Bending Rivers – Fevers of the Mind

Poetry by David L O’Nan : Where Do I Leave?

Where Do I Leave?

I met you in the death to skin fires In sticky pits full of fallen stars A dark red-curtained nauseous room with the moonlit hissing Your room is a dying egg shell white bleeding angel artwork, the Mona Lisa convulses off the walls. You broke my eggs to the Dirty Three the yolk is a permanent black crisping to wet dirty cement, Breathing up from the ground To paralyze me to this memory Pause, run, running I feel homeless Fainting to your lectures You fed me pills and secrets You harshly took my heart out, and drained it like a sponge. I have to escape this, I have to escape this, I have to escape this, These claws that grip I have to escape this, I have to keep running from this, I have to escape this, So fast from the macabre The claws that rip The hands of knives want to purge me into the holes, To fall in, and smell the sourness of a body That sweats away the alcohol That dances out all her dirty arrogance. The few that swim out The feeling I have to swim out I’ve got to swim out, This drowning, This drowning, Is closing in, I’m forever changed by your tattooing Left me in tears Leave me scared Leave me feeling sick and departed From my mind Leave me blushing in with fevers and leave in a hypnotic taboo. I drove away When you didn’t want me to I drove away Because I had to I drove away From this Kentucky Mountain Medusa In an alcoholic veil Mentally bruising Mentally washed Mentally forever wondering Mentally i’m ashamed When you were the one drawing all of the lines. In my car I try to scream But I can’t In my car I try to breathe But I can’t In my car I drive faster than the speed I drive into the black hole eyes of the road. Like chaos in the melting snow and the violins play louder “I Knew it Would Come to This” Again Paralyzed when the sky blackened The road feels like a lost tunnel with these, dim lights.

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

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren

Bending Rivers: The Poetry & Stories of David L O’Nan out now!

Poetry: The Parody King’s Castle by David L O’Nan

The Parody King’s Castle

I'm a troubled man.
I've got snakes in my head.
Persecuted for living out of my bed.
I've got nails in my hands,
from the day that I got crucified.

I can sleep with no worries.
Now the day has come that I've passed.
I look a lot better now.
I look years younger now it seems.
I feel a deep calm.
I feel like I've unlocked the chains.

I burned away the evil demons that were attached to my soul.
I caught a burning thought and saved it for my own.
Beware of my skin,
I've grown very thin.

I'm wasting away,
My bones are all that is left from my sins.
You wonder where I went
You thought that I went away,

Never imagined,
I could fall all the way down.
The path of hidden resentment to the world that took my crown.

I was living in a shallow tomb.
The weight was too heavy to shake loose the closing casket.
So, I just let it close, unpursued.

The mind being sketched over.
With images of the lies, the cheating.
Connected the dots on my skull with a pen dipped in the filth,
The sorrows in the soil.

Memories being erased, questions I must ponder.
Childhood electrocuted out of my cranium.
I am only a child in my heart,
The heart is growing smaller,
And more porous from the holes that has been cut by the lies,

the cheating.
The long fingernails emerging from air, vanishing
Then sinking into our internals.
Prayers to find my inner self
Prayers that were unanswered, my inner self decides to yell.

I was yelling out of the sands of a lost September day.
When I had unity, feeling free, no worries, no decay.
Months passing, unity split, new fears.
Fears of betrayal,
The ensuing betrayal with clarity of manipulation.

It wasn't me who took the first bite
You were hungry, hungry for new blood, new skin to run across your own,
The new man to make you scream,
To make you feel fine.
Leaves you banging at the door and begging for more.

Laughing down onto you, over your natural being.
Eyes beaming for that certain glow.

Are the tears real, are they mechanically grown?
Caught up in the rapture,
the thrills of seeds being sewn.

A cold, cold man now
Ears tingling through series of codes
Will I screw up this, will I screw up that?
I'm sure I'll pay a price
Standing at the gate, leery of gatekeepers.
They are begging for one more slice.

Now here I am with frosty breath moving slow motion across my lips.
Feeling so cold laying in this dirt.
I've got serpents and insects crawling through my new lair.
I bought this new kingdom for the price of a lost soul.
It was cheap considering the condition the body was left in.

Now fly away to the unknown, or to a Heaven?
Let the birds and angels bring your wings.
So that you can carry on as someone who wouldn't dare to have known hate.
Try again,
never trying any harder to never choke.

In reluctancy of caring after the thoughts are permanently blinded.
The relaxation is now for grief
Everyone can now leach onto the stinging release.
Time will go on, hell may not.

Falling away, black hole.
Wet muddy tumbling ground I fold.
Leave me with a lullaby as a chaser, relief of doubts.
A new day brings life to some of us,
the lying, the cheating

To a crownless king it brings one last sleep.

Hard Rain Poetry Anthology U.S. Link https://tinyurl.com/2p938cy8
International links on this page. https://feversofthemind.com/2022/06/23/hard-rain-poetry-forever-dylan-anthology-available-today/

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren

Poetry from David L O’Nan in the Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers

The return & revised version of “New Disease Streets” by David L O’Nan Poetry and stories

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

Poetry from David L O’Nan : Tumbleweed Corner

Tumbleweed Corner

from books "The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers" and "Bending Rivers"

Buried hearts at Tumbleweed Corner.
The thistles split apart bad men as they choke.

Santa Fe, on a hot New Mexico morning.
The jury decided to hang the man.
The creeps,
They follow with chisels, with rope.

A chilling smile,
Their creepy walk.
Like a dictator marching from their tomb.
Cuff marks leaving my hands raw and sore.

Dry air sucked in,
That dust,
That failure.
On the septic trails,
My dusty boots enriched in blood.
From a man that found his soul.
He was lost forever from his native Ohio.

He met his demise here in New Mexico when -
The sunrise began to drop dead heat on the wagons -
during our horses first meal of the morning.
The lonely man,
He was enamel
bare to the shaking,
the menacing inevitable.
Once he saw my hatchet teeth,
My bull rope eyes
He was just collecting horseshoes off dirty roads.
Those cloudy roads named in honor of befallen heroes.

As I sat there, judgment awaiting.
The judge sweats the sun's breath.
Moving his body into a boring inertial state.

He's a rock
And will not change.
His mind is predetermined
My lifeforce begins to drip.
To image itself as melting metal.
The toughness,
I become a shy child.
The people look at me with evil intentions.
Purity no more in their Christian hearts.

They wait to see my remorse.
My sunburnt face with the boils,
The leather chapped cheeks
The flaming sticks for a nose,
The ears that are dark and hidden like a tunnel.
The face that can't find the guilt.
I've been ripped away from my internal being.

I can only hiccup memories to the brain
The crying mornings,
Under this town's smoldering bridge.
Almost every morning.

They grab me by the stale leaf hair.
Pull my hungered body to the bird-shit ground.
The smell is now of old crusts and ashes.
That hot New Mexico sun has been burning -
my skeleton chest through my flannel shirt,
My bank robber legs through my tattered jeans
The sun poisoned my mind to obscenity.

I'm clinging to you,
Clinging to your thistles, Lord
I've eaten from all the ratty coffee cans too long.
I spit out all the ashes
Of all the dreamers.
Just rake away.

Tired of the spirits of those
I've killed for green greed, awakening me
Kissing the blade of the machete
A sorrow of laughter,
And then disappearances into -
The nocturnal rib of the air

Tumbleweed Corner is now heartless.

Those that were buried are now walking
They become the zombie vision,
Thieves that stole back their dignity.

My soul is left for scavengers.
Drag me away like rags.
Empty with the scars
To bury me in the gut of stars.

Eternally trying not to fall to the fires below.

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

Bending Rivers: The Poetry & Stories of David L O’Nan out now!

Poetry from David L O’Nan in the Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers

Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren

The return & revised version of “New Disease Streets” by David L O’Nan Poetry and stories

Poetry: Walls by David L O’nan

Walls

The thought of kissing you
was interrupted
when the river formed a curious wall.

Trying to disappear,
we were helpless
When it pushed us to the streets.

Hour after hour of resistance
Our chilled bodies,
bones growing old.

We swam toward the fires
After every tear,
every downstroke

I looked into your eyes
You were so scared,
filled with fear,

but you wouldn't take my hand
About a minute later you found an exit
In the skin of the moon we rested.

I sung you a song that you've never heard
You began to blush,
but soon regretted it.

You climbed off
clutching a star
You said you must get back home.

The land is dry there,
I can trust there
I can rest alone.

So, I laid back down
Ears hearing those sad songs
you've never heard before.

After a while the moon's surface -
became so wooden,
my splintered skin had to leave.

I climbed onto the back of a lonesome comet
That brought me home to my lonely midnight fall
When I landed,
I couldn't walk

I just
innocently began to crawl
The ground...
it felt so wet and dirty.
It was like boredom and slime

Finally, home I poured myself a cup of coffee,
my mind was already racing
My mind wouldn't let go of your smile.

My heart was being held a prisoner by patience
I laid my stolen head down to think some more
I thought I saw the first hint
of the season's sunshine.

So, I walked closer to the window
I began to envision you
as an angel holding me up high.

When I got closer,
only past ghosts looking at me
Taunting me with light.

So, I transformed back into the gravel and dirt
Never knowing the invention of hills
would soon give birth to mountains.

Looking over my shoulder
The pale ladybug crawling on the curtain -
is shy to the wind.

Breath becoming more intense,
she doesn't even budge
Sort of reminded me of you

And you’re blind to love’s eyes
laying stagnant in the winds of the past.

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

Bending Rivers: The Poetry & Stories of David L O’Nan out now!

Poetry from David L O’Nan in the Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers

Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren

The return & revised version of “New Disease Streets” by David L O’Nan Poetry and stories

Poetry: Butterflies and Manifestations by David L O’Nan – Bending Rivers

BUTTERFLIES AND MANIFESTATIONS

There was a time
When I had an existence
We were the Roses
In fields with the butterflies
A Masterpiece
Manifestations followed by
The wilting, just weeds
Infestations
Butterflies spread across the crispness
Of the ground
Through it all sticks and the snakes
The moments of life
Beats your reflections
Upon oneself
All the hugs in 20 quick seconds
All the kisses in a flash of cloud to ground lightning
The moments of the attempts play like a 4 hour movie
The pills, the Crashing to the floor
Revived, prayers you have to rip from the mud.
Just to see your reflection
After another infestation
See yourself in precious waters
Pulled petals and thorns scattered
In the forms of scrambled tombstone etchings
Battles in love, beauty in achievements
When you stabbed your self-doubts
And you felt fragrant, and you could attract a crowd of dandelions whom thought they were Hollywood.
Make the proud moment reflections last longer,
God please
When I’m holding my babies
Not accepting being one of the masses of Roses
I feel the drowning of my mind
Being held down into another ditch
Another infestation
Butterflies scurry to a truth
A Masterpiece in true waters
A welcoming warm stare of the Nymphaea Nelumbo
May I feel comfort resting in this blanket of grass
Resting under twilight
Stars of God
Lift me into light
I can fully encompass the reflections
The last days of diseases that withered me to bone and plastic skin
I can see that I like everyone had moments of being a Masterpiece
That flew with the butterflies
A crowding of love
Purging ideas that there were infestations at all, and what was claustrophobia
Was just blind tremors
And tricks of sin
That oozed out the poisons
And scooped up, in handfuls and drank in by your own soul
When scared and resistant