Bending Rivers – Page 2 – Fevers of the Mind

Poem by David L O’Nan Writing Suicide Notes in the Bluebird

Writing Suicide Notes in the Bluebird

(this version originally published in Elephants Never December 2019)

I was writing on notebook paper
Red-bumped tongue sticking like glue to the roof of a dry mouth
December weakens me
My bones and all my thoughts
Can’t dream in the pillars of orgasms
When our ecosystems begin crashing in declining health

I freeze to your scars
And grew hungry in all of your fears
The stairs and the elevators
The storms and the sun

While around me walks all the men in current disguise
They seem to have decided to join the Ted Bundy billionaire boys club
Suave and sadistic, leave women puking or pouting
I stand upon a damnation hill
Watching the moon fail me, to bring a slight light to the loneliness
As my pen weakens in ink.
Thoughts begin to melt over the table like a shot snowman onto the windshield
Of frosted over flash,
Streetlamps coughed dim light over white pruned-in roads
Mushed in and slick

While the feeling of we all die dance like a parade
That is not a lie as we hold the umbrella and march
Sometimes, we can cartoon our own demise
We can shovel the dirt
Missile into our lungs the cold breath
The air of an avalanche lingers over our heads

All of the loves I’ve had
Are banshees of screams
That are cynical in their echoes
The beauties, the art, the maniacal inkblots
The dresses always sway off into the wind
Becoming bare skeletons that merged into a God-claw cloud
Away from me at least,
In their own heaven
In their own world wherever that could be
With other voices that know more poetry than I
That sing sweeter than the last drop of red wine
It’ll hit the glass

I would kneel these weak legs down to prayer
Only to feel the spikes
And God was left baffled by the shaky knees
As you try to lead love back to a lie
Your bravery feels lost
And look at the cost
Now look whose skeleton is beginning to show through
Your bare soul, do you have a claw to reach for?

I look down to the letter
It is empty of content
And the body is hungry
Stomach feels crippled
Order the special
Worry about the demise on
A different lunch hour.

 “Before the Bridges Fell” by me David L O’Nan Poetry book is out today on Cajun Mutt Press

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!

Bio: David L O'Nan is a poet, short story writer, editor living in Southern Indiana.  He is the editor for the Poetry & Art Anthologies "Fevers of the Mind Poetry and Art. and has also edited & curated other Anthologies including 2 inspired by Leonard Cohen and an upcoming one inspired by Bob Dylan. He has self-published works under the Fevers of the Mind Press "The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers" "The Cartoon Diaries" & "New Disease Streets" (2020). A compilation of 4 books "Bending Rivers" a micro poem collection "Lost Reflections" and new book "Before the Bridges Fell" (look under books tab in Amazon) under Cajun Mutt Press & "His Poetic Last Whispers" (2022)  David has had work published in Icefloe Press, Dark Marrow, Truly U, 3 Moon Magazine, Elephants Never, Royal Rose Magazine, Spillwords, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cajun Mutt Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Voices From the Fire.  Twitter is @davidLONan1 and for the book @feversof     Join Facebook Group: Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Arts Group .   Facebook Author page DavidLONan1   and goodreads page is https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18366060.David_L_O_Nan

Poetry: Monet’s Trees by David L O’Nan

photo by Adora Goodenough (altered)

MONET’S TREES

We speak as if death,
as a reflection of shade
As we navigate in the circles of sunlight
As miracles of breath
Miracles of Mother Nature
The trees of a Monet painting
Have become real
We become bearers of our sins
To discuss, to confess
Confessions to the caverns of bark
Eaten away at,
We lay in the comfort of cold ground and confess
To the lace ripped from the corner of an orange moon
The days of strange
By the riverfronts
Watching little devils form in the ripples of water
We met each other
As soldiers of war
Soldiers of mental scarring
We met each other
From dust to blood
Battle-wound confessions
Blood of the dawn
Paints the tears to my skin
One with my pores

Can you feel the burning?
All the reflexes in a burning

Tremor
Confessions
When we whisper lies to celebrate infamous moments
Celebration of ego
In radical boredom
The moments we walked on the bridges of bone
To climb the highest mountain to touch the hands of God
Superiority complex, confess
That you are lost in a possession of spirit
The caverns of bark, to climb through
And let the animals, tunnel through
Nibbling at the periderm
Confess more
Were you satisfied with the awakening of madness?
As it spread, fires across lakes of thought
Confess to the artist that sketches into your brain
Confess to the colors that swirl in your mind
Greens, browns, grays
What shall the Rhytidome be?
When confessing to the caverns of bark
In a blending of Monet’s Trees

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!

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

Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!

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

There Have Been Strange Men Coming Down Here: poetry by David L O’Nan

There Have Been Strange Men Coming Down Here

The bugs on windowsills
like a little camera,
the skirts lay dirty across the basement
loose chess pieces
after madness ended the game.

I wear this glove of a ghost over my skin
The soul still preaches out cynical waves
the bars on the windows
as cold as the haughty icing that caresses its pane.
while the pain is grenades during a beautiful hymn.

Play bashful to the soul takers
bless me with the blankets
not the smothering ones
bless me with the cradling 
and visions of the temple.

Don't leave me prone to the majestic
I want the sour to be removed
and the spell crippled away by Jesus Christ

and Violas playing for me forever
let me forget that there have been

Strange Men coming down here.

Minutes after my shadows dissolved with the night. 

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 stories 

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: A Centipede in a Blizzard by David L O’Nan

A Centipede in a Blizzard

 
Paralyzing tracks in the stacks of snow
A centipede in a blizzard
Dragging broken legs, frozen and falling off
As the wind is full of laughter
These shadows have sucked up the kill,
my venom
Now, the picnics are a funeral
My dreamscape is now a graveyard
In which you stare to the heavens
Sitting by my tombstone
You watched me wither like melting butter
I am not a saint, but I was washed into purity
Yet, you sit as an eternal witch
Can you take the falling of the black rubies?
Can you drink the toxins from the fruit?
Do you feel the long breaths begin to putt… putt…putter?
Are friends beginning to suspect you of all these fires, baby?
You wake up to a crawling, cold spider dragging to the floor
The phone keeps ringing
like a haunting stain of air
In ways I have always been your skeleton
A Strong, calcified soul
that you could always see thru
Forget your infamous night
The prayer for a rebirth
A limping leg and a heartbreak of whistling wind
The clearing is nearby
Forgiveness to pale fires
Is rebirth the cure?
Evict the liars bell-toll
No soul, a rebirth of a savage
Watch for the tumbleweed 

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

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

Honey-Texas by David L O’Nan (short story/poetry)

photo by Glen Carrie (Unsplash)

Honey-Texas

Honey is
Dreaming the life of a millionaire
Born to a trailer park
She always felt lonely in her painted golden lawn chair.
Never to be a thief in her dreams.
Torn apart each night by the ghosts that lived inside her mind,
That cut away the demons living inside the skin of her meat.
Morons whistling by the windows each night,
While prowling through town
The personification of the creeps.

Will she ever feel like a princess?
Or even a woman again?
Honey, you’ll have to forget that you didn’t follow him down to Texas
He is just a memory to a gurgling beating heart.
As you cry into stale factory air pollution,
You are still stalking him,
With a poisonous tipped dart
The voodoo of the Spring Equinox.
And the clouds were pissing,
She awoke inside the tickling of the alarms
And then the whisper of a twister
Bound her to her sleep paralysis bed.
The clouds began laughing within her
It became that demonic orange-lit room.
Night sweats have deformed her bed into a fevered lake.
Bubbling up infestations of banshees.
Moments of lost lusting opportunities.
“Honey, you should have followed him down to Texas”
They say your energy fights your soul.
You are beginning to miss the medicine that he fed into your arms.

Your tall drink of water,
He’s bent over crippling with you and the junk clouding in your veins.
The tunnels of a morphine maze,
So, you decided to stay.
Stay to try and help your mother.
Texas couldn’t wait, for a renegade hobo.
Help your mother ignore your father for now.
Watch the bastard come home from the bars.
After factory work, he would bitch.
And throw his fists like a prairie boxer.
Cursing out your mother and threatening the whole Earth.
He’d attempt to fistfight his own shadow
Then collapse into the yellow curtain drapes.
And finally, spend another night crying from jail.
Watching him crumble into the arms of a toilet shadow.
So you put your family on pause.
When you met your own cowboy chewing jerky on the tracks.
Near the greasy pizza shack in the corner of Jefferson and Main.
He was surrounded by his drugstore starlets.
When you first looked into his eyes.
And you saw a burning heaven.
And you felt his naked touch.
He tipped his cowboy hat and offered you exotic sweat.
And you fell in love with all that came with the hissing snake.

“But honey, you didn’t follow him down to Texas”
On Repeat,
Robotic in your mind.
You believed you were his cure.
To saving all his ravaged purity.
You’re stuck in the harbors of crashing nerves.
Like the gunfire of a thunderclap.
On another night, paralyzed to your bed.
Enter the orange-lit room demons,
It felt like you were shooting –
A Colt Mustang into the eyes of a fading sunset.
Try to escape the holy spirit,
You thought you saw the Trinity in a funnel cloud.
So, why do you continue to follow him in circles,
Around the spinning rodeo in your head?
You don’t want to lose your Cult King Cowboy with –
The smile of a dust bowl grim reaper.
“Honey, you didn’t follow him down to Texas”
He packed his ropes in his muddy jeep.
With his cocaine concubines down in Denton,
Sucking the high off his lips.

In your mind he’s still a stolen kiss away.
Those burping heartbeats that you carve in the heartbreaker woods.
Little hearts into stumps
A breath and a fading sigh, until fainting from the power from his eyes.
A cigarette,
Quivering cool around your slender face.
Another night, another nightmare
Awakened by the sickle to your throat.
A shadow man begins fading into walls,
Leaving a caricature in the image of his face.
You lost your breath,
You begin to cough.
The cigarette smoke burns out from the blankets.
The windows begin to peel.
Paint chips to the heads of yesterday’s energetic cockroaches.
You shake out, convulse out all your pain.
Just grab a new blanket.
Wipe the sweaty make-up from your face.
The house glows like a green light on a busy street.
Then the tornado hit the Ohio Riverfront.
You barely faked a tear,
Then the river becomes a wall over your inflammation –
To the damns built in the corners of your eyes.
The river scars like lassos hitting skin.
The mosquitoes die off into the air.
They left nibbling tiny bites,
Over the swamp that is left on your thighs.
A whole body became one with the twister.
A whole inclination surrounded by the blisters.
Left by a violent whip in the shape of Texas.
The wind smashing in doublewides down like an anvil.
Honey, you didn’t follow him down to Texas.
Could you feel this gravely illness in your blood?
Don’t slice away your beauty,
That percolates in the cracks of the clouds