They shoot me up with
druggie fixes; the black
dawn itching to shock.
Boy, where have you
gone? I feel the static
of your spirit, but I
can't reach out and
touch it. Those are
gone with the sticky
rice he made me before
he zapped, snapped, and
capped me. tobacco wasps
burn and yearn; my one
supper in this plastic lie. If
only to be better, might I.
I, Libertine
Red Camellia
Did you die by the rope,
or was it fate?
Neither a root nor stem, it was
always up to them to supply a solution
to your problem of ten.
Cinnamon rust on the fetid paper
where your eulogy was spilled,
little could be done about
the flickering lights, the cracked coffin,
or the broken-down hearse.
I asked the priest for a grass cutter, but
all he had was a silver spoon.
A useless weapon, for your heart was
ground into livestock, and
the plant that swaddled you bore
a red camellia; a talking head
who played chess with the dead.
A game that never ends,
naked; afraid of what comes next.
Author Bio: Courtenay Schembri Gray is a writer from the North of England. She is 1/4 Maltese, and happened to find herself hit by a car when she was eleven. You’ll find her work in an array of journals such as A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Misery Tourism, Expat Press, Rejection Letters, Hobart, Bath Flash Fiction, and many more. She will often post on her blog: www.courtenayscorner.com
Twitter: @courtenaywrites
Instagram: @courtenaywrites
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Courtenay S. Gray
Can you describe this beautiful photo taken by (c)Ankh Spice better than Ankh?
“a thousand miles of grey wind-calved mountains on a veil-world, material for a sorcerer’s armour, fallen bits of storm-sky, shoals of glass sharks” -Ankh Spice
” a seascape – choppy, restless pewter sea in endless unbroken waterpeaks. Long dark hills brood sleeping-dragonry alon gthe horizon, a split of orange dawn/dusk firing down the spine. The rest of the sky is exhaled smoke, beginning to tint around the ember” – Ankh Spice
Untitled from Petar Penda
Gold beams touch the sea
While they glide behind the hill,
The last greeting is mild and soft
Like lovers' kiss when parting.
Still, it makes the water shudder
Thinking of tomorrow's long day
And promises of passionate encounters.
Untitled by Jacqueline P. Dempsey-Cohen (@boscoedempsey)
All day the sun had danced on these fledgling waves
jagged hillocks gleaming like rumpled silk
limning the peaks and valleys the ridges and folds with silver glints of fire.
Now as the sun retreats to gild the hills
the waves rekindle its fevered touch
tamping it down to drown in fathomless depths
Swallowing it whole to sink below wrinkled water
to resurface as hammered silver jewels
A burning grace
Sunburst by Robert Allen (www.robertallenpoet.com)
Nimbocumulus clouds
press into the mountains
like secret handshakes
behind the hills, ablaze–
the waves not noticing as they
rake away the sea.
The Last Wave by Christian Garduno
One earbud for you, one for me
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
seagulls floating on the thermals
this wave starts in Petaluma
goes all the way around to Myrtle Beach
you sigh in contralto
the cavemen must have really had it all
because even the Moon is tethered
just ask the spaceman
The sky has limeade eyes
the clouds are pinstriped
I saw your soul set as the sun came up
there’s no sense in trying to interpret you
maybe it’s the bottle of dry talking
you’re the summer I hope never ends
the sea-foam grasping to reach us
I close my eyes
and the last wave is gone
Poetry from Ankh Spice : Reclaiming the birdboyPoetry based on photography Challenge from Ankh Spice pt. 1Poetry based on Photography Challenge from Ankh Spice pt 2Poetry by Petar Penda : Tiresiaswww.robertallenpoet.comPoetry : Dying Diamond by Christian Garduno
can you describe this beautiful photo taken by (c)Ankh Spice better than Ankh?
“a thousand miles of grey wind-calved mountains on a veil-world, material for a sorcerer’s armour, fallen bits of storm-sky, shoals of glass sharks” -Ankh Spice
” a seascape – choppy, restless pewter sea in endless unbroken waterpeaks. Long dark hills brood sleeping-dragonry alon gthe horizon, a split of orange dawn/dusk firing down the spine. The rest of the sky is exhaled smoke, beginning to tint around the ember” – Ankh Spice
At journey’s end by staci-lee sherwood
What lies beneath the sea
Hidden from our eyes
Secrets the ocean keeps
Only sharing
With a few
Do the mermaids sing softly
As whales swim by
Wrapped in a watery blanket
Made of ocean tears
Waves crash against rocks
Holding back the tide
When it becomes too fierce
As cool mist
Calms the night
As the sun begins to set
Getting ready for its slumber
All the world’s creatures
Begin to settle in
A mystery awaits
In a far away place
For each to unravel
As we chart our own course
Of self determined destiny
Shall we rush to the land
Or linger in the sea
Time is a precious gift
We unwrap
With every sunrise
The dawning of a new day
Beckons us to explore
A new era
And new wisdom
As we set our own course
Immersive from Lisa Falshaw
Stand. Still.
Look out over silken-grey, sea-tumbled bed, hiding
love-depths smoothed and honed
like hand on skin, gentle lapping water,
salt-taste bites granular on lips edged with kisses.
Mountains rise, sky-tipped,
rugged contours flow back to water,
settling to razor-sharp edge,
slices soft-dipped embrace.
Sinking sun hangs low, suspended
over dark-hushed land,
dips gold to treasure of love,
flashes hot sky under foaming clouds,
sets fire to what lies beyond ink shadows,
promises and disappointments
in glowing embers of a dying fire.
Stay here, immerse yourself, my love.
(twitter: @LisaFal)
Water by Bailey Gee
I sit in silence
Looking at the water
The waves ripple
As they greet me at my feet
Calming
Soothing
For one moment
My mind is blank
I feel relaxed
Waves
Are a magical thing
Natures cure
So much depends by Helena McCanney
on gravity.
This thing we cannot see
feel or lick that lurks
every place among
and between each object,
but never shirks its duties,
tugging us towards
each other and bonding us
steadfast to the ground.
So much depends on gravity
setting the planets
on track around the sun,
our homestar.
This celestial roulette wheel
that never loses momentum
keeping the moon in unbroken
perambulation around the Earth.
So much more depends on gravity,
And with the pull of the moon,
the tide lumbers in
and out.
skald by Debbie Strange
this is the way
it comes for you
in the end
a valkyrie sun astride
the mountain's obsidian back
mercury swans and planets
laying claim to the words
of your bioluminescent suffering
(twitter: @debbiestrange)
Upon these waves by Alex Irwin (the ulsterpoet)
Upon these waves
I rest my day,
o'er gilded light
and dwindleday.
And as I dwell
I hear them say,
I wash, I wash,
I wash away
Ampersand by Larissa Reid(In memoriam from the gannet colony of the Bass Rock, Scotland, 2022)
Gannet banks, copper light infusing wing tips,
Crisp white arc against a split wide sky
Stitching elegance from elements.
Gannet arrows through metal shell of sea
Folded origami meets slim sleek shoal;
An ampersand scatter of mackerel.
Gannet pulls up and out of water’s density,
To soak in laced air,
The sea oscillates in her wake.
(Twitter: @Ammonites_Stars)
Untitled piece by Sidney Mansueto
A thousand roaring waves roll into
A void of deep passion with no voice
To be heard and seen, hiding with fear.
Fear drowns the voice, lessening its truth
Making waves in the name of fictional stories
That make the real story lifeless.
Something as beautiful as an ocean
Is shaking with thunder, a storm to erupt
Yet nothing can stand still,
only can be if it chooses to stand against fear.
Links:
Poetry based on photography Challenge from Ankh Spice pt. 1Poetry from Ankh Spice : Reclaiming the birdboyHoliday Interlude by Ankh Spice from Avalanches in Poetry Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen5 Poems by Ankh Spice : That which can be made visible, Hold the river, Feeding the koi, Act like you were never for sale, & Hathor’s giftA Quicksilver Trilling by David L O’Nan : Poetry & Writing style lyrics inspired by DylanPoem by David L O’Nan Writing Suicide Notes in the BluebirdPoems by Peach Delphine: Every Cloud Has Life of Its Own & Speaking of Home, Beyond the Wind, Flat
You found your beekeeper that February morning,
in the London gray,
silencing your confessions.
Carbon monoxide just a wet towel away from your most esteemed epitaphs.
The cathodes could not eradicate the ache,
your albatross,
your only affliction that no man could climb beyond.
His grasp so dire,
you could not refrain from his grievous beacon,
succumbing to his grim demand.
Bio: Jessica Weyer Bentley is an poet, author, and public speaker. Her first collection of poetry, Crimson Sunshine, was published in May 2020 by AlyBlue Media. She has contributed work to several publications for the Award-Winning Book Series, Grief Diaries, including Poetry and Prose, and Hit by a Drunk Driver. Jessica’s work has been anthologized in Women Speak Vol. 6 (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), Summer Gallery of Shoes (Highland Park Poetry), Common Threads 2020 Edition (Ohio Poetry Association), Appalachian Witness Volume 24 (Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel) and Made and Dream (Of Rust and Glass), Psalms of the Alien Buddha Part 2 (Alien Buddha) and online blogs including Global Poemic and Fevers of the Mind Poetry Showcase and a Wolfpack Contributor 2022. She recently was featured in her first magazine entitled Summer 2022 (Of Rust and Glass). She is currently penning her second collection, Down Below Where the Canary Sings slated to be out in 2023. Jessica currently resides in Northwest Ohio.
can you describe this beautiful photo taken by (c)Ankh Spice better than Ankh?
“a thousand miles of grey wind-calved mountains on a veil-world, material for a sorcerer’s armour, fallen bits of storm-sky, shoals of glass sharks” -Ankh Spice
” a seascape – choppy, restless pewter sea in endless unbroken waterpeaks. Long dark hills brood sleeping-dragonry alon gthe horizon, a split of orange dawn/dusk firing down the spine. The rest of the sky is exhaled smoke, beginning to tint around the ember” – Ankh Spice
Waveforms by Lesley Curwen
wavelets / chins tipped / hold sun’s embrace
squirrel grey in livid rays/ their ranks of open lips
mouth sweetness/ at the eye of dusk
no swimmers here/ to rip their harlequin silk
to shreds/ of light
ashore/ sole-prints are shadowed/ by day’s ebbing
gold/ to be immersed in crosshatched expanse
of tide/ whose basketwork
convexities/ suck land’s mauve loom
below/ a quilt of cumulus
a haiga description from Mo Schoenfeld
light slips, struggling,
night laps at the mountain top,
darker depths settle.
I framed a portrait for an absentee by Sam Hickford
Here is a cranny for you to seize, my love,
among the volcanic strait of smoke-stung cloud..
will you take it, as the wagtail claps
this wreath of Autumn, makes this land its vow?
As each trilled wavelet furnishes a mountain
for a chalk-board dreadnought to a droughtless word,
come. I watch the ocean’s opiate
break mirrors in the champion of its lens
and picture you cradled in these hues
of fire and lazuli and scarlet shards.
Shores of Safe Distance by Robin McNamara
When we divide our words between
a stanza with image-filled meanings
and one with an abstraction of reality
not easily deciphered/
do we need anything more than the
acceptance of our verses read by the judgmental or do we find our oars and paddle out a bit further; into deep waters
of thoughts, without a compass.
With only the stars to navigate a way
to your account of my words.
What if I drowned, what if the storms of uncertainty was too much,
what would
wash up upon the shores?
A body of work beautifully polished by the waves or a piece of driftwood?
Would you tread water to find our existence, or would the stones under your feet compel you to go back and stare at the ocean from
a distance and say; maybe another time.That's All Folks by Elizabeth Cusack
The sky is burning—
It’s not exactly news—
It’s been this way since I was born.
There was an egg before akasha,
If you care about language,
And there was the ein sof,
If you care to read that tongue,
And there was an egg before the chicken—
This is very hard to grasp,
It has ruined paradise,
This inability to understand,
The great unknown was once one,
And all multiplicities someday will blow apart.
A prophet comes along once in a while
And says, this is what it’s all about— all is one,
Call it love or whatever makes you smile,
But the fact is we are killing every one,
And as we come and go,
And as we kill our mother,
And read our revelations,
The steel-grey cable under the sea
Is recording every absurdity,
And as we remember the essential dead poets—
Remember what, exactly?
That everybody who ever lived is now here!
James Joyce got it in the Wake,
And they mocked him
As they do every damned prophet—
All the condemned are on this ride
As we read up on Aleister Crowley,
As we are on this burning earth,
As we read revelations from the dead
And martyred who died for clarity—
And don’t forget Stalin, Mao, and old Paul—
And as we drink the soma and submit when we are called,
We remember the ones who saved our lives—
Thank you to the poets, that we have a mind at all!
That is the final thing they will try to take from us all.
STRUGGLING by Spriha Kant
Kaleidoscopic dreams
float like amorphous clouds
and the hopes shine like the sun
in her psyche.
Stuck amidst
the turbulent eddies
trying to drown her
in the stygian abyss
she keeps the
waves of her
mind, heart, and actions
synchronously tranquil
for she is as vulnerable as a fire in the water
who can’t dare to rebel against her inner voice
ordering her to achieve something that will
raise the eyebrows and open the mouth wide
of the pessimistic commentators.
Links to some work of a few of the poets:
Fevers of the Mind 