Writing, Poetry, Short Stories, Reviews, Art Contests
Send in poetry, essays, artwork, articles, emotions, inspired creative ideas that came from reading or listening to Leonard Cohen. This is a follow up to Avalanches in Poetry Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen in 2019. “Before I Turn Into Gold” will include a few pieces from the original anthology, revised work from me from the first anthology, artwork by Geoffrey Wren, submissions from our blog & through our e-mail at feversofthemind@davidlonan1
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with Ethan McGuire:
Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?
Ethan: I started trying to write little stories and essays as soon as I could spell, but I did not take my writing seriously until high school. Up to that point, I would write some things down but keep very little. Mostly, I would just make up stories while doing chores on my parents’ hobby farm, or I would dream about
making a living as an outdoors writer for Field & Stream when I grew up, or I would sit at a picnic bench in front of a PVC pipe—pretending the pipe was a microphone—and act like I was reading some radio commentary I had composed.
I never actually took my own writing seriously until the tenth grade, when an English teacher, Dr. Seibert, handed me a writing assignment. I don’t remember the details of that assignment, but I do remember exactly the poem it worked out of me. Something clicked in me then, and I knew, from that moment, I simply had to become a writer.
My first big influence was definitely Louis L’Amour. I consumed his books as a kid. I loved his writing style; loved all the real, lived details he injected into his prose; loved the way he described his
characters’ surroundings—especially the American West—as if the Earth itself was poetry, both magical and mean. I was influenced by various outdoors writers, as I mentioned, in the tradition of Ernest
Hemmingway, because I wanted to brave the harsh elements of the more primitive world and tell people about my adventures. Then, I discovered Milton, reading Paradise Lost in high school. Milton put
me on the path to writing poetry. I had written poetry for sure, but Milton showed me poetry could give me the same feelings of awe and amazement that music did.
Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?
Ethan: When it comes to writing non-fiction, I have a hard time knowing my biggest influences. I love the movie
reviews of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael; the historical writing of Stephen Ambrose, Bruce Catton, and Shelby Foote; and the lay theology writing of C.S. Lewis. I love so many others too. In fact, I sometimes wonder if I like too much art!
When it comes to poetry, I can speak better. Probably because I have been focusing most of my recent writing efforts on poetry. I skip fiction because I haven’t written much of it lately.
At the moment, if I were to call myself a disciple of any particular writer, I would single out the poet Dana Gioia. Gioia constantly impresses me with the way he works in both formal and free verse, as well as essays and criticism. One of my personal writing goals is to bring together both old and new poetic styles, which Gioia does. I also appreciate that he works in the literary world without ever being
condescending toward working class readers, toward any non-literary readers, and I appreciate how he brings our attention to the primitive, oral, memorized tradition of poetry. Just consider his
accomplishments as NEA chairman, the “Poetry Out Loud” program, and his “Can Poetry Matter?” essay.
Also, I must mention, I probably receive the most artistic inspiration from music, especially from such artists as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell. Their lyrics coupled with their music give me chills! They speak directly to the human experience, like Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon . . . the list goes on. I feel Cohen’s “tower of song” behind me as I write for sure, and, of course, there is always the struggle to hew out one’s own style and voice.
Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing?
Ethan: I grew up as a hillbilly, really, in the Missouri Ozarks, and I have enjoyed the art of storytelling ever since,well, from before I can remember. My family, on my father’s side, is extremely proud of our Irish heritage, and they have always loved that Irish people have a great reputation as storytellers. As a little
kid at family or church get-togethers, I would sit down and soak up all those stories. Unfortunately, I was never the best at memorization or the oral storytelling tradition, but what I did memorize was the
feelings I experienced listening to the grown-ups tell tales. It was exciting to step into a story in its telling, to imagine along with a speaker.
At about eight years old, I began playing music with my family and friends, and we did that just about every day. Bluegrass, folk, Gospel. In living rooms with huge pots of coffee, on front porches with jugs of sweet tea, at backwoods church “singings,” at outdoor festivals in the heat of the sun, this hill music was forever present in my life, and it gave me a love for poetry.
My parents instilled in me a love for reading too, and I read voraciously as a child, anything I could get my hands on. When the love for storytelling and reading met in me with the act of creating music, I began to want to write my own stories as well.
This hillbilly influence we can call it, that is definitely present in my writing. In the rhythms, the subjects, the word choices, even in my outlook on life. The mountains, the folk music, the hill people’s
superstitions, the fire-and-brimstone preachers, my grandparents telling me about their Great Depression childhoods . . . I find these thumbprints in my writing all the time.
Q4: Have any travels away from home influence your work?
Ethan: Moving away from my home in the Ozarks definitely influenced me in that I gained a wider perspective
of the world. Even though most people travel around the country, and even though many people travel around the world, the majority live most their lives where they grew up. Now, this is not necessarily a problem, if people have grown up in a community and stay within that community to thrive, and to help others and the environment around them thrive. As Wendell Berry teaches us, we all need to find
communities and contribute to them, which we cannot do if we are jumping ship every few years.
However, living, even temporarily, in a different environment among different people reminds one of how great the wide world is.
Now, currently I have chosen to live on the Emerald Coast, in Florida near the Gulf of Mexico. Living near the sea has enriched my soul. We forget how powerful a force water is on our planet, and constantly being near a gigantic body of water makes you confront that fact, which I try to do on a regular basis.
Countless poets have described the sea, but it never ceases to amaze me. It is such a naturally poetic force, the majesty, the repetition of the waves, the formed formlessness, the wildness tamed in some
way that we hardly even understand.
I have always traveled around the U.S. quite a bit too, although I still need to visit other countries. That I haven’t left America yet is a major weak spot for me. But my parents always traveled, and my wife and I do too, so that gives my writing a sort of restlessness. I certainly am forever wrestling with conflicting desires of individuality and community, which does pop up in my work.
Q5: Any pivotal moments when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
Ethan: Music first seduced me as a kid in church, a country church where anyone who wanted to play music was welcome to join in, especially during evening services or monthly “singings.” I would play around with a ruler or something, pretending to pluck an instrument. My father played mandolin, so around eight I decided, “Hey, I want to play the mandolin too!” After learning mandolin, then came guitar, bass, a little singing, helping arrange, writing my own songs. It all happened gradually, but I guess I’ve always
loved music.
Of course, my love for music smoothly transitioned into a love for poetry, especially since I have always enjoyed analyzing lyrics and the way they work with the music around them. That first assignment from Dr. Seibert—where I realized I had to be a writer, if not by profession, by passion—I turned in a poem for that assignment, called “The Warriors.” Actually, an extremely revised version of that poem, called “The Woodsman,” may surface soon from me, so I won’t say much more. My first published piece of writing was a poem too, called “Snow,” with which I won a poetry/picture contest, when I was in tenth grade, a few months after having written “The Warriors.”
So, at that point, I was off to the races, reading anything I could like I had done for years but now with even more purpose, and writing in any genre I could imagine. Paradise Lost, though, as I said, that is the
first time poetry truly awed and amazed me, the way Milton employs blank verse there along with a fantastic vocabulary and imagination in his wonderful retelling of Creation and the Fall of Man. Lines like
this still give me chills:
. . . Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the firey gulf,
Confounded though immortal. . .
Q6: Favorite activities to relax?
Ethan: I love the Emerald Coast’s white-sand beaches and warm water. The sunsets we have down here on the
Emerald Coast are breathtaking, all orange fire and navy and lavender. It never gets old. I enjoy kayaking with my wife, taking our young chocolate Labrador out, hiking, being with friends, visiting restaurants, traveling, watching movies, reading, playing and listening to music. Honestly, I probably like too many
things! I need to be more judicious. I like to stay busy but am trying to learn that a certain amount of boredom actually has some value. I need it for my mental health!
Q7: Do you have any recent or forthcoming projects that you’d like to promote?
Ethan: Sure! I would definitely encourage anyone interested in my work to visit my website TheFlummoxed.com where I post my writer’s journey, and I post other stuff too, usually creative writing,
like new poems, essays, etc. that I do not want to submit elsewhere for various reasons. You can follow me on Twitter as well, at @AHeavyMetalPen, where I am most active these days. In the last five months, you here at Fevers of the Mind have published seven poems of mine of which I am quite proud, and I am honored that you have included me in the writing community you are building. Plus, I am currently working on my first poetry collection, which, of course, I hope someone will publish! I appreciate self- publishing, but for one, I am not good at design, not much good at all, and for two, I desire to have some kind of writer/editor collaboration.
Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from a poem of yours or others?
Ethan: For this question, I will give you something from one of my favorite poems that I have written and something from one of my favorite songs.
First, my own work. Here is a little more than one line, rather a stanza, the small chunk of my writing that I have thought about most the last several months. This is one of my favorite stanzas from my poem “Salt,” which appeared in Fevers of the Mind on February 23rd, in your “Avalanches in Poetry” series:
My upward way is at once my downward.
The downward path, it rises up likewise.
God sees all time present for forever.
I am not God; the night still spreads outside.
For some reason, that stanza regularly spins on repeat in my head.
For a quote from one of my favorite songs, here is my favorite part from the song which most heavily influenced my poem “Salt,” Leonard Cohen’s “The Future,” the bridge of that song:
Things are going to slide,
Slide in all directions.
Won’t be nothing,
Won’t be nothing,
You can measure anymore.
The blizzard,
The blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold,
And it’s overturned
The order of the soul.
I think about Cohen’s “The Future” a lot these days, right alongside Krzysztof Kieślowski’s excellent film series The Three Colors Trilogy. Both Cohen’s album The Future and Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy
were released in the same period, the early 1990s, a time of great change and unrest. The Berlin wall was coming down, the European Union was coming up, a changing of the guards was occurring all over the world. Both Cohen and Kieślowski were at once optimistic and pessimistic about these changes. Our world is shaking up again, so I run to the wisdom of those who have gone before us.
Q9: Who has helped you most with with writing?
Ethan: First and foremost, I must mention my parents, siblings, and wife, who have given me invaluable encouragement in all my creative pursuits. My mother encouraged me to read. My father led me to
think critically about all art. My siblings supported me with kind words and collaboration, especially in music.
My wife urges me to pursue creative projects, and she reads and critiques my work; any time I get stuck, she nudges me in a better direction. For example, oftentimes I will be working on a poem, essay, etc., and she will give me some advice completely against current conventions. I will usually take her advice,
but not quite understand it, although I can see that her advice is good. Then, later, I will hear some writer most special to me give the same advice in a lecture or something, and I always think, “Dang!
Maybe my wife should be the writer!”
After my family, there are a few people who jump into my mind.
Andrea Walker, as the editor of the West Florida Literary Federation’s The Legend, published my first poem when I came out of a creative writing publishing hiatus. In the September 2019 issue of The
Legend, Andrea published my poem “Newlywed Song,” which kicked off my transition from primarily publishing non-fiction—especially music and film criticism—to primarily publishing creative writing. The
last thing I had had published of that nature was my contest winner, “Snow,” back in 2009. Andrea went on to publish other pieces from me in The Legend and Life in the Time of Corona, and she is involved in another project of which I will be a part soon. She has always had kind words for my work.
Two other women in the West Florida Literary Federation had a motivating influence on me also, Juliet DeMarko and Debra Stogner. I was in a biweekly poetry workshop with Juliet and Debra, among others, for a little while, and they helped lead me back to the poetry road. In that same vein, I am a member of an online writing community called “The Poetry Pub,” led by Jen and Chris Yokel who have helped me gain confidence in my writing, along with other members like Chris Wheeler, Janna Barber, Shigé Clark,
and Una Kavanagh. Talking about writing communities—and I know “community” is a word I have used a lot; repeating words is a tendency of mine, for good and for bad; let’s call it poetry—I am privileged to be part of the ones built by David O’Nan here at Fevers of the Mind and Brenda Stephens at The Dark Sire.
Finally, I would be remiss if I went without mentioning my friend David Malone, with whom I returned to writing in the first place with our website “E.D. – Music, Movies, Etc.” We are not very active on “E.D.” (yes, the name is a joke), but it is still up. Writing there gave me the courage to share my work with the public.
Wolfpack Contributor Bio: Ethan McGuire
with Michael Igoe:
Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?
Michael: I started writing at about 15 or 16. I had little interest until then, I was encouraged by a musician buddy to do this. What I was reading was mostly trashy detective stories and horror, sci-fi.
Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?
Michael: A lot of what I see and hear is contemporary work- Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown. I still revere the beat poets, especially Corso and Ginberg. Surrealism, Dada, and Symbolists are about as far back as I go. I’ve heard that “an artist is true to the times.” So be it.
Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing? Have any travels away from home influence your work?
Michael: I grew up on the South Side of Chicago which is a pretty fabled place for childhood. It definitely had a great influence, at one point I spent a lot of time portraying neighborhoods and people in them.
Q4: What do you consider the most meaningful work you’ve done creatively so far?
Michael: I have a few favorites from my own work. One of them is in that great anthology, Avalanches in Poetry
Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
Michael: I think because of the way I was brought up I shied away from identifying myself as an artist. It happened by default.
Q6: Favorite activities to relax?
Michael: I study Tai Chi and it has aided me immensely.
Q7: Any recent or forthcoming projects you’d like to promote?
Michael: No! I send out submissions; that’s all. I write for the people I’m with.
Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from one of your poems or others/Favorite artwork?
Michael: “Nighthawks” the Hopper painting. I had a reproduction on the wall at college.
Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?
Michael: I have to say the late Allen Ginsberg. I corresponded with him for 2 years. I showed up at his Institute in Boulder and met up with him again when he read at Harvard.
Links:
Wolfpack Contributor Bio: Michael Igoe
2 new Poems by Michael Igoe : Think of It As Fire & Subdue
Poems from Anthologies & new poems from Michael Igoe
Poems by Michael Igoe : “In Certain Climates” & “Elliptical”
2 new poems by Michael Igoe :”Inborn” & “Funeral Lilies”
2 Poems False Prophet & Violet Contact by Michael Igoe
Twitter: @MichaelIgoe5
https://www.dustpoetry.co.uk/post/lake-tomahawk-by-michael-igoe
https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2021/01/three-poems-by-michael-igoe.html
https://thepoetryquestion.com/2019/10/30/tpq5-michael-igoe/
https://www.sledgehammerlit.com/post/brass-monkey-by-michael-igoe
https://idleink.org/2020/04/04/origin-by-michael-igoe/
https://ephemeralelegies.com/2020/05/25/thin-disguise-by-michael-igoe/
with Barney Ashton-Bullock
Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?
Barney: My first theatre show was called ‘Church At Llanbadrig’ and was performed at the now defunct Bournemouth Centre For Community Arts in South-West England. My first influences were playwrights; Harold Pinter, Steven Berkoff, Jim Cartwright. Towards the end of my teens you could add Derek Jarman, Hanif Kureishi, Rupert Brooke and Thomas Hardy into the mix. In terms of contemporary poetry, it was specifically the two film-poem texts ‘Xanadu’ by Simon Armitage and ‘V’ by Tony Harrison, both published by Bloodaxe in the nineties. The arena of Cultural Studies particularly infuses my work and the conversational transcript and diary keeping ‘qualitative research’’ approaches in particular.
Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?
Barney: Thomas Hardy’s poetry is still a major influence, but I’m ruthless a contemporary poetry reader these days and some that recently I have found inspiring are Roy Guzmán, Caleb Femi, Jameson Fitzpatrick, Kathryn Maris, Bobby Parker, Matthew Walsh, Dom Hale, Jamie Thrasivoulou and Joelle Taylor
Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing? Have any travels away from home influence your work?
Barney: I was living and working in Swanage in Dorset, South-West England immediately before starting at Goldsmiths’ Art College and grew up predominantly in the Southbourne suburb of Bournemouth, a Victorian seaside town. Both living in rural Dorset with my father from the age of 15 onwards and with my mother prior to that in the seaside resort (my Grandmother having run a seasonal guest house) these formative experiences still resonate in my work. I always had a very strong and specific interest in Norway from the earliest age, doing school projects on it from age 8 onwards and the Norwegian landscapes both isolated and urban have a profound influence on my writing and aspirations.
Q4: What do you consider the most meaningful work you’ve done creatively so far?
Barney: I have a creative non-fiction tract with the working title ‘North’ that has lived alongside me for about 25 years and with which, in its original 8 page form, I was chosen to represent the UK as a young playwright at the Interplay Europe Festival through the Royal Court Young Writer’s programme. All these years later, it’s about 50 pages with photos, poems, speeches and fragments. It is everything I’ve ever wanted to create and unlike much of my published work, it’s an achingly personal, yet, non-linear work and I’m not sure that I’ll ever, can ever or want to ever finish it. But, I do know it has a spiritual hold on me and that I do find it deeply comforting to know that alongside everything I’ve ever written and had published and performed are these pages which I think and hope reflect the best of me and everything creatively that I ever aspired to be.
Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
Barney: Two pivotal moments when I sussed that the fusion of poetry and music was a direction I was compelled to explore was when I heard the album ‘Wild Seed’ by Morten Harket and could visualise, though my listening to it, a world I’d rather live in. The power of that transformative experience, coupled with reading Derek Jarman’s searingly honest thoughts in his autobiography ‘At Your Own Risk – A Saint’s Testament’ and my sensibility shifted into a conviction and dedication to fuse the radical and accessible within a hybrid of poetry, theatre and music
Q6: Favorite activities to relax?
Barney: I love listening to whole albums in a dim-lit room with no distraction. My favourites are contemporary classical and new age instrumental music for deep relaxation but I also love electronic pop music and atmospheric pop in particular. The most amazing defelction from stress is walking the Dorset Coast Path when back in my hometown.
Q7: Any recent or forthcoming projects you’d like to promote?
Barney:
I have a fairly in-yer-face poetry pamphlet, ‘Café Kaput!’ out with Broken Sleep Books. https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/barney-ashton-bullock-café-kaput
And the last remaining copies of ‘FPig Zeitgeist!’ which is my verse diaries spin-off poetry book from the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ project are available through Cherry Red Records mail order
My next book which will be coming out in August this year, will shortly be available to pre-order through Cherry Red Records and it is called ‘Bucolicism – Alt-Lite Lyric Verse For A Post-Pastoral England’ visit www.cherryred.co.uk and search for Barney Ashton-Bullock
Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from one of your poems or others?
Barney:
“the conch shell held to an itchy ear,
a touchstone to a myriad of uplifting whispers;
forebearers, predecessors, ancestors, antecedents,
illusive Gods and dead heroes
jostle in a chirp-a-thon
their wisdoms in a soothe of song”
From ‘Some Sort Of Salvation’ in my forthcoming booklet ‘Bucolicism’ through Cherry Red Records mail order from August 2021.
Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?
Barney: Being an avid attendee of salons and classes at Coffee House Poetry run out of The Troubadour Cafe in London’s Earls Court district, I have to mention organisers and teachers Anne-Marie Fyffe and Cahal Dallat as real enablers of creativity. My dear friend, salonista and editor Chip Martin is the most selfless and life-affirming mentor as has been an inspiration in all he has done. I am honour bound to also mention Noël Greig, my now deceased tutor from many years back at the Royal Court Young Writers Programme who first green lit my urge to fuse poetry and theatre. Finally, my muse, Andy Bell, the singer in the synth-pop duo Erasure, for whom I’ve written three solo albums and stage shows as part of the Andy Bell is Torsten music / poetry / theatre hybrid collective of which I am a founding member. Those albums also available through Cherry Red Records
Links:
Meet the Fevers of the Mind WolfPack: Barney Ashton-Bullock
A poem called “blizzed” by Barney Ashton-Bullock
3 poems from Barney Ashton-Bullock in Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020
Poem by Barney Ashton-Bullock : L’anti-arriviste est parti
Twitter: @barney_poet
Instagram: @barneyashtonbullock
https://429harrowroad.com/tag/barney-ashton-bullock/
https://www.thebabeltowernoticeboard.com/featured-writing/three-poems-by-barney-ashton-bullock
A Hallelujah for a Midnight War
I can feel your skin breathing in orbs kisses that feels like surgeries and the money dies off when you are greedy and we step right into a Midnight War Millions of Judases in the wilderness The sick and the crimson In torment, so petrified One breath, chokes Hallelujah In chaos the hammer smashes in the glass We are hidden behind these walls a combustion in bones and all to become vapor In this Midnight War Where the glitter turns to ashes breaking from the chairs, a howl Hallelujah The spectres and the stars Looking as one Like in a mirror of night We have been forsaken of riches They loot the diamonds from the heart And the robbery is simplistic we feel translucent watching the seas The Midnight War cripples And the waves clash together in an Everlasting Hallelujah The virgins spin down with chapped lips and breeding, hungry eyes You are numb to touch A revolver, an allergy The flaming of whips to erase your mind The pearls, they fall to the fire the path is a torrent from fibrous roots - to the vines of cherries Angelic songs Obliterates, to my auditory invisibility In grief, in pain Praying in puns Hallelujah So, Midnight passes And we are back to 1 a.m. Time for the blossoms and the honey woven into the fabrics of Earth tip toes the demons away White horses begin to gallop - wildly around the curves and suddenly your eyelids open back to the reds, blues, orange in the sunlight, surrender hear the hearses beginning to putter the gas kills off the energy Hallelujah Ripped Off My Jean Jacket As the symptomatic leaves begin to fall I watched noiseless waterfalls - drink in the deranged and lame Our bodies are blush, decorated into these parks by the stabbing strokes of a paintbrush Brush away these harsh devils Wiped away all of my tattoos My head is clammy and sweating Watch the stars penetrate the heart From the moon, I have become the decorous the ultimate gentleman - to all that is blind whip-in the inhales And shoot the arrows to the waves. If I am uncovered, if truths are found to be false I will carry myself like a casket and image myself as the lifeless wooden doll I collapse to the thundering faint, to the floor I ripped off my jean jacket the wild, the seeds plucked to be reborn Long nights listening to this same rain falling the owls are silent in their hoots the traces of our footprints - are known to be crazy we are picking the serpents from our boots. So, is this the white noise? I live in either gray or electric shock an impulse is easier to swallow but sin takes time to regurgitate. Oslo in the Heart It was 4 seasons in Oslo Where they greased the wheels for our eyes when they bleached the brides my skin has turned to purple veins, locked my mind inside a wall of chains all the Norwegian women bled like rubies over a beach of shells Candlelight on the bones inside the moon cooking the peasants in a witch's ritual. Oslo was in my heart when we wed Winter crosses full of wet lead tuning my mind to a dripping paint and rippling vapors whip in every corner. Oslo was in my heart that day we danced a fandango through the avalanches lay bare sleighs the mountains had broke for all the old anger in the stones. Oslo nights in wonderfalls heartbroken men and shallow women calling for the moneymen to come from the big U.S. city the commercial life the vacations and all the models bankruptcies in graveyards the drifting of the wind. Shenandoah Tramps You walk the streets like you are still in Tabriz You miss the Iranian Summers While fumbling full of wine you feel the prickly goosebumps from the breeze. And we begin to walk with a squint as the sun masks the city eyelids bouncing, and quivering drunk lips. You desire the kiss when the night stirs dressed in scarlet red looking for that efficacious effect We are like the stars in the sky celebrities in meteoric flash We are just lost from the waste to the lakes trying to unlock the code to flee us from the beams of Heaven's Gate We can wish on these wine bottles throw in the pennies for a little luck we can invent beauty out of the contagious Shenandoah muck. Our city is just a bullet town Our love will fall like tramps in the rain with our hands becoming umbrellas trying to protect us from the downpour awake our celestial shine with this oncoming train. And here come the dollies and all of the sheepmen who gather ours fossils and they use them for swanky chaotic sin our rose is a misery burn the shell right off this redolent city. The streetlamps are as dim as a yellow puddle with a hint of chickweeds growing around the blacktop tumors. And all we can talk about all of the music, and hum until poetry rifles through our brains. Studying the fallen art stuck to the limbs of trees On the edge of what was Calliope. When all was tame and flowery, The strong was not frail without a care Our frames were not broken, just skeletal grey And we would dine on evening air and dance to the melody of church bells the hymns were our parade. Drinking Blue Moons I was burning through the poker chips Looking eye to the cavernous eye of some demon I see all the misleading in your passions. If all your passions are the flaming dollars and all shoes want to dance for the triumphs You have a Malibu boy doll home with wives that sashay in the golden fields beautiful gardens and thrusting seeds water this, burning just a little. And we all want your suits and all the glory the perfect hair and the ungodly White teeth Maybe the jealousy lives in all of us but we know you're as fragile as a toothpick - when your way begins receding. Drinking Blue Moons when the red wine runs low You begin pacing like a war of pistols when the bombs begin flashing your photos - to the world we know you, there are truth whisperers Your flavor of the month decisions begin to disease with constant new kisses After dark in powder kegs love hearts dancing around the bones to erode them three sheets to the wind and your toy world is for sale and crumbling. Love, love, love is in the twist of a bottle-cap Love, love, love Is putting your head next to the ammunition the boattail bullets dips you in to the a round of ripples Love, love, love Your blondes in black in the background crying. All the women are there from all your hidden life messages to a Lucy, an Alexis, a Leilani, an Olivia From the bedrooms with White curtains and all that money - was never his to begin with Will he rest in peace in a graveyard of suitcase tombstones? An Autumn Scarecrow If my song for you is Autumn From the roof I shall sing to a soft chill My voice is an earthquake quivering out these little sonnets and trails of letters Coming down faster than the snow We soon stand still in the early season blizzard It will blade through all of the farmland The prairies ruined with guillotined scarecrows bleeding straw like a hydrant This is our beauty, this is our moment Will you say I love you back from this Midwestern view? And we can warm each other in praises In the hills of sleet where we shared our first kiss your hair falls over my body like the stars tonight And magnetizing our hearts together in our newly found love. Let us birth the Winter Solstice in the death of leaves I really never cared much for all the scarecrows Anyways, they were nothing but a lie To keep the dying birds on the street I know, I know I can love you At least for awhile in this arctic shift as my heart beats lazily the colder it gets Well, do we escape together? Before all the tornadoes of Spring hunt for fresh meat to begin the hunt for a new shelter Share this breath with me a little longer before I have to think of the potential hazards. All of the Miles Between Us There are many miles between ideals and many indecisions. Between the straying women Riding new wheels and feeling weightless. Do I feel artistic, or just punch wildly and swing around to a phantom touch? How can I be me? When I am constantly feeling stalked by the shadows, the voices, and past scars the new wheels begin to break and roll down the road. I see you play the actress You play with the best of them Just call you Joan Crawford, Just call you Mrs. Hepburn I can't see myself in these mirrors past the steam there you may be Is it the lipstick or the lie? Just cradle me you are my melting candle Like a mind without sympathy Hear the wails in the air, I'm constantly in a crawl for you but you felt more secure by naked irises and secure by the many miles between us. On Rippling Streets and Possibly Dying Inhale, exhale, now uncertainty awoke or maybe i'm a splattered angel to the road. In feathers like a cardinal in hot August breath Burning away to the move of a wicked gravitational spin I'm on a rippling street, dust swirling like my head covered in an old business suit, damp and frail watching abandoned Subway trains moving once again. I see a 1940's traveling preacher on the corner. One moment he's for Jesus, the next he's in it for the flames. I stare into the hypnotism of a long walk to triumph I have to face the destruction of regret and neglect myself in cigarette smoke that wrestles the air - to the gray we all see in this converging heavens From this industrial sewage drains to the tobacco fields the trees lift from the ground funneling energy from the clouds. I'm on this rippling street And I think i'm lifeless a hex to the all the beauty of colour a hissing in my shoes they begin to race by you to get to me Do they see a man, a skeleton, or invisibility? And the Wolf Shakes In a camera's view I am the tortoise When hidden away I can be the hare With whistles, dry kisses, and dangerous fixes I can suddenly be the crushed worm. I feel the hierarchy of changing the wind cracks these castles to rubble And you dream of the vicious and you dream of the gentle warmth in the shelters when the wolf shakes. Eventually, the Winter will slip through Those cracks and eternally We feel we become the peasant's meal The bears begin knocking and Goldilocks is illuminated Always hiding like the scared child When it begins thundering the war sirens. The bullets, the bombs Squeezing like the boa even when we run The parades become eerie and the howling sounds like hell Tight and abusive, the frightening smiles and nods those demons drink in the rain and leave us all thirsty with endless clouds still bleeding. Imagine the harps and flirtations of the angels only to be tricked by the chivalry of the devil I see the spit of poison reflecting up - from the bottom of a wineglass. And God can be the illustrator when you are fearful when tasting of the bread and the Holy Bible is a straitjacket to whisper you back to sanity. These wars were made for men certainly not made for love the damages have painted a death, for the wash. Now the washing away. The floods finally have come. Wiping away the hoax of the drifters in these torrents to rebuild our trenches where we can desire to live again When will that wolf leave. will the sheep ever get to play? Leonard Cohen's Ghost To dance, dance, sway, just sway with all the Gods, the ghosts, the deities that we pray to. Restless orbs hovering through my bedroom. On the walls that they call home. In their wooden eyes and popcorn ceiling shedding I feel a leaky roof's carcass form an IV drip of falling rain On the bed sheets, on my cold Manhattan muscles with all the holiness, the prophets, and the seers - that surround Drinking the electricity from my blood. In my slumbers I see the hereafter In windows bonded by straps Paralyze my brain to a schizophrenic trap Patch myself back with apologies and prayers the Soul keeps straying to and from this thin layer between me and the concrete sky In this room lives the melancholia Reflections of Orion and all my visions, Judases, and the disease - in synthesis My bones fail, and muscles endlessly ache they crack and break 'til I cease to be Being an old man dressed in yesterday's fashion. I sleep in my suit, with another suit for pillows to cushion The opium that fills me begins to possess me when it becomes night. I may be left abandoned, yet you want to steal my soul. You reach from the floor and present my death as Christmas Day. I have your stains in my DNA, And your perversions scarred in my brain I looked to you during grief and hunger And you, the angel, the woman, the saint - the kiss Gave me a drink from my flask on the worst of days I retire away from your memory. Where can I find the safety again of family? In New York the rats know you by your name. And you gamble with them in Central Park Drink your coffee with the visions of Virgin Mary the herald angels we Hark! I begin to dream away a crystallizing of waterfalls the moving mountains on my deathbed calls. My children have all left the buzzing city I have grown skinny, skinnier every day with this beard always itching. The room feels like it's a melting paste. And I sketch all the martyrs, my family, and founding fathers And I pray to a wisp of light that shatters against the lamp post. In all of its fury, I meditate through this path I confess to a mass of angels lifting away the flames from my soul. I want salvation as I see the jetlines of Leonard Cohen's ghost. Smoke Halos in Endless Winters The infatuation with you was immediate You complimented me on my shirt Your tanned skin danced with the sunlight for the Summer As I sit in admiration for you in the crackling dirt. I infected myself, haunt myself with your routine. Day after day the ring on your finger seemed to be on display. How you cried in your loneliness and longing. And I wanted to be the shadow that meditates in your soul. In coffeehouses we roamed The same crowd of people we knew I wanted to draw you closer Your heart belonged frozen to a soldier's march in a sick hue of blue. Even when he screams You sat as the trophy on his shelf. There was a line of men like me some had love in their mind, others were just bawdy Many admirers left blushing at the parties and in the silence And in the New Year's trips I was hanging on to my sanity from the tip of your lips I wish mine were. And I would cry for your nomadic footprints That I lost and battled myself to find And every time I thought you have found clarity The green pebbles from the red, Then you became a borderline aurora My body thrown in the piles of dead, just another audit for the cemetery. You would come home in tears, a distance My arms still open many months for your embrace. After months of your endless nights and dark mornings The smoke halos above an Alaskan bay. I'd hope for the energy of my heart to be revived I wanted to charm your broken one from the ashes in your shoes. I would hint annoyingly trying to drag out a smile. And you would hide behind a mask of newspaper I would write you poetry, and I bled out my blues I would ask for a dance though I didn't know how I would gladly try even if my legs were be broken. If at the end you were the ultimate prize. I would've danced my tears to a drought I would've lifted you up above the clouds And touched the wings of the angels to revive us from the Earth's shutting crust And the younger years become a dusting. And full of those hearts stuck paralyzed. The strings of years form on my forehead A husband and a father And I know you are around I still feel the fighting of those ghosts I feel you are battling them also though the nomads walk begins to slow. The footprints of Winter now have a home. The Shrinks and Street Heroin From the morgue you seem restful, finally Your blonde hair, blue eye German swirls became languished From the battles of Berlin and Cologne You walk like the death of magic. The rain dissolves in your palms and fades Fall in the puddles of your narcissism and hatred your reflection as withered as your health the death of the superego and the icy stared pupils. The needles came from everywhere and you collected them all as if they had value and all your shrinks kept pushign you closer to the brink. Your fashion became flooded like the blood in the plunger. They inject the dye and lies And you swim in a coma through the streets - of this dying city. While all the boys would watch you like a sunset You quietly regress as the opium drips from the tap. Soon you befriend the devil But you say you hugged Jesus You've brought flowers for the enemies And you dreamt up an artistic sewer. There are weird, wicked & wonderful snails That lay on the concrete in your heart And they just want you to feed them the freedom From the points of lust in needles With their many injections and ejections. So let us travel to your voyage The withdrawals and we surround you like all the pneumonia Pounds, pounds your lungs Pounds, pounds your breath baby, baby, baby the palpitations, the scarring, the stench Living life like the jagged nails on a bench. become dispensable. Not bathing in oils anymore sleeping naked on the bathroom floor Your shrink now has an unlisted number No longer the fresh breeze in your decay of all art and poetry the mortality surrendered Permanently in my doorway is your dark shadow. An Ode to Tessa While in New York The juveniles gathered around your blinds They studied your silhouette to memory Dancing like Ann-Margret around the room The candles burning around a 1985 waterbed. On New York city nights one of the college boys in the alley Looking for a clue and a view You'd walk out slightly drunk, smiling at crowds of boys with eyes that were up to no good. Riding a green bicycle to the Jackson Hole your scent of sweet cigarette smoke and perfume, leads the path to a perfect follow Maybe I will come down and have a drink While you chat about the news to some hipster folks I see you flirting with them all. Everyone laughs until we bruise my heart just jumps like a petrified fish. I have to walk by and say a hello Although, there were more handsome faces in the shadows. I hope to at least be more hypnotic than the stained spoons - in this diner. You say "I am Tessa, but I believe you already know that" I introduced myself, she said "I've always liked your artsy hat" We drank coffee 'til our stomachs bled. And I was as shy as a detached bubble. You carried the conversations, lead my hand Picking flowers out of the cracked sidewalks near Brooklyn Lead my hand, as we joined silhouettes As the other jealous hustlers sat in the rain. Lead my hand, through other diners with scent of burnt coffee. Drinking our time away we would be catty, flirty & bitchy Tessa, you really enhanced my greed and need In nights I swayed with you Nights we cried into each other's chest Nights we drugged ourselves to nightmares Nights we laughed until the extra strangers left Now, in New York here I am Long distances between the walks in all the boroughs All the pigeons, drink at cold waters the Statue of Liberty looks plagued. Since my needs are old When you lead my hand, to the bars You lead my hand, by all the Harlem diamondbacks You lead my hand, to you breathing your last breath - on the back of my neck. You lived your life for many, but to yourself you hid away all your suicides. Featured photo/art by Geoffrey Wren Wolfpack Contributor EIC Bios: David L O’Nan & HilLesha O’Nan Wonderful Artwork from Avalanches in Poetry Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen by artist/writer Geoffrey Wren
