration poem Giulio Magrini & David L O’Nan

1 (Giulio Magrini)

The younger ones look at us and smirk…
We remember the smiling of our youth
Furtive… covert… and shrouded

Those memoirs are today’s mystery of youth
And live behind the curtains of our past
They are cognitions divorced in time but parallel confidence
What is the necessity of covert masks in the present
And our frustrated guilty memories?

2 (David L O'Nan)

I've began to feel afraid.
that i've bled out for liberty from my imagination-
that was never brave.
The loveliness just disappears.
Morning whispers engulfed in last night's tears.

I was concentrating too much on the lies.
Assuming everything from youth to existing was from the failing eye.
We were watched down on by the lighted figures.
Not wasted anymore yet cultivate me with all my failures until I die.

You're private and play hide away.
You're intellectual and passing around the plate
Damn, i'm still living slender with my fist taped up.
Everything from midnight to morning is just medicine
just passing through.
I go from I love you to i'm sorry i've been holy for you.

Maybe my mind has bled out only lies.
And my exit is the last leaf on the tree trying to cover up his face.

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/10/22/current-bio-for-fevers-of-the-minds-david-l-onan-editor-writing-contributor-to-blog/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/07/13/a-poetry-showcase-from-giulio-magrini/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/09/14/a-fevers-of-the-mind-quick-9-interview-with-giulio-magrini/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/09/12/2-wonderful-poems-by-jennifer-patino-inspired-by-plath-and-sexton/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/09/07/a-poetry-showcase-from-jess-levens/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/09/30/a-fevers-of-the-mind-quick-9-interview-with-jess-levens/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/05/25/poetry-showcase-from-k-weber/

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Richard Cabut

Q1: When did you start writing and who has influenced you the most?

My first paid writing job was in 1982 – I was 22-years-old – freelancing for the NME, under the pen name Richard North – after New North Road (near Old Street), where I was squatting at the time. London back then was characterised by wrecked and abandoned property, corrugated iron, fires burning in rusty metal barrels in empty yards, wasteland, toxic clouds of tobacco smoke in the dole office, on the top deck of the bus and in one smokers’ carriage on the tube, darkness. It was an environment which you could truthfully run wild in, to paraphrase Malcolm McLaren. And I did. I loved it. I guess I was taken on at the NME to write about a particular type of post-punk bands sometimes called Positive Punk, the name of a front cover piece I wrote about the movement, which wasn’t particularly a movement – just a loose collection of reckless feckless glam soaked musicians, squatters, urbanites, trash clubbers, punk nostalgics, dopers, no hopers. It didn’t last long – satisfying a need for vitality for a mere few months, and then we all moved on.

I carried on writing for the NME as well a number of other magazines and papers, before taking a writing job at the BBC. Which I quit after ten years or so, to carry on with my own projects – journalism, theatre, and authoring a number of books, e.g. Looking for a Kiss, Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night (Zer0 Books), Dark Entries, etc.

Q2: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?

As a very young kid, I was looked after by my grandmother, while my parents worked. I come from a Polish background and my babcia (granny in Polish) amused me and herself by telling stories all day – fantastic Polish tales of dark foreboding, dire warning, dislocation and disaster, fortitude and survival, of how the cold will settle with deathly embrace around our shoulders if we forget for one single moment to beware, to be constantly on your guard. Folk stories, and family history of how, during WWII, my family had been ethnically cleansed by the Soviets from our home in Eastern Poland to labour camps in Siberia, and then, after amnesty, to the middle east, Africa, and, ultimately, England. A true odyssey. My babcia placed these tales in a mythological context. Similarly, her descriptions of current affairs were akin to the telling of contemporary fables. I guess knew then that I wanted to tell stories like her.

Q3: Who has helped you most with writing and career?

I suppose those editors and publishers who have, over the years, recognised my wild and raging talent. I humbly thank you. But, in my experience, writers rarely help one another and are mostly fuelled by ego, jealousy and hatred of other writers, especially successful ones. I’ve seen friendships end overnight after a former pal has had a good review or a few sales. The writing scene is characterised by vanity, rivalry, and bitterness. As Gore Vidal said, ‘whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.’ Ha. I also like the line ‘succeeding is not enough, others must fail.’

Q4: Where did you grow up and how has that influenced you? Have any travels influenced your work?

I was born in Aylesbury, Bucks, and grew up in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Thirty miles up the M1 from London. Suburbia largely. There, kids left school and went on the track, the production line, at the local factory, Vauxhall Motors. If you got some qualifications you could join the civil service. Meanwhile, some couples had been going out with each other since 3rd Form and watched telly round each other’s house every night, not saying a word. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew I didn’t want any of that. Instead, I was in love with punk rock. I was in love with picking up momentum and hurling myself forward somewhere. Anywhere. Rip up the pieces and see where they land. Which, for me, at the age of 18, in 1978, happened to be London the traditional refuge for suburban refugees – people who felt disaffected by life in the sticks: the treadmill, the mores, the conservatism, the repressive nature of family life. We wanted to tip all of this upside down, assert ourselves and fathom the world. There, in London, I wrote and produced my punk fanzine Kick.

Q5: What do you consider your most meaningful work creatively to you?

I always think of my latest work as the most meaningful, for obvious reasons.

Q6: Favourite activities to relax?

Procrastination, prevarication, seeing people, avoiding people, bad language, bad behaviour, hanging out, talking shit, fucking around, shopping for clothes, lying on the sofa, lying in the sun, lying, being boring, yoga.

Q7: What is a favourite line/ stanza/lyric from your writing?

The End. Obvious huh

Q8:What kind of music inspires you the most? What is a song or songs that always come back to you as an inspiration?

While working I usually listen to Mixcloud – mostly dub, low event horizon music, spiritual jazz. Music always keeps it ticking along – the heartbeat, the soul and all.

Q9: Do you have any recent or upcoming books, music, events, etc that you would like to promote?

Yes please.

I’ve signed my second book contract of the year – with the notable New York publishers Far West Press, purveyors of fine literature, who will put out my book of verse entitled Disorderly Magic and Other Disturbances in Spring 2023– available nationally in the States, select shops in the UK and Europe, and online worldwide.

Disorderly Magic is post-punk, dark jazz, pop art verse. Essential beat up/down, free-fall, free-for-all poetry for people who don’t particularly like poetry (and who do, of course).

Disorderly Magic features subterranean scenes, picturesque ruins, neon glowing, faded glamour, Chelsea Girls, the damned, the demimonde, the elemental, being on the edge of being pinned down by our ghosts.

Also, memory, magic, mourning, worlds and words that are desperately fragile –mapping the loneliness and expression of private sorrows, some peculiar energy from the streets, hidden and brilliant corners, ‘well of course I liked Godard’s films before 68 but…’

And, a graveyard of myths, nostalgia, ‘the problem is: to get back to zero’, image of nylon, sur et sous le communication, folk devils, alienation – full face or in profile, the Scala cinema London 1983, the Zone, the consumer society, concrete brutalist situations, that which doesn’t exist.

Plus, French film slurred, correct sounds for a new audience, POV shots, reverse shots, absolute technical precision, brand new revenge, compartmentalisation of our lives, everywhere at once, ‘“I prefer American films… they’re prettier” – “Yes, but less arousing,”’ invisible people in homes, in other words no normal life.

Additionally, blocks of flats, signs of repression, reality of reflection, very little ideology, juices stirred, dilation of the pupil, Polish mysticism, passage of a signal, pop blow jobs, pravda, overlaying one image onto another, all in black and white (black and white is fast – colour is slower) – standard speed for capturing abrupt movement, madness.

Set in full moonlight, before the Flood.

Disorderly Magic and Other Disturbances will be available for pre-order March 2023, and published May 2023 by Far West Press.

Moreover, my current novel Looking for a Kiss has been picked up by the exciting publishing company PC-Press.

It will be re-published next Spring (2023) in an extended and amended edition, with new text additions, artwork and cover. There will also be an audio book version. The paperback and hardback versions will be distributed to shops nationwide, and will also be available via the usual online outlets. Until then, Looking for a Kiss is no longer for sale.

PC-Press released Melissa Chemam’s book Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone, the history of Test Department, Total State Machine, etc.

Pete Webb, who runs PC-Press says: ‘Looking for a Kiss is a post-punk masterpiece. The book presents a particular slice of Post-Punk London in its brutal, negating and bleak narrative that brilliantly evokes the time.’

Looking for a Kiss remains a ‘fabulous’, poetic some would say, chronicle of speed and madness in the London/NY 80s post-punk milieu.

It was described in the programme notes of this year’s Lewisham Literary Festival, where I appeared, as ‘a cult classic post-punk pop art novel.’

Author Biography

Richard Cabut is author of the novels Looking for a Kiss (PC-Press, 2023. Previous edition: Sweat Drenched Press, 2020) and Dark Entries (Cold Lips Press, 2019), co-editor/-writer of the anthology Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night (Zer0 Books, October 2017), contributor to Ripped, Torn and Cut – Pop, Politics and Punks Fanzines From 1976 (Manchester University Press, 2018) and Growing Up With Punk (Nice Time, 2018).

His journalism has featured in the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, NME (pen name Richard North), ZigZag, The Big Issue, Time Out, Offbeat magazine, the Independent, Artists & Illustrators magazine, thefirstpost, London Arts Board/Arts Council England, Siren magazine, etc.

Other fiction has appeared in the books The Edgier Waters (Snowbooks, 2006) and Affinity (67 Press, 2015). As well as on various internet sites.

He was a Pushcart Prize nominee 2016.

Richard’s plays have been performed at various theatres in London and nationwide, including the Arts Theatre, Covent Garden, London.

His poetry has appeared in An Anthology of Punk Ass Poetry (Orchid Eater Press, 2022), and magazines such as Cold Lips, Foggy Plasma, 3:AM Magazine, etc.

Richard exhibited as contributing artist (textual) to Always On My Mind, an exhibition in aid of The National Brain Appeal, the Fitzrovia Gallery, London, July 2022.

He published the fanzine Kick (1978-1982), and played bass guitar for the punk band Brigandage (LP Pretty Funny Thing – Gung Ho Records, 1986).

richardcabut.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cabut

https://linktr.ee/richardcabut

Book Review “Wiregrass and Other Poems” from Moira J. Saucer review from David L O’Nan

Pre-Order here from Ethel Zine https://www.ethelzine.com/shop/wiregrass-and-other-poems-by-moira-j-saucer

Moira J Saucer is a disabled poet living in the Alabama Wiregrass. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her worked has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada including Black Bough Poetry Freedom- Rapture anthology, Visual Verse, Fly on the Wall Press, Ice Floe Press, Mooky Chick, Floodlight Editions, and Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020.

Wiregrass and Other Poems review by David L O’Nan

I have been lucky enough to read Wiregrass and Other Poems and just the wonderful, melancholy collective works of Moira J. Saucer. I admire Moira's writing and have been inspired to keep writing short story style poetry & prose due to Moira encouraging me with a story I submitted a few years ago to IceFloe Press. I actually knew someone was actually reading my work again. I received a "Best of the Net Nomination" for this piece and thank Moira, and IceFloe Press very much for keeping my confidence and expanding my style of writings now into my 40's.

This collection from Moira, is the gut of her soul. It is the heartbreak, the sadness, the wanting to escape, the bewitching hour of living in the darkness and wondering if the moon will shine down on some Alabama Wiregrass tonight. It is a recovery, back into your own cynicism, to lost, to feeling Godless to feeling God is in everything. Wiregrass and Other Poems pours the aching hours of years into one quick ride that you learn the heart of Moira. The kindness of Moira, and where our mind goes when ends are coming. The Darkness of Moira. I sit in this same kind of wanting solace, but never seeing the real Sun. Almost like a ghost, the sun fades quickly just are you are discovering it is there.

"When You Fall" : "There you are conveniently sick and poor. You are trouble wrapped in thrift store clothes, a motley creature with little possibility for redemption" a sad poem about remembering a more youthful time as a woman and feeling trapped by the never-ending days that stretch our mind more and more into the unknown.

"I survived the dark descent, the five years of shame, poverty and-
and yes hell."

"Homeless and Broke" : A tale that feels like you're forever traveling long dark Alabama roads. As i've done many times traveling from Kentucky/Indiana to New Orleans by car. Forever on dark Alabama roads. You get that sneak of Mobile, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery. But then you just see shadowy trees that jump-stare at you like Frankenstein's Monster at 3 A.M. looking for the Waffle House sign that doesn't sound good. "I lay awake at night the pain from Fibro like sharp invisible knives thrusting and turning into muscle and tendon. The portent of my death" Long lasting pain just like a long night of dark roads....doesn't ever feel to end.

"Woman A/The" : A remembrance of glory days now feel like descent. "She lies in a cot. The roaches crawl on her white skin. Flies hover over her bloody chest"

"When She was dying" for Quinn : A poem about memories, where you'd like to stay in those memories. But family, a mother has to fade and you're never ready. "She wore an otherworldly glow flushed from love and cancer"

"Wiregrass" : A poem of the wildness that once was. Alabama nights lead to the mischief, the rebellion, the fun, the regrets, the sadness in old lightbulbs. "My days are spent cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, praying. Praying to stave off sorrow and madness, but sometimes these twin demons...wait outside the doors for blindness to set in, for gladness to fade"

"Wounds" A poem about caring for someone who no longer can care fully for themselves. The sadness they have seeps into yourself. And it just becomes too much to handle. "Our bodies knit together flesh so we can go on living...but the wound memory is always there"

"Flower Thief" A wonderfully put together poem that must be read. Very metaphorically, yet visibly strong. Imagery shines. "the pallid woman told him she saw me stealing flowers... they call me a flower thief my crimes stealing stars hope from the gods brilliant light"

"Kindness" Heartbreak poem....love, lost, love, deception, love, forgiveness, or a void. "She didn't fight the judgments. It was important to avoid ruffling waters, telling the truth. He had claimed to be an honest man, yet blamed her for his lust"

"Marbles" wonderful imagery. "I love marbles...bought beautiful ones in Chicago just to gaze at them lost now" comparisons of just watching something in amazement for what it is and not what it should be.

"Charolais" "The Whole property was once pecan trees and cattle...Now there is only a pasture"....

"Midwife for Robert" about friendship, motivation, refreshed, and appreciative of art, poetry, work, what a non-narcissistic view will help guide you to greatness when it comes to writing, art, your true heart's desire. The creative starvation sometimes has to be purged back out with the hope. "Poems began to die from lack of oxygen...the poems and I began to die"

"Origins, at Sixty-Five" I've read this poem many times and always amazed by how well it is structured together to convey to never give up what creates you and what you create. "I shook the grain out into my hand, ancient yet bright, polished and buffed by the seas"

"Summertime" Stuck in the muck of another summer down South during the hardest times, wanting to get out, but fate will not let you escape at this time.... "It's time for tornado season with no shelter, no place to hide, and it's god-awful-hot under the canopy of scabbed pecan trees"

"Loss" The frustrations during the hardest period of time as a grand whole for the country. Especially, when you are living down south and what is fed to you is a machine of mudslinging. "Pastels, beautiful colors, rolling onto emptiness of white space. I wept blending them-radiant pigments, a gorgeous burning nightmare"

"Night Visitation" "Roads in Alabama roll away like giant tar pits, the blackness-deafening, dangerous"

"Vampire Story" A story/poem about after you lose someone and you just search for anything to keep your mind off it. To infatuate yourself with anything. A story. Mundane, love, cheesiness, or just leave me alone everyone and let me transcend away for awhile.

"August, 2019" Very well put together poem using nature as a symbol in the imagery representing the blooming and the blackness of rolling clouds through the Summer. "The garden flowers now shriveled, having bloomed into scattered color madness"

"Chrysalis (Queer Butterfly)" "The open road is transformed...I wait for you in a garden dense and fragrant" a beautiful poem.

"Did I Tell You" "We create another self...dissociate to absorb trauma." "The Second self watches from a distance being battered and gets exhausted too" brilliant!

4 poems from Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020 by Moira J Saucer

Pandemic Love & other Affinities from Icefloe press an anthology

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.

*Announcements for October including release of Deluxe Edition of Before the Bridges Fell (Fevers of the Mind Press)*

Paperback & Kindle version of Cursed Houses is now available from David L O’Nan on this link below

Poetry Collaboration Carson Pytell and David L O’Nan : On the Edge of Water near Wyngate Mansions

On the Edge of Water near Wyngate Mansions

from the series “The Empath Dies in the End”

1 (Carson Pytell)

How far is far?
Pat your head and rub your stomach,
but do it from the inside of your skin.

Near is never enough,
like Bermuda or the Caribbean
or the houses you pass on your way to work.

Mist your days, if you'd like,
under envy. Motivation leaks
out of you like piss if not.

2 (David L O'Nan)

I was and always that most dangerous jewel box
Slightly cutting colors out with each touch.
I am swinging from your eyelids trying to lift them up to see me.

I will dip in from the edge of the water.
I come up splintered, thorns inside
Punctured me to insecurity.

I don’t have the strength to understand the distance anymore.
I don’t have enough care to understand the smiles that run slim.
Over the Wyngate Mansions on hills full of sad old travelers.

I confess that is where I’ll be
With stories of lost mates
With the chants in my head, promises of endless ruins.

The whistles in the distance run to cold air invitations.
Biting through heat on the way.
Love was given, love was failed at Wyngate on a-
troubled Godless day.

Ashamed, pathetic voices paddled out half-truths.
Was it rain or sun or was it the new flood as fate,
My body near, far, an imitation of a water’s edge.  
Visually vacant.  

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog. 

Paperback & Kindle version of Cursed Houses is now available from David L O’Nan on this link below 

Carson Pytell: Best of Poetry Showcase

Retort to a poacher by David L O’Nan

as you write poems behind the scenes about everyone and anyone, forget those that helped you along the way. Invitations to another carnival…and poach at every opportunity you can get. Deciding which personality to be.

Acting innocent are we with arrows in the back.

We can all pretend to be grandeur.

We can all pretend to be hated

We can all dream when the river flows our way.

We can all bleed together and call ourselves unity.

We can be our keeper until one is needed.

Let the death of us fall over, while you’re too busy posing.

Self-declare yourself the one in a vanity mirror.

Watch yourself exempt all that has made you, your strut is a broken gallop. Until you are melted by another. It was your game to win.

And what a prize.

To be a stuck Lego man, yellow, masked, with a facade smile. You cared about this world, or was it just the king of the broken city you were after.

Here is your address to what is dire poetry,

Here is your crown of catfish and the same 10 people that give you the key to the neon light.

Enjoy Sundays.