Memory Flames
(after Chelsea Hotel #2, and other songs by Leonard Cohen)
If you remember the Sixties
you were not there, some bore said
later, at a clever dinner.
The Sixties, yeah.
We were there
and we remember it well.
I went down on you
while the limousines still waited
and the afternoon light
fell, slatted gold
on our emboldened bodies.
Now that we are both
passed
I think of you more often.
And you, Suzanne.
And Marianne.
You are all hot flames to me still.
And your light still gets in.
And not one of us is mentally aching now.
Or ill.
Bio: Ivor Daniel lives in Gloucestershire, UK. His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope, wildfire words, Steel Jackdaw, Writeresque, iamb~wave seven, Fevers of the Mind, The
Trawler, Roi Fainéant, Ice Floe Press and The Dawntreader,
After..., Re-Side, Alien Buddha, The Orchard Lea Anthology (Cancer) and The Crump’s Barn
Anthology (Halloween). .
@IvorDaniel
art photo sent by Pasithea Chan for writing prompt
Untitled by Mo Schoenfeld
memory, dry, cracked.
silent shivering, slick streets,
puddles like mirage.
Twitter @MoSchoenfeld
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Mo SchoenfeldPromenade by James Penha
The rain drizzles like paint on a canvas
but I am safe under cover of night when
lamplit colors melt this great city I own
on my way.
Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him🌈) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry. Twitter: @JamesPenha
Light by Ivor Daniel
(And then the lighting of the lamps. T S Eliot - Prelude).
We shall overcome. (Pete Seeger et al)And then the lighting of the lamps
And then the lighting of the
And then the lighting
And then the
And then
AndWe
We shall
We shall overcome
We shall overcome, some
We shall overcome, some day
WE SHALL OVERCOME, SOME DAY
WE SHALL OVERCOME, SOME DAY
WE SHALL OVERCOME, SOME DAY
#SLAVA UKRAINIA Poetry Showcase for Ivor Daniel *Updated 9/23/22* with Plath haikuA Painter's Umbrella by Pasithea ChanI set my canvas in swirly wrinkles
hoping my brush makes ripples
in my lover's heart for all onlookers
etching my pain in colorful grain
to relieve longing's strain & stay sane.
I'm neither a cane for her to lean on nor a window pane
to entertain an agonized soul sedating his pain.
I am an umbrella held for shelter from weather.
Never a stage for soulful blues under red hues.
To me you are both the same:
hiding your agony in a canvas colorfully
as she hides under me indifferently.
All I have is a love story that's now a memory
captured in a silhouette of her figure.
Blue is all the affection left behind love's rapture.
I am a picture hanging on by a fixture
trying to mend my heart's fracture.
Like rain's pitter patter hearts often scatter
taking apart lives that were once together.
Take it from me, there's no warmth in being of use.
Sometimes the end can be your muse
even when your hues become forgotten clues.
Pain is my eye and hope my sky
Blue is my welcome made to qualm
A broken heart looking for a fresh start
Raindrops my fingertips turning colorful drips
into benches to sit through a goodbye.
Author's Notes:
The piece is inspired by Alexander Bolotov's painting of a girl walking holding an umbrella under the rain fading into the blue evening sky and red street lamps. The poem is an imaginary conversation between a painter and an umbrella he painted.
when flies walk upon my forearm hairs
proprietorial as landlords
and the land is ripe with roadkill
extreme weather scenarios
play out in real time
climate diplomats gather
but the plenary is beached -
delegates cloyed
as wasps in coulis
we sit around
the water table
with an ashen thirst
everybody wants to make a move
but no one does
like watching the bleaching of coral
the only thing agreed on
is that all this is unprecedented
unprecedented rainfall here
unprecedented temperatures there
unprecedented use of the word unprecedented everywhere
in high summer
the deluge
the canicule
the conflagration
ants grow fat
grow wings
buzz my ears
we pick at
the brittle wishbone
of consensus
wait for crows
locusts
to draw down the dusk
with a dry calling
We Are Green
One winter’s day
through condensation windows
I mistook a withered gunnera leaf
for a heron’s wing.
Imagined the bird
coiled, primal,
waiting at the water.
Months later,
in the veiled sphere
under a summer gunnera plant,
I imagined myself
small,
deep in zoological realms
below explosions
of virid strong-stemmed leaves
as wide as the sky,
blush flower spikes
pushing up and through.
Today
in seasons of indeterminate grey
when squirrels
do not know
which page
of the nut calendar
we are on,
it is the verdure
I return to.
I daydream of a kinder world.
Daylight and rainfall
elect a parliament of plants.
An upper house of trees.
We are green,
enfranchised.
XY (No Means No)
X.
Doctor Foster
went to Gloucester
in a shower of rain.
Fred and Rose
they quit town
but left a nasty stain.
That’s Fred West -
more than a sex pest.
Did unspeakable things
in his dirty vest.
Y.
Cycling past
the rape seed fields
brings it all back.
The yellow so vivid,
you lying on your back.
The yellow, the horror,
you want to be home,
but find yourself
involuntary, prone.
He seemed ok at first,
he said he’d drop you back.
The stony ground remains
no aphrodisiac.
You shut your eyes
your demon’s back,
slow, stupid in the sack.
And No Means No
involuntary
lying on your back.
Choose Your Own Mother(for Rhianydd Daniel)
I have heard it said
the yet unborn
can choose their parents.
A strange idea, this.
Although we live in times
when nothing is
beyond belief.
If it is true..
If it is true,
I ask myself
the reason
I chose you.
Indecisive as I am,
and daresay was
before my birth,
there is a scenario
in which I am at peace.
Wherein, unborn,
I somehow hear
your singing voice.
And from that time
I have no choice.
sand in your blood
I remember when
you scraped your leg on coral..
a rose rust bloomed raw
under your skin..the
sea was a blister the moon
was a bruise.. all night
your fever rose and
fell..lava tides licked feral
flames..sand in your blood
Ad Astra Zee
I am waiting for my blood
to clot. Broad beans
block green veins,
velvet furred.
I am ripe
for it.
One day my feet
will be corms,
shoehorned
in stony ground.
My soles are up
for it.
Hey Astra Zee!
I want my
second dose
already.
I am weary
of this solid flesh
my veins
so unimpeded.
Bring on the levelling dark.
I am ready, pale horse
for your clip-clop.
For blood clots.
Bolt, beauteous breathlessness!
Bolt, cramping throbbing pain
stampeded!
the paranoia shop
sells mini cctv
for the home or handbag
sells cctv any size you need
hard-sells hard knuckle dusters
and knives all shapes and sizes
beyond imagination
for your perfect tribulation
they say carrying a knife
puts you more at risk of a stabbing
but the stab-proof vests are on offer today
see the cute hand guns
to fit your hand just so
the paranoia shop
nestled between Gaultier and Kenzo
I love to window shop there
It makes me feel so safe
worm haiku
exit wounds out of
apples, soldiers, the worm out
of one the bullet
Perfect Bed
I dream I am at Bembom Brothers
Dreamland funfair park
with Tracey Emin.
Hard by Margate sands.
I know I shouldn’t drink that Vodka
on the Helter Skelter.
Apart from that,
a Day as Perfect as the Lou Reed song.
We Kiss with Fish and Chips Lips,
Join Hips. A Turner Sunset
Going Down.
I guess it is the Golden Hour.
Blair’s Babes
and even some of his men MP’s
are busy Changing a whole heap of things
for the Better.
Back in your room
we remember that
we even Changed the Bed this morning.
The linen soft and cool next to our Optimistic skin.
(This poem has previously appeared online in iamb-wave seven)
Going back
I went back, and it looked the same.
I was not expecting that.
Expected the usual rash of
New Builds, creeping up the hill.
I went back, thinking
it would all look smaller, like
when I came back from America
aged 19, and it seemed like the train
home had shrunk
in a B movie.
I went back
looking for what?
The muddy lane where
we skidded our scooters?
The neighbour’s garden gnome
one of us pushed in his pond?
The Fish Caves, where we played
explorers? Journey to the Centre of the Earth,
or at least
some way in
to that disused tin mine.
I went back, not to look for
my Dad, just some of the places
he used to take us.
Halfway between morbid
and curious.
I went back to the old conker trees
and the scraped knees. To the
broken fence on Bishop’s Wood Road,
where it said No Trespassing
but my Dad said we’d be alright.
I went back to the old quarry
with the pond we thought was a lake.
I’m channeling a half-
remembered sense of comfort,
danger. Somewhere between
Teddy Bears and Teddy Boys.
I went back to stacking
boxes of seaside rock
at Woolworths.
Each stick had writing all the way through,
persistent as memory.
From up on the hill
you can see it all.
The only thing different
is wind turbines out at sea,
turning like time.
I remember a school master who left.
All of a sudden. The smell
of that old classroom
at the end of the dark
corridor. Scuffed floor wax.
Thanks Sylvia for the Sylvia Plath/Anne Sexton Challenge
You married Ted, slapped
cobweb faced British poetry,
long overdue
Bio: Ivor Daniel lives in Gloucestershire, UK. His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope,
wildfire words, Steel Jackdaw, Writeresque, iamb~wave seven, Fevers of the Mind, The
Trawler, Roi Fainéant, Ice Floe Press and The Dawntreader. He has poems forthcoming in
After..., Re-Side, Alien Buddha, The Orchard Lea Anthology (Cancer) and The Crump’s Barn
Anthology (Halloween). .
@IvorDaniel
Hazel Willett grew up between country and town before the Carmi, Illinois roads. A right red arrow sign points “Corn Seeds and Corn Sold here”, the left black arrow sign on the other side says “The House of Prayer” all you see are fields. Where are these places?
Well Hazel got married a few times to Ol’ Red, Ol’ Roy, and Dwight the drunk. She had a few kids, a few odd girls and a couple of country punks. She had one son the cook, Willie Buck and one son that knew how to crook ‘Lil Clyde. Together them boys could steal some hearts, skinny dipping like frogs out in the pond while mean ass Dwight drove around drunk mowing a mess of crops with his rusty red tractor.
A few years in the boys got through school or left before the final bell tolled and enlisted into the Air Force. They learned the game, got married and got a divorce to two Lindas 2 weeks before they left off to their first mission.
Well Linda Jean and Linda Darlene moved on quickly and got hitched up with the Grawlikee twins. Sean and Shoney Grawlikee. The best metal head country loving boys with the coolest motorcycles and the coolest 8 track system playing the Allman Brothers Band until the birds fell from the sky to their death from the Ramblin’ sounds.
Well back to Willie Buck, known for his cooking the best Scrambled egg chili and blood red puddings, but Clyde felt lonely out there near the Philippines. They began to hear about the rumbles of the wars in countries nearby. Clyde fell in love with a girl from Manila. They talked about babies, farming and building a home back near his mom. Well this girl didn’t feel quite the same for Clyde. She didn’t fully like his idea. She said “no, no, no red tractor, I’ll stay here” then he saw her walk away to another man about a mile away at the corner store. The man was wearing shades and smoking nearly 2 packs at once. It was Clyde’s enemy in the Force. Jimmy Wesley, the self proclaimed loverboy who could convince any women that walked by that he was quite the investor. “One day baby! It’ll be me and you in a big mansion and we’d have all the horses you want”
Well, Clyde got mad. Escaped away. Beat up a greaser style man on the dirt road. Clyde stole his coat and his car and made a skip-hop-and a jump to the nearest Aeroplane. He made it home back into mama Hazel’s arms and her ripe red flowery moo-moo dress.
Hazel said “Welcome home baby, Daddy Dwight is missing…or maybe the ass is in jail… I tell you what Clyde, find you a gal down at Birdie Brown’s bar, marry her up and you can have Dwight’s farm since I’m down for the count and falling more ill everyday damn it!”
She took a silent breath of wretched smoke straight into Clyde’s ear and whispered “You can save up and get you the newest red tractor on the market”
Clyde got giddy and got him a factory job and began singing Buck Owen’s tunes to hippies in the bar that were stoned and tipped him torn dollar bills. One of those Friday nights he saw Marie Smith, a childhood enemy who know was smoking about 2 packs at once and dancing around. They got to talking and next thing you know they were dancing to “Summer in the City” he said “baby, all this scotch has gotten you looking so pretty”…”and it would be an honor if you come to my horse farm estate and become my wife” Well she thought Clyde was full of gold…but he just sold her a pack of lies with wandering eyes.
The couple got married on a rainy El Dorado night. The slick haired preacher got them all wedded and ready to go. 2 weeks later she is looking outside. Clyde is outside yelling “Baby! look at my new ride” Hell…it was the best red tractor around.
4 years later, 6 kids yelling, and a deadbeat neighbor who keeps inviting Marie over for a weed break and a jean shorts photo session. Clyde is walking around, hands in pocket, brass knuckles and a lucky rabbit’s foot in his clutch. Instead of fighting his neighbor Kenny for a lost cause he kept walking up that hill and sat by Mama’s stone. He talked for about an hour and said sorry Mama…I just wasn’t as successful as you wanted me to be.
A few minutes later his brother Willie Buck pulls up with his famous Dr. Thunder Cherry Pie and his family of five. He says “Hey Clyde it’s going to be a great Christmas ain’t it?” Well before Clyde could answer in shame, Willie Buck pulls out a check and says here’s 50 bucks…buddy it’s time to tow away that motherfucking red tractor!”
Clyde begins to hitch the roads and hopes to hit Hollywood to stalk Dolly Parton.
The Red Tractor Micropiece from Spriha Kant
The Red Tractor
stands polished
excited to assist
his driver’s nominee
in plowing the fields
(c)Spriha Kant
Small town Whitley City, Ky from Marilee Poppins (Lena Saunders)
Review of Before the Bridges Fell by David L O’Nan. Ivor Daniel
A poem is a bridge built of words and hope.
Before the Bridges Fell takes us to many poems, many bridges. We cross from nightmare to
light and sometimes back. To a mindscape where a bridge is a crossing, and simultaneously
something to suicide jump off. Bridges across to the murky hopeful past of literature and
lived experience. And to the tawdry here and now.
In these dubious times of ours we read to escape, but not always into beauty. The
characters in these poems navigate scripts not fully written, open to doubt and danger. The
improvisation of their daily lives is hitchhike-ride scary. And these poems nail the truth that
without that risk, we would not journey, would not create.
O’Nan has ‘seen the ruin’, and has kept on living, kept on writing. The poet has witnessed
humanity ‘Driving erratically and uncaring of a permanent damage’, on
‘freeways full of a new rage blinding -
From metastatic stars on American car plates….
An embolism on a prairie field’.
And further on up the highway, in another poem,
‘you can feel a little rot. When the curves of the road are at your throat’.
O’Nan has seen the banal and the ugly side, and captured it like Hunter S Thompson and
Ralph Steadman captured it, and thankfully for us he has kept on going until we can…
‘Watch the cities become countryside.
And watch humanity float
Off these infertile grounds’.
In these poems there are precious moments when, as in our lives today, we are brought up
short marvelling at moments of beauty (conventional or otherwise) amongst the horror and
the drab;
‘We were cut from the Jerusalem sun.
The pile of rags in the oils of the sand’.
And there are glimpses of nature shining through;
‘The birds digest our mayhem
to the streets’.
And sometimes, there is peace and contemplation…
‘Let me sit another night and feel my completion through a pond full of stars’.
But overall it is the unresolved angst of Americana, of humanity, that bubbles up through the
sand in these poems, where …
‘lives are just scars
to look at in our corners of a heaven.
We continued gunning down true leaders.
We took the beauty from our land’.
O’Nan is prolific and well-read, and up front about his influences. He has one of his
characters
‘hunting Bukowskis down with bottle cap bitten
teeth’.
In his Acknowledgements O’Nan describes himself as ‘an editor for humans all over the
world’ and goes on to say that ‘the worldwide writing and reading community is the always
fascinating...beating heart of the world’. This community is indebted to David L O’Nan for
these pertinent and powerful contemporary poems. And for all the energy he puts into
boosting other poets, and helping that ‘beating heart’ beat.
All the poems in Before the Bridges Fell
‘weave in the beauty and the
broken’.
This is where we live, between the beauty and the broken. As we navigate the storms and
fevers of the mind, the need to live between the dreams, ‘to brush the teeth, comb the hair’.
To see our deal with society through. This book will help us do that.
A poem is a bridge built of words and hope.
Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.The return & revised version of “New Disease Streets” by David L O’Nan Poetry and storiesPoetry from David L O’Nan in the Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and WhispersAvailable Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey WrenHard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!
Reviewer bio: Ivor Daniel lives in Gloucestershire, UK. His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope, wildfire words, Steel Jackdaw, Writeresque, iamb~wave seven, Fevers of the Mind, The Trawler, Roi Fainéant, Ice Floe Press and The Dawntreader. He has poems forthcoming in After..., Re-Side, Alien Buddha, The Orchard Lea Anthology (Cancer) and The Crump’s Barn Anthology (Halloween). . @IvorDaniel
Fevers of the Mind 