Issue 12 of Fevers of the Mind Poetry, Art & Music celebrates several great poetry pieces from Fevers of the Mind over the last few years as well as some new material. Contributors include David L O'Nan, HilLesha O'Nan, M.S. Evans, Scott Thomas Outlar, Anne Paulet (Scripta 21), Angela Kosta, Rachel Coventry, Jimmy Webb, Lorna Wood, Pasithea Chan, Anushna Biswas, Owen Bullock, Robin McNamara, David Hay, Nina Parmenter, Steve Denehan, Cat Dixon, Victoria Leigh Bennett, Maxine Rose Munro, Petar Penda, Kevin Hibshman, Shobana Gomes, Gayle J. Greenlea, Oz Hardwick, Stephen Kingsnorth, Vicky Allen, Matthew Freeman, Barney Ashton-Bullock, Kathryn Anna Marshall, Tuur Verheyde, Anna Rozwadowska, Hiram Larew, Marie Little, Rickey Rivers Jr, Gordon Lewis, Colin Dardis, Karlo Sevilla, Michael Igoe, Sarika Jaswani, Kushal Poddar, Christina Strigas, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, John Grey, Renee Williams, Peach Delphine, Stephen Watt, Jennifer Patino, Katrina Kaye, Paula Hayes, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Tianna Godsey, Elizabeth Cusack, Khadeja Ali, Charlotte Oliver & Samantha Terrell
All of these poems can be found in Fevers of the Mind Issue 11: The Lone Road with my revised book “Taking Pictures in the Dark” within
Bio: David L O’Nan is a Midwest poet, editor and founder of Fevers of the Mind (www.feversofthemind.com) he has been nominated for Best of the Net numerous times. He’s had several books and revised books. He has edited and curated Fevers of the Mind Anthologies including Fevers of the Mind Poetry, Art & Music Digest, Bare Bones Writing, On the Highways with Many Miles…to Go! (inspired by Kerouac, Miles Davis, Townes Van Zandt), Waltzin’ Through Rusty Cages (inspired by Elliott Smith & Chris Cornell), The Whiskey Mule Diner (inspired by Tom Waits), Hard Rain Poetry (inspired by Bob Dylan), 3 Leonard Cohen anthologies (soon)(Before I Turn Into Gold & Avalanches in Poetry), The Poetica Sisterhood of Sylvia & Anne (inspired By Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton), Truth, Lies, Blasphemy & Disorder (inspired by Joy Division, New Order & Depeche Mode), The Chelsea Underground (inspired by Andy Warhol & the Factory, The Starman Oddity (inspired by David Bowie) He has been published in Poetry Life & Times, The IceFloe Press, Headline Poetry & Press, Spillwords, Cajun Mutt, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Ghost City Press, Grains of Sand, Punk Noir Magazine, Rhythm n Bones, The Poetry Question, The Wombwell Rainbow and more. He will be reading this Summer in Louisville’s Insomniacathon. He has also edited the debut novel from New York City Poet Lennon Stravato “The Inner Dialect” and the poetry/prose collection “Werifesteria” from co-editor HilLesha O’Nan
These revised poems are included in Issue 11 of Fevers of the Mind Poetry, Art & Music: The Lone Road
In spurious cherry boots And a tramp will walk In the overflow of leather piercing the skin. Imagine if that were you You used to be so smart
We used to be so proud Living in the bubble of your thoughts The door slams, The boots hit the wooden floor And you sit and rot by your demure reflection.
Disguised vanity with a glass of wine in hand You forgot to hew away the depression And put on the heartbreaking smile You walk into work with the wine in your hand For 4 hours straight you talk about your divorce. And how cheap your boots were. As you flaunt them for attention.
So now you're shopping for an easy man. Like bars are stores for your eyes And the free drinks are your voyage To rent-a-man for a night of temptations You don’t seek that love anymore. Only desires that freak away the burns from feeling mellow.
You begin to wonder if you could trip all the way - To the tip of mania. We all begin to wonder Lipstick smear across the mirrors of white Hurricanes swirling around inside your brain A wonderful cloud of sewn thoughts Pull the threads and see if there is substance left.
With the boots beginning to tear Barefoot and scraping against the road To whatever Wherever, this road leads to You were never you, And you are still searching to find If you can be you To feel true, The halos of shadows Merging in with the vanishing woman. And leaves a voice to hear by all of us paintings.
SHAME IS A HIDDEN KNIFE DRAWER BY DAVID L O’NAN
For many years Sweat and my blood. Like an anger Trying to needlepoint these seas. To a perfection The perfect comfort, Like fabric All the deception that bubbles under Keeps the stones tossing in my head. Hide me away, Like scared oysters. In shame.
Those knives do leave scars. If they don’t shed me for good.
About 2 Souls by David L O’Nan
Attaching 2 souls together, with this thread. Pulling our hearts together. Let’s cry and live as one. The beautiful and the damned. A curse or a cross. Mind puppets that want the control, to applaud or fraud. They will continue to crush. Their hands are too slimy. Stuck together in a unison prayer. You, beautiful and natural are the secret to my sanity. I drink purity from your soul, And I can feel like a human again. A loving, warm human. To touch your eyelids and kiss your forehead. As soft, As skin like silk. Sends goosebumps through me. Eternally you are with me. Your smile is my present. I will hold your love in my heart and not fail. For once I will not fail. Your soul will not let me fail.
The Courage Rhapsody (for my father) by David L O’Nan who passed away from ALS on 12/25/2016
Silence A cold breath mantra Holidays voided by the entrapment of the body. Can’t escape the seizing. The brittle bites My bones palpitate. Lost my nerves, And the Winter took my shield. My energy, my guiding hand, My memories I can only feel within my dream fog. In my mind, I still have that. I still have my love. Through all the night sweats, Reminiscing when I was a stronger man, A man with bravery, Or the façade of A man who could fight. Through the fires with the strength of tangled jungle wires. I was easily scared, but nobody knew. Because it was safer to hide a heart of scars Inside this chest, I gave my soul to be caressed by the hope that is God’s Word. Now I am a man, Not just your past But your future and in your cognizance. Remember me as a man, a father, And your laughter and protector of tears. We will not struggle with the tugging of life’s heavy rock We will lift it high, with our drums pounding. Triumphant. Staring into black eyes.
She’s a Roadkill Jezebel by David L O’Nan
I used to make apologies for my unnerving shy glances. ‘Til the winter rivers rage became frozen.
I said “Sorry for Loving You.” I said “Sorry for travelling like a crashing car into your heart.”
Startled you when you were checking for answers, hiding behind the newspaper. I was clueless and young; you were clueless and young.
I had to hide behind this joker. When at night I summoned the moon’s tide to move me to your arms.
I risked all the carvings and heartbreaks. For you in jangling jezebel jewelry I waited in sacrificial tears for you in a prayer. As I became a paste of roadkill in your mind, parasitic and left to suffocate.
The sun comes up, and you just drive by me. Moving on, sunshine, moving on.
A World Cries by David L O’Nan
A whole world in my hand, convening Captured the gypsies, erased all the blue Tilt into the sound of the calming breeze. Hearing whispers of change, in the shells. Mother nature is in flames, the buzz. Birds swoop down on garden worms. Old men still lifeless in rocking chairs, in heat. Lips kissing the bottle, the poison diminishes some. The air moistens our skin, our pain. Golden breath of the sky emitting a smokey sunset, A stir of cigarette and factory smoke in the swirling. My hands shaking. Afraid to drop the world already in decomposition. Yell peace in megaphones, still no echoes. Yell blood in unity, the war is our lie. Eyes of dark clouds follow the families. The loves that are clueless, fighting for dirt or gagging on the mud. Squeezing away our minds. We just are trying to survive an extinct world.
The Pheromone Room by David L O’Nan
There were many men with ponytails and Tank-tops at her funeral Some of them with Cocaine fingernails
She lived in and out of the Pheromone rooms All of the gigolos And all of the beer-bellies Mustachioed lotharios And trashy wholesale doctors
They wanted her smile To be only for them But she was his And they also, were not alone Afraid to be alone back home with the stranger And her cemetery complexions
All were wild and bouncy And in shame Once the buzz wears thin But she made them forget the digging graves With her fancy hellos While they were just a wrong decision Away from jail-bars She could always go home
But once home was their loneliness Maybe, he and his goat beard Made her hide inside Reading to herself, crying While he is out with the girls on the boat
He wasn’t there once she got sick He was under the roofs of neon lights And dancing faeries Dollars falling from the holes in his pants pockets
And then she was gone Hung down like a prized ornament Blame that on the moon, Maybe blame it on the town Maybe blame it on some twisted shit In the veins of motion Circling around the pheromone room.
Holy Shelters by David L O’Nan
The devil is a car dealer. That sells lizards with broken crankshafts All the witnesses gather around the cemetery yards And they saw, what was an eagle is now just - Feathers piling over Michealangelo’s the Prophet Jeremiah
And we hunt, Through the prisons Cutting our feet on chipped rocks We smell in the fresh bread bakeries We discovered the mischievous smile of that greedy dancing devil And we still couldn’t find the symbol of supposed freedom Lord, bring me the chalice to sacrifice my violence, For just pennies on the prayer All of my old bots, my tin pan alley tunes And my displacement in this realm.
My death from Holy Shelters Stuck dollars in your snakeskin wallet I want the feeling that is real Drop the chains from my wrists to the ground To unite in fists As they attempt a reformation of the eagle.
Is it too late?
I am bending, slithering, shadows hiding under a cool rock. I am paralyzed to your stare Sensing the breath that sticks to a wind whipped leaf Through the Jacobson’s organ with fangs to the crest I feel the devil stole me away.
And now I’m on a car lot Prostituting out sticky tongue serpents With broken crankshafts.
Cassavetes by David L O’Nan
I once lived in a canyon As a starved mannequin I felt nude As my clothes melted into my plastic skeleton You will not feel my shakes As I’m a mute to you, But, inside I’m an Earthquake.
I will not revisit the canyon. Now that I’ve found Gold in superiority God smiling over our field of life And you can go back - To wearing your dirty stained robes Asleep in your coalmine chambers Your Cassavetes movies on repeat On a television screen Green with cobwebs whipping
You will awake in thorns The prickling stabbing will leave you to - Moments of incompletion. I once lived in a heartbreak, As a drowning boat To the last breath of the lively sea.
I was teased by hearsay I was dressed up in other’s garments Whom were in the “more impressive” crowds I was a hipster on a day to be a gentleman I was a gentleman at the party, When you are supposed to scream for passion. I was an ocean that had no life formations I was only water Salt was a stranger You want to live in a duel Parading town as the social clown You dream when it’s convenient Your nightmares shape your eyes - To a sunken black tombstone.
Good luck impressing the Kings and Queens With your coffee-stained Santa beard. However, you’ll never know if they will applaud Once you create a dynasty out of your cheap imitations. A lollipop for the mob.
Sure, you can impress By making grenades out of seashells But, can you pull the needles from your chest - When you’re robbed from all that you’ve loved.
I once polluted this Earth with a squalor empire Spilling drips and drops of toxins Over a circular sun Well, I was told by God himself That you should learn to run Run away from the burns and scum That follow you into a shun.
Are you following me?
Always and always will Always is the word that means eternal.
Even when hidden below the mountains, And you’re the forgotten mister. The old cracking skin, Picking lines from the bible and tattooing them on your brain. To recite to all shabby crocodile hearts - That walk by pounding on that narcissism drum.
You call for peace When the world explodes in sin.
And where are you?
Still watching Cassavetes films On your broken waterbed.
The Third Poetry, Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology from Fevers of the Mind Press! The first edition “Avalanches in Poetry” was released in 2019. In 2022 “Before I Turn Into Gold” (Avalanches in Poetry II) was released. With more artwork from Geoffrey Wren and listed below are several contributors through writing, photography & art.
In 2016 the world was changing. We lost legends. The world began to scramble, and 5 plus years later, we are still in disarray. Politics, Pandemics, a loss of passion. Anger, Depression, the unknown.
We are still writing. We are still painting. We are still artists.
Just listen to Leonard Cohen for a few moments. Read the truths that he wrote and sung about in metaphor and imagery.
For a few moments we can regain passion enough to feel inspired as he has the writers and artists featured in this second anthology in honor of Leonard Cohen.
Contributors include: Geoffrey Wren, David L O’Nan, HilLesha O’Nan, Lindsay Soberano-Wilson, Robert Frede Kenter, Davis Varghese, John Donley, D.C. Nobes, Elizabeth Cusack, Tom Harding, Tom Driscoll, Lennon Stravato, Peter Hague, Helen Lurye, B.A. O’Connell, Christopher Martin, Greg Fanning, Roger Carter, wv sutra, Elaine Beckett, D Rudd-Mitchell, Kushal Poddar, Jessica Coles, Amelie L Peterson, Dianne L Knox, Susan Lavender, Elaine Webster, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, D.L. Lang, James Walton, Joan Enoch M.D., Myrtle Thomas, Walden Quinn Caesar, Jason Lee, Clarissa Cervantes, Ellyn Maybe, Allan Lake, Rob Plath, Eliot Katz, Lynn White, Andrea Lambert, Jan Sargeant, Evelyn (Eve) Hall, Paula Hayes
David L O’Nan is a Midwest poet, editor and founder of Fevers of the Mind (www.feversofthemind.com) he has been nominated for Best of the Net numerous times. He’s had several books and revised books. He has edited and curated Fevers of the Mind Anthologies including Fevers of the Mind Poetry, Art & Music Digest, Bare Bones Writing, On the Highways with Many Miles…to Go! (inspired by Kerouac, Miles Davis, Townes Van Zandt), Waltzin’ Through Rusty Cages (inspired by Elliott Smith & Chris Cornell), The Whiskey Mule Diner (inspired by Tom Waits), Hard Rain Poetry (inspired by Bob Dylan), 3 Leonard Cohen anthologies (soon)(Before I Turn Into Gold & Avalanches in Poetry), The Poetica Sisterhood of Sylvia & Anne (inspired By Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton), Truth, Lies, Blasphemy & Disorder (inspired by Joy Division, New Order & Depeche Mode), The Chelsea Underground (inspired by Andy Warhol & the Factory, The Starman Oddity (inspired by David Bowie) He has been published in Poetry Life & Times, The IceFloe Press, Headline Poetry & Press, Spillwords, Cajun Mutt, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Ghost City Press, Grains of Sand, Punk Noir Magazine, Rhythm n Bones, The Poetry Question, The Wombwell Rainbow and more. He will be reading this Summer in Louisville’s Insomniacathon. He has also edited the debut novel from New York City Poet Lennon Stravato “The Inner Dialect” and the poetry/prose collection “Werifesteria” from co-editor HilLesha O’Nan
These revised poems are included in Issue 11 of Fevers of the Mind Poetry, Art & Music: The Lone Road
Come one, come all. To the nuisance ball. The men are climbing up and down the walls. Trying to find the women to return their calls. They shed their skin. They shed their horns. No longer a beast or devil to be sworn against- and frowned upon They are eager for their lord. A sinful youth chants. And voodoo spells have paved their roads. Clinging on to last year’s hopes. The men lost their women because they felt more. More for the drug of lust. Thinking it was true love. Only pulled tighter…the ropes. Began to feel sorrow…pain. And tears that impaled skin. The challenge now has become who is the seeker – And who is being seeked? The deities are in laughter in grandiosity. Pointing at the desperate man, the laziness. Where are the women? Are they lost? Are they hidden? They have walked away from the dread, the nonsense. Well, there is a place and time to be unique. Now is not the time. There are other treasures to seek. Like trust. The last word. The felt word. There was a time you were that word. You cannot be trusted anymore. A soul that dripped as you walked out of the door. That’s what became of you. Much like these men whom have yet to leave the womb. The women were there. To bring the touch, the love. They left them shaking as if nothing meant much. Until it was too late. Victorious in ugliness. Everything now. Quiet as the music muffles to powder. Balloons popping over the dead piano. At the nuisance ball.
Slime Pennies
War heroes picking imperfect flowers - for bony ladies. Barenaked treetops as lively – As a parade in February.
Old men taking walks. Trying to count the barrels of bourbon bouncing – Down the hills.
Visions becoming tricky. Life isn’t always easy. Hissing, cracklings from the lakefront.
Buried our treasures of memories – In the blink of a heart attack. Deafness as loud as flashing siren lights. Shadows as silent as a tip toeing child – About to ruin a new morning. A morning that has yet to be determined as realistic.
All your monsters are trading dream scenarios – Over your bedroom ceiling. Laughs bounce from the lifting ground. Laughter pressing against your mouth. Grinding your teeth, Like the pennies hitting the concrete grates.
Chamber echoes, the parks filling up with hate groups. The tunnels of demons begin to crawl through that slime. The need for the energy is ripe, so politically charged. Bloodthirsty from fiery grips. A young soldier passes by. Escaping the wrath of this gravity. The magnetic fields are losing the tight adhesive on his world.
Rain begins to fall. Bullets birthed out of the clouds. The ground still full of smoke in the floodwaters. Anger, sludge and mud. The aggressive need for violence they yelp! Prisms explode from one side of the sky to the other side in declaration. To destroy the impersonating of Jesus.
Wannabes with their brains filled with jam. Rainbows that used to be sacred and worshiped. Are now just dust in his hands. Fishing down in a puddle is one of the old men. He appears to have caught a dollar bill. Crumpled up and soiled. His hands now infected by stigmata. Can a new calendar day be the salvaging freedom – We need to rectify this malnutrition that pounds our soil, That boils in our lungs. Asleep in the choking hands of a puppet master. We have the choice to not buy his greed. He’s a cult of one truly. Slime pennies, purple & green, grey & mutated.
Fevers of the Mind Issue 11 features photography & artwork from Margaret Viboolsittiseri (Maggs Vibo) including the Cover Art “Lone Road to Moloka’i” which includes a small selection of poems prompted from the photo, This issue also includes a revised version of David L O’Nan’s collection “Taking Pictures in the Dark” a small manuscript “New York City During the Fall of Saigon, April 1975” from Michael Igoe, Contributors include: David L O’Nan, HilLesha O’Nan, Maggs Vibo, Elizabeth Cusack, Michael Igoe, Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen, Robin McNamara, Spriha Kant, Lesley Curwen, Constance Bacchus, Helen Openshaw, Sadie Maskery, Lee Potts, Ivan Peledov, James Diaz, John Grey, Amrita Valan, Donna Dallas, Merritt Waldon, Will Schmit, Linda M. Crate, John Kelly, Keith Suddrey, Walden Quinn Caesar, Patricia Walsh, Christian Ward, Jonathan Butcher, Victoria Leigh Bennett, Mark McConville, Jayanta Bhaumik, Abel Johnson Thundil, Maid Čorbić , Annest Gwilym, Giulio Magrini, Patricia M Osborne, Catherine Graham, Jeremy Limn, A.R. Williams, James Schwartz, Sana Tamreen Mohammed, Petar Penda, Chris Dean
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