Poetry Showcase: David L O’Nan (March 2023)

from my book “Cursed Houses” October 2022 https://amzn.to/3gknC3r for a copy (U.S. Link)

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

Poetry Showcase: David L O’Nan from Cursed Houses pt 1

A Botched Sunset

We could have had all the colors to hold in our hands as the day ended.
What was to be a clear forecast, 
The hands of time stop and let me sip it all in.
It was just the beginning of a robbery, a botched sunset.
She cries with little painful eyes, 
and I have to hide to adore her from the side.
I’m not able to clear the air, nor wipe away a tear.
I’m not able to speak up and let her know I was there.
I couldn’t disgrace his name, even though he’s to blame,
and you were quilting yourself shut, a kite that wouldn’t sail.


I walk around with the wrong crowd; I watch as they burn out.
I’m thinking that if I stay in the here, I’ll be around for you in the now.
But I’m sorry I can’t stay frozen; I gallop everywhere, 
and I just burn too much –
to inhale the ice of your stare.
I couldn’t just fade into the smoke. 
I couldn’t just laugh at the tasteless jokes.
When the burn for you was real-
around a crowd of fake noise and hidden fear.


Wilting, a fading voiceless, where are the words?
It’s still raining since that day.
The old pictures and old punctures tickles at the brain.
The enchantment is enframed.
Forever paralyzed inside. Where do old voices go?
Unable to conserve the wonders from that first thunderstorm. 
The clouds are forever parading across –
and once in a while the light, the pop, the cracks and crumble.
Repair me temporarily with the glue...
Then wait for the digestive gulp fade awhile once again.
The sunsets just can’t get it right, too ruddy, too nauseating, too lively, 
or too sick.

All I can remember is the near times, not like the first times.
The times we almost shared...but the eyes were never for me, 
at least that’s what the ring said.
Always something to push the buttons for you, 
and always a shell for me to cling to.
The memories will always be inside a confused heart. 
Sitting there in an old photo wasn’t me, 
but there was the goofy, the darling and the preacher of philosophy.

I know you’ve been through the sands, you’ve been through the cold
you’ve been with the devil, and you’ve been with the bells of angelic souls.
You’ve been upset, you’ve been my bridge, 
you’ve been my ladder and my fall.
And I will claim myself unsuitable for your wall, 
and just hang there from the sky like
like a botched sunset. 

From a Motel Somewhere

We were shaken in our radiance, 
A shattering immortality 
corrupted the ripe and sat lonesome against the splintered mahogany door.

I found a letter on the ground addressed to the hierarchy.
The prisoners are at the shore laughing in a fan boat, 
they have smiles like gargoyles
While the dead dance at the ritz and do some sort of cellophane jig.

The gothic greedy mouse goes begging for cash from King Rat.
And I was watching as the bastard child failed to secure the gold.
They just talked to each other like a mumbled muppet behind the walls of these wishbones.

Time stopped and the children did play.  
The wells they wished in was for a forever.
In tiny bits of water they made God into a tadpole...
to give them hope and wait all afternoon.
Watch for the light shoot down like a ladder from the sky.

Then we have all the muscled monsters in the mazes.  
Remember them for strength.
..and their constant need to look just alike and flex for the fantasy in her golden skin.

They will not be remembered for their failures, their miseducation, 
or their sweat.
They still show tears in dramatic flaws when the mockingbirds did come out to squawk.

Let’s look for the glutton sleeping by the tobacco fields,
as he is covered in tics and mites.
He’s moving through this prairie like a skunk, 
just to become a possum city punk.
Carcasses and bones falling off the wagons, driving too fast near the cliffs.
Sunsets seem a little fancy for now, 
and the stars are too bright to tremble for this apocalypse.
Another mystery in a town full of affairs.    
All the sexiest and dreamers decide that in denial 
they can mix in with the lacey foliage.   

Mowing down the vacant lot.
In a distance full of sparrows and woodpeckers shake at the cage.  

From a motel somewhere, the truckers coming in for a night of 
chemical sleep.

If Masterpieces Were Bloodshed

Could I blink out stars, 
with bloodshed blowing from my thoracic aorta.
Like a lightning strike to the wind,
painting a perfect picture to define sin.

Slender wings, fat reptiles
Cold blood mixed in art
A witness will rise,
to slam our faces into this disguise.
Time has slipped and slept
with the stinging breaths.
The witch has left magic for death.

A tiger lily, a mourner binges tears – 
across the ropes
The pulling against the cuts, the scabs itch against the scars
Eternally I have decorated you with my haunt.


Leave everyone curious, all shall see
the visible is in my invisible me
Wish for one last high, we can ride
The flights will rip apart this sky like 
a thin silk, a yarn - 
my frail skin will come down like banners and lay.

Just lying there, cold
So cold, like stones stitched together –
like a masterpiece

Shivering, losing feeling
in fingers, in toes
my cheeks, my lungs
my bones, my heart
My weather-beaten mind –

Literal Picassos, hobo Van Gogh
Dry heaving Monet in a radiation snow.
Art has, art had
our lives, our love,
our waves, all water dried
Emerge from withdrawals
Or silence, I dare your darkness
to ripple in a little sunlight.

Lifelong, gliding
Just hanging on, disappear
Fail the imagination, Fail
existence.
Then what is left is pale
watercolors in a shaking hand.
Orbs and nowhere to go.

White Sheet Metal Heat

I guess you’ll just invite yourself in,
Mr. superiority with black eyed, bloodshot, half-crippled

driving severed metal motorcycles with a loaded gun.
A corpse walker with white sheets in America.

Driving till the blood burns to a volcanic metal heat.
You travel with the Sturgis circus

Don’t come near my family, “wise man”
Flask in your hand, 

Crystal Meth bubbling in your head.
Buzzing up bumblebees in your fuzzy dreams, 

swing at the hornet’s nest
and watch the clouds bleed.  

There is no glow for you.

Long grass blades with burnt tips is your energy fuel.

With your solid white sheet, you think you’re a form of king.

Smothering in like funnels obliterating nails 
and shreds of the trailer park
 vacuum up in the flames.  
The pedophile Uncle and his 100-page letters

can’t invent you a new identity.  
They can’t make your potatoes grow. 
And they can’t stalk your women for you full time.  
There’s a burning ball of gas heading your way.

to explode you from rotten to root.
Come on over, Mr. Loaded gun.

See the scars ripping through my skin.

Can you identify me as a fossil that has been eaten- 
from flesh to ghost already?

Bones stripped and my teeth ready to chew.  
I’ve buried rapist like you with the worms.

Crusting off in this white sheet metal heat.

Bravado comes, bravado runs

Bravado comes, bravado runs

Keep the running, bravado when blades chase

Keep the running, ego and greed. It is getting hotter and hotter.

Hide in your hills of dirt, 
ready to strike when the guard is down

I’ve got the battle plan in my head, 
I’ve got the battlefield in the mazes of vessels and neurons

I’ve got the mind and all you have is led and steel, 
swerving mirrors showing a shady fuck!

Drink your medicine for those brain eating “turkey mites”  
with threats and shouts and cuss you outs. 
Swallowing in your drug infected teeth.  
Swallow them down into flakes

into the burning ulcer of your white sheet metal heat.

Your magic wand has left your hand.

Expressway Fade

As loud voices crack in the room of whips.
I have to escape my mind and walk away.
Into the dark, raining or snowing
Shoes or not? 
No physical feeling when the suicides are swirling.

I feel the pain harder 'cause it cuts slower for me.
Rejection sensitivity, empathic.
the ulcers and worries just cause yourself to fade.

I don’t see my reflection anymore on these dark expressways.
Keep on walking with and in my pain.
pray inside for the waves to shave into a stream.
I can swim easier in my vision when the expressway doesn’t fade.


Sinking Prison

I think of life outside
just as chilly and mean
I wonder if there are people
that still remember the
younger me.

Robberies and cowards
overcrowding my feels.
Claustrophobia dancing the 
minutes of sedated thrills.
The pills can’t dissolve the
brain in a sinking prison.

Feeling the floodwaters wrinkle
my feet, the cuts and the
injections never cease. I am
wondering if I could put to
words the voices that scream
to me in this disease.

I can only imagine the trees
outside in full lambada. I can
imagine the touch of love from
another era, that no one
fashions anymore and the
celebrations now are now
brighter and pops!

I would trade my clothes for
the cigarettes and rest. I would
trade my soul for Jesus
beating in my chest.

My heart is made for steel bars
and switchblade threats for a 
little lick of sunshine on a 
follicle of my thinning hair.

Sinking prisons, concrete is
more like barbwire foam.
Years of short circuits and
trampling prisoners to their knees.
We are all in this cave, sinking
And we slowly asphyxiate in
the smoke.

Sinking, sinking prisons
It doesn’t matter your crimes

If you were a magnet or the
hidden star in the sky. You
were found and punished and
become a nameless gazelle.
with a jungle full of hungry
lions on your trail.

17 Fallen Angels

It was a good thing they invented the devil –
on a day that Yahweh was sleeping in the masses of rain
With hissing, conversions, hippy guru cult majesties
the angels begin to fall from the sky to the grass,
the lily pads, the valleys, out of the bars, into the cars
of mouths that drink in their own bibles.

Never to be found, left blind, deaf and touch was no longer a crowning.
Geranium lips. Kisses screwed to mouths, glued in filthy and watch him –
crawl in and out of the light. To knives, rope, tape & a weep from breath
that became a bark, a growl, a demonic quiver. Another angel in the dark.
When will the awakened get off their asses with blades and venom?
And fight out the hushes of the selfish,
the killer’s frail mind, the resonant cutting.

Fallen angels in guillotines being dreamed 
by the assassins and the machines..
they made love to you in the midnight twirling sky. 
Exchanged your evening dressed
for the ripping macabre thread that whips in and 
out of the darkness of eyes and night.
When the devil gets tired and then he forgets he’s just a puny human.
Chairs overturned and speaking in tongues. Foamy and milk. Shaken in silk.

He just knows he’s in love with your memory 
rather than love the hurt of what memories
 were & the love that could have been. 
The reality is that bubble that you choose to not live in
and the bubble he can’t get out. 
They greased him in. The fix was the sin. And the hex was
the insurance. Walk through this glass and nails to save an 18th.

Callie's Dad: Obituary

I found myself an ill mess
sweating all over my bed
switching alarm clocks on and off.
I could swear my heart was
pounding nails in my head
I was all engaged in the world of me.

Well I read somewhere that
Callie’s dad died about 3
Summers ago.
4 Summers since I knew her.
And we had visions of a 
wedding, but July dresses are
much to sticky and itchy.

So I think I remember the man
vaguely, Callie’s Dad.
Met him at a family barbecue.
He seemed drunk and rude. But he shook
my hand and informed me there was still some catfish bites on the grill.

So I remembered your mom,
always answering the door, a
little teary, a little dreary. A 
dirty rooster t-shirt and makeup
many hours worn and hair she
combed flimsy.

I once gave Callie a school ring
and said with this we’ll forever be.
And like a dumb young boy I skipped
home or drove in some out-of-date car
with neurotic loud voices and
shredding guitars. Callie ignored me and kissed
my cheek. And she said  “goodbye” as I was still developing a 
personality designed for her.

Now, with cloudy coffee, a
wasp in the room. I am
thinking of our drive-in movie 
date, and her daddy threatens
her with the tricks that a full 
moon will bring. "All the men
are searching and hunting and
the women are the prey" he says.

He wanted her to always stay.
But she strayed to another.
A blonde combover 27-year-old, Miller Light addict
A town boy with no city, no artistic aspirations.
He could read the hell out of a TV guide.

In her father’s obituary I find 
out he left this Earth with 5
different wives. I am sure the bills
will never end. And Callie surely doesn’t remember me
more than a 2-week boyfriend.  Her and blonde Dennis
have 6 mouths to feed and I’ve got a closet full of magazines
with cracks in the seams.

It Hasn't Rained in Spanish Harlem for about 100 Days

There is a tarantula running rampant through a Baja desert 
with blue moon light.
A crowd of lucifers play the fiddles in Kentucky mud, 
they live for the fight.
Wine is spilling from the lips of the rain – 
and she knows that we all become drunk
while the grain is burning from barn to barn
the glass shatters from traffic jams. 
A watchful crowd of hitchhikers look on stoned.
Lined up on the interstate they just stand while the plague is in full ruin... 
and on each hand.

The sweat of lovers has painted the windows and the heat of passion falls off the buildings and mold the sandy concrete.
A railway with a lawyer walking in a dirty suit. 
He’s dressed up and thinks he defines cute.
He’s bland, full of cocaine and he’s a clumsy sloth...
with lipstick puked on by a prostitute.

Pistols going off and the whole city is afire
Everyone’s flesh is damaged, 
and everyone’s uncle is conspiring
... about the world being a wholesale of tramps 
It has risen enthusiastically while all the coffee has burnt, 

and their biscuits are stewing.
They want the fancy, but the streets want to stain them. 
The world caresses the old with new
visions of death.  Generic black to Generic blue.

Joyous and decorous, the sidewalks seem like a puzzle.
To the bouncing balls and the jump ropes shredding like old bones.
Where are these gunmen coming from? 
I smell their scent, but their fumes are camouflaged.
So we can ask ourselves to meet God and the wisdom tree. 
We ask the foolish to feed the machine. 
We find that fools are nothing more than an ocean without waves.

Look over there everyone is milk white as heartbreak thrives in their chest. They can’t fathom the drought or the dust that simmers instead of treasures. A society of soundless, watching people can be so boring. 
Letting another nerve weaken.
The wheels fall off and your left running unrestrained with no moon light.  A tarantula follows
..and you divided your blood and your might. 
Lethally injected with the fuzz and the haze. 
You have failed to realize that the thirst is real, 
and it hasn’t rained in Spanish Harlem in 
about, a hundred days.

Living a PTSD Scandal in Newport

Well, it must have been a break in the clouds when Dylan plugged in.
Well, your day must have been ruined when Maggie’s Farm was brewing.
Well, you could have got over it and jumped from your sunshine window but didn’t.
When civil rights leaders were being shot, 
you have sung about it but didn’t really change it.
Changing things for the better, 
or did you really just want to stay stagnate.
As Kennedys came and Kennedy’s went, Malcolm X and MLK, John Lennon.  The assassins kept bidding.

Well, now today we have parasitic new kids with assault weapons and wanting quick copycat fame.
Well, we got old men in diapers waving the death of their old glory flag. All torn and weathered.
They are screaming until tears, but not for lost lives.  
Seeming more like a revival of a Third Reich.
They want to keep watching the court dramas of pirates and glamorizing mamas on their flashing 
screens in front of them.
July 24, 1965, January 6, 2021  Some of them can’t figure out which one was worse than the other.

Well, have you ever met George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Breonna Taylor or even Aura Rosser?
Well, probably not…maybe not but you’ve met the abuse of your neighbors.
You’ve met the stalker’s eyes, the wicked smiles with rebel flags. Pretending it’s about pride.
You’ve seen the whimsy stickers, 
the scare tactic flags daring people not to cross them.
Threaten us with the spells of evil in yellow and black and green, 
The Gadsden Flag comes flying 100 mph in some aggressive move-while in a truck to cause 100 collisions.
And they say they know God better than you.


Well, too much bleach drank in the mansions and the motorcycle villages by the stained trailer.
Well, Jeff knows Jim and Jim knows Randy and Randy knows Carol, but does Carol know anyone with darker melanin than hers?  
Has she ever had a real conversation with someone that isn’t exactly
like her?    
She’ll talk about the soldiers that returned home.  
Maybe they have secrets, maybe they just 
don’t want to marry your cousin Tara and not go out on dance night in a cutesy neon glow.
So that her eyes really burn when you don’t introduce yourself in their vision of you.

Well, we’ve got a whole lot full of Americana showing muscle cars like White Horses.
Well, they’ve got the “Southern Charm” and the beers “keep on chuggin”
They converse over Hooters waitresses and decide to body shame a local stripper.
They get all bent out of shape that the gentrification isn’t really helping them.
Just more hipsters to pay wild money to keep a controlled art scene rolling.
Worried about a woman’s right or an all-encompassing freedom. Continually making them feel lesser than them.


Well, they would storm that capitol like a reptile and hoped the bankrupt billionaires would give them a thumbs up and a promise.
Well, they hoped he would release them from their “prisons” and in the end they’d get the virgins.
They would get to cross-over to their Epstein heaven.    
The marigolds just fall to shame being paid to stay silent.
Take your hat off and place your hand on your heart while a burnt-out cocaine mustache sings the national anthem.

Well, they can’t decipher in this world what is a zombie apocalypse from the beauty of real people walking in front of them.
Well, they think that they don’t have that dollar to spare the poor when they’re begging, but they have plenty to spare to funding DeSantis or another cloned failure. 

To be the next television robot president, 
To be the next Hollywood hitman.
Well, I see that the money shortage hasn’t hit the mega churches when it comes to buffet picnic day.
To sneering looks and turning blind eyes to the fast-talking creepers watching the short shorts volleyball  game.

Willingly to spend $30 on a t-shirt that isn’t just for Jesus, but a little for waterslides, BBQ, and maybe to get Lee Greenwood to play a tune.

Well, then we have our small-town boys, driving their new cars and feeling alright playing all the latest rap songs.  
Still they have the American Flag vibrating on their windows.   
Well, all the laughing girls think they can sing like Rihanna, 
but they live for cowboy hats behind the scenes and live for designer jeans.
They think they can say any derogatory word and believe they are being “cool” and not offensive.
They are protected by the police, the lawyers, the daddies, the town, and the money.
Protected by the town’s tradition of 4th of July Fireworks and beauty pageants.   
For some it’s not a celebration it’s a stoning.

Well, let us see how the Cold War, a Civil War and a Vietnam War looks like wrapped in the same Christmas wrapping.
Well, let us see how Uvalde, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Minneapolis, la Drang Valley and Tulsa look in unison.
Well, that is where the world is headed.  
And we become enraged with our starvations.
and just think we cried over a little electricity in Newport.
and just think we cried over an award show tragedy.
and just think we cry over a delay every single day just to move 1 inch in a line.


Well, we are always worrying about political or gang affiliations.
Well, we can’t just put our brains together and try solving this cursed dissolvable nation.
We built this dirt on scars and stolen goods, 
too hard to repurpose the greed.
We just rebuild into new narcissisms.   
We feel we must revolutionize our way from our own suicides.
We still feel that they are coming for our malnourished taste.

Well, will it rain, or will it burn? 
Well, will the cars die, or will the wheels turn?
They say not to worry about the future on “our” borrowed time 
“But please let me control the present with my bleeding idealism”
Please hand me some form of uniform or costume 
so I will know my identity.   

I guess they’ll send out the Mark David Chapmans 
and they’ll send out the mob
they’ll send out the flags, and they’ll send out the dogs
They’ll send out the grim reaper to stick his sickle through 
your upper back.
They’ll come after you with their rights to bring artillery.
Forget Newport and let’s see if we can rust the machinery.
For all of those we can picket out whispers of “do you remember me?”




Bio: David L O'Nan is a poet, short story writer, editor living in Southern Indiana.  He is the editor for the Poetry & Art Anthologies "Fevers of the Mind Poetry and Art. and has also edited & curated other Anthologies including 2 inspired by Leonard Cohen (Avalanches in Poetry & Before I Turn Into Gold) and Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Inspired by Bob Dylan. He runs the www.feversofthemind.com website. A wordpress site that helps promote many poets, musicians, actors/actresses, other writers. He has self-published works under the Fevers of the Mind Press "The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers" "The Cartoon Diaries" & "New Disease Streets" (2020).”Taking Pictures in the Dark” “Our Fears in Tunnels” (2021) a collection of poetry called  "Bending Rivers" a micro poem collection "Lost Reflections" and new book "Before the Bridges Fell" & "His Poetic Last Whispers" (2022)  His latest book is "Cursed Houses" David has had work published in Icefloe Press, Dark Marrow, Truly U, 3 Moon Magazine, Elephants Never, Royal Rose Magazine, Spillwords, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cajun Mutt Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Voices From the Fire among several other litmags. He doesn’t enjoy the process of submitting constantly, however. Twitter is @davidLONan1 @feversof for all things Fevers of the Mind.    Join Facebook Group: Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Arts Group .   

A Super Deluxe Poetry Showcase from David L O’Nan (from several books pt 1)