The Empath Dies in the End – Fevers of the Mind

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

Poetry Collaboration “What is?” John Drudge and David L O’Nan

from the series “The Empath Dies in the End”

1 John Drudge

I like to ride
The thin wave
Between hope
And despair
Between the rolls
Of a fading surge
And the bright lights
Of eternity
Wrestling with angels
In the aftermath of faith
Falling in
And out of love
With endless wonder

2 (David L O'Nan)

I like to sit and paint obscure trees
and I wonder why the rabid and the heartbeat meet.
I wonder why we feel jaded when our blood beats.
And I wonder what is Sex, really?

Is sex a secret, or is the heavenly plague,
Is sex the magic, created from the voodoo wind
Is it all biblical, are all just magical?
Are we the creations of a night of love,
are we the creations of a selfish game?

Are we awful, are we royalty,
Does the music play, when our filth becomes the silk?
The makeshift subtlety, or a full blown wrath,
What is sex when your mind is unarmed?

There is a trouble in the hallowed walls.
They listen in to hear us scream or call,
or maybe we may just pretend a whimper,
Are we the acoustic or the bass,
the electric fire or the aching moan of the cello?

Are we frightened, are we given a choice?
When boys attack the girls, and the girls attack the boys?
When all they wanted was to paint a few obscure trees?
What is sex, a natural state or the first disease?

The time is ticking, with a draconian yell.
will there be freedom, as we run naked through the vines?
The moldy fruit is shaking from the trees,
and there's a formation of primitive life kicking around.
habitual, self-absorbed, was there love,
was it abortive or what is sex after all?
A deadpan coward looks on.
And the sweat swallows down in our breath, as we mold ourselves into an impressionistic painting.
of some obscure trees, the nude bodies by the river watching the thunder turn the clouds from hurricane to a fainting wind.

What is sex? When the wheels are judging.

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

A Poetry Showcase by John Drudge

Poem collaboration: Madame Stress Pills by David L O’Nan & Petar Penda

from the series “The Empath Dies in the End”

Madame Stress Pills

1 (Petar Penda)

Feeling nothing is a feeling,
Indifference followed by remorse
And a guilt-ridden question
About what led to this state of mind
And if we are to be blamed for
The emptiness and horror
We live and leave behind us.
Our madness is not escape
As we don't go anywhere
It is only a subconscious distance
From others and ourselves
Since we know deep down
We are contagious.

2 (David L O'Nan)

My eyes are their own souls
My body is another, the zoo can be wide awake
The wind could be blowing in a new world, would I know?
I feel mostly like a peasant, that is the feed.
And that the rich are the desired.
Pull on this wild chain, together can we pull and pull until
Our hands become numb and bleeding. Remaining calloused.
Can the brain be the same? Can the moon be just as calloused gawking down at us?
There will always be the drunk bug like men serenading it with broken voiced ballads.

Animals lurking by our dark shoes as we walk, in the night
Their silence is angry, our silence is frightening,
our silence once brave.
Tree stumps scattering and wanting us to tumble, stumble into the arms of a wicked star.
I hear the walking heavier and heavier, my eardrum is rattling.
The stress pills are now fallen, washed in the mix with the maggots.
I might as well be worshiping in bad habits if this is what life has become and from all looks –
Will always be.

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

Poetry by Petar Penda : Tiresias

Poetry Collaboration with Spriha Kant and David L O’Nan : The Doorsteps Series

from “The Empath Dies in the End” series

The Doorsteps Series

1 (Spriha Kant)

I am a river
glistening in your sunny love
flowing in a dream
where we are a miscible solution
eddying in canoodling

2 (David L O'Nan)

Thunderstruck and downpours came
The next day after an engorged full moon
Breathing heavy, the air belted against the Himalayas
‘caused the belladonnas to be caught up in the fishnets.
And I walk down after another night of taunting silhouettes.

3.
I feel the rain through every speck of light.
I see the river overflowing the streets soon –
To meet my first and second doorstep as I-
Wait to dip my foot in the filthy liquid from the comfort
The comfort, of my third doorstep.

And just cry there buddy, no backbone, no light
And just dream yourself a small suicide that’ll never be so bright.
And cast yourself a ghost before you’ve even spoken about all your sins.

Even if you watch me cut away, you’ll say I’m just gaslighting and will
Run, run away. To sit on a doorstep. Like a wet leaf stuck in the sewer grate cover.

I’m just inventing myself a new vision to go from mind to mind.
To read your mind. I don’t know if I can. The flashes are too quick to bind
Together, I’m just sitting back and listening to Ian Curtis singing
“I put my trust in you” “I put my trust in you” “in you” “in you”
I can follow the predator to his shaking bones and catch him behind a super-church
Brass-knuckles wait in a pocket. Is that what it’ll take to make this eyelid wish come true.

6 David L O'Nan (first 2 lines) Spriha Kant (next 3 lines) David L O'Nan (last 2 1/2 lines)

Third step, my home.
I can fade into anything I want. When I’m in my lonely bones.
Utopian curtains bared eyes
Blurred hopes flared eyes
Silence glared ambitions
I just stare back towards the panic park wanting silence,
the bird he hollers.
Through the trees and threatens me, casually and I vision my demise.

Ease down to the 2nd step
The river dried away, the rain stops to another town, for another meal
Getting closer to the tackle, the sociopaths in the battlefields
They wait behind minivans now and bounce around forgetting that
Wars are won by artillery, cannons, and fists. Not the beats within a mix.

8.
First step, all dry now
The worms are drying and stuck in tulip petal straitjackets.
I heard the whispers (the sirens) that the circus was in town.
I watched it unravel with teargas and billy clubs
We were all just tigers growling equality through the megaphones.
We were the ones who were let down.
Sunshine brings in more clouds.

Poetry Collaboration: Backwards Until When (5) with R.M. Engelhardt (from Dead Man’s Press)

part of the “The Empath Dies in the End” series

Backwards Until When (5)

1 (David L O’Nan)

I keep dreaming of a backwards red balloon floating in a bleeding sky, a paper sky

I keep envisioning a backwards red balloon floating by, telepathically I know it is you.

5 years before, 5 years before that, 5 years before that and the years are crumbled pebbles.

Many men have come and put a forever ring on your finger, they stare at you with narcotic eyes.

They have stared in your eyes with wandering eyes, they have seen you float away into the darkness.

By yourself, spinning in your head.

By yourself, the dreams of children. The children only helped before the yelling killed the heart.

And left you remembering you were on that road, that you have been travelling away in your head for years

And left you remembering the bumps on your skin, frozen like that entrapment of an iceberg.

And you just want to float because you’re scared, in that emptiness.

I am out there watching you in a dream, in a vision, in a feeling, and you want to leave.

Bring me with you. Cast that spell on me. If you weren’t backwards, I could grab that string and rewind-

Your heart.

I see 5 flashing in and out from the beads of sweat burrowing down my head.

What does this 5 mean? I crossed paths with a woman holding a pack of tarot cards.

Reading fortunes, reading pictures I’m holding of a backwards red balloon, I ask this woman of insight, of foresight, of belief or just a scammer with a bucket of gold weighing her back down. I just lay my head down on the sidewalk and absorb in the earth as she begins to read my fate.

2 (R.M. Engelhardt)

The fortune teller
Says you have “5”

Five what?

Days?
Weeks?
Months?

Years?

She read my palm
Said my lifeline was
Long but she never
Quite gave me a specific
Answer, her accent
Making it all the more
Devastating

She just stared at me
With her dark eyes looking

Serious & concerned

So afterwards
I wandered

Started drinking
Started getting nervous
Started getting paranoid
About what she had said

3 (David L O’Nan)

I’m in a dizzy spell, I feel like I continue letting you down, although I’m unsure that you’re even around.

Am I somewhere up there? As a memory in your brain? Do you remember the days when I didn’t weird you out.

Or is it just fuck these roads that we keep travelling?

Or is it just fuck this iceberg entrapment that I’m still being kept in?

Or is it let me keep floating don’t try to catch my string? I’m backwards and in my inner space?

Or are just not ready to be blown into a new eternity? Now how long will we wait. 5 minutes, 5 days,

5 years, 5 decades, 5 nevers. My paranoia is just a ringing phone from a god to a well.

I’m callin’ I’m callin’ I’m callin’ I’m callin’ haven’t fell. Just keeping my eyes open as long as I can see you in that sky. That bleeding sky, that paper sky.

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

New poems from R.M. Engelhardt