The art is hidden for now. I have obeyed too long.
I feel frozen. While my possession eats the heat.
Where have you gone? Slid behind the clouds?
Perfumed doors. Rooms go from stale to rancid blindness.
I feel bloodless. Accidental and lost a shine. Pale funeral songs.
The black dresses are now my misery
These, that dance above me twisting. Swing dancing into a hex.
All ghosts, all witchery.
Former waves that blew the knives over us and dared us to swim the lake.
Dim are my eyes and bones that have chalked.
As Jacques sings "Ma mort attend comme"
I hold all the flowers, I hold all the crippled photographs.
Elderly and young photos. Fortune tellers in the clouds.
Deafening light from outside. I want the puniness of a weak night.
No hardening storm. No flooding streets and screaming thunder.
They, the geese she'd use to fly over me. I felt lucky to have them.
A new direction. To escape them. To escape him. To escape the cage of screams.
Those 8 Geese of Hanover that kept hovering me.
My guardian angels I would welcome them to my melting wax home.
I wonder now if they were truly demon. Explosions, the apple and all.
As now alone and severed I feel that they are the same as these hauntings.
I watch 8 black dresses hover over me now.
But they in these garments, they bite. The geese have transitioned their colours.
I awake to scissor teeth marks on my skin. So they are heaving to me the curse. Still. The Curse. Always that curse.
Do holy bibles hiss?
Is my god a blonde bombshell?
Is my god a tornado?
Is my god a magical bearded fabulous genius?
Is my god a chirping cricket?
Is my god a newborn baby?
Is my god a morphine drip?
My revelation is a promise?
Le deuxième ange sonna de la trompette
befitting. closing eyes.
staring into darkness, rippled waters I feel in the air of this room.
Leave the lake, become my misery.
In this room that pain stares at me.
Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.
There he is
I see him under pelts of hailstones
A riddled mind and diseased by doctors
the icy rain pulsing little cuts
All over and over again.
I'm still in a quiet thought
We always felt the ending.
Or at least I have seen this ending.
In nightmares every night
The men festive from the jail.
Mother, a stereotype. Needing an exorcism.
There he is
My brother, a little hushed baby of 25.
Shoes as split as a peeled banana.
His coloring of blue, like the river nearby.
Like the breeze that blows through his long haired, daredevil boy.
He was hideous in his battle
Popping firework amphetamine pills, dragons watch the alleys.
The abusive and abused in corners and in jars.
Oh, lonesome traveler
a blood kissed jewel.
Some crows sing in their broken voices, they sit atop the bells.
They fly in the air, they congregate in the tree above. The sick hickory
I watch with no blink as they rescue him from the cold ground.
For only a few long hours and then they just return him back
to give him a comfortable dirty sack.
Underground, where they'll whisper out your sins to each other.
We can't escape the gossip.
Gossip clumsily falls like a slinky missing a step along the way.
The steps that are missed however, are remembered for coming up with the best stories.
Your best demise.
Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.
So I find myself alone after a night of separation
A Black night lit up over our green chairs.
Now empty, no longer filled by our bodies
and our conversations, sits like ghosts
My God! this night has moon lit on fire.
I was the first to vanish from your anger.
Your white lightning skin wrapped in the moon rays,
as you paddled insults to my heart.
You will never let me feel the honey.
To let my lungs wrap up in the stickiness.
The mosquitoes and the bees begin to sleep with a thirst.
Will a new man let you swim in that undertow?
The Chimes they cling together by the swirling winds.
The clashing waves pour onto your cracked toes from Lake Seneca.
Several hours of dancing some unnamed waltz.
On your hideaway beach that wasn't hours.
That is what the prophet tells me.
Stabbed in waiting while the hymns carry my ghost away from my body.
I listen with dim sleeping eyes. The boats in the distance belt out
tunes. I drain in this loneliness. The weakness, rustic in scowl.
Blood over the beads of rocks. Listened to the wind blow once.
Listened to the wind blow twice. It was a disguise.
Converged pure from my polluted brain. The narcissists was wiry and sudden and overtook my neglected heart. Infested a brain.
The Empath dies in the end.
Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.The Tranquil Sun by Vipanjeet Kaur
The sun sits tranquilly
over the western horizon
at dusk,
His charioteer slows down
and pauses for a while
After traversing the whole sky.
While riding the chariot of dusk,
He smiles a last fading smile –
A farewell gesture;
A token of eternal love;
A parting kiss
to the dying day.
While folding millions of his
imponderable arms of rays
that pervade the world
throughout the day,
He draws the blinds of
his effulgence down
before night,
Like a mourner,
saluting the passing day.
Beyond the picket fence
of my mansion,
The one-eyed overseer
rings the bell of repose
and looks at me
through crimson windows,
imparting a rosy aureole
to my dormant hopes,
and like a dreamcatcher
promising vernal dreams.
A fervent plea in his closing eye
to release the unrealised dreams of
the dying day: broken, dead and decayed
in the autumn of dusk.
Let them burn
on the pyre of the setting light,
Let the sombre red embers
reduce them softly to ashes
with the deepening darkness of dusk,
Let them dissolve in the darkness of night,
Let the cremains of despair be immersed
in the flowing silver moonlight
before a new dawn begins
a new chariot ride.
Bio: Ms. Vipanjeet Kaur from India is a poet fond of writing poems on various themes like nature, women empowerment, self, spiritualism and life. Her haikus have been featured in the international online journals like Haiku Dialogue of The Haiku Foundation, The Haiku Pond, The Cold Moon Journal and the Scarlet Dragonfly Journal and her micropoetry has been published in the Five Fleas (Itchy Poetry). She has also read research papers on the topics of Literature, Human Rights and Women Empowerment in a few national seminars and international conferences.
She can be followed on Twitter @vjpoeticmusings.
Fevers by Matthew Freeman
And I’ve said there’s no difference
between the streetlamp and the moon.
And that’s still true, but now
in late September as everything wanes
I’m sitting outside my sister’s apartment
with my diet soda and my cigarette and my iPod
watching the crowd get thin at Ted Drewes
and every little thing we believed in fall apart.
Someday when the sun burns out you’ll ask yourself
whether you stayed true, really true, to your
feverish desire.
A Poetry Showcase by Matthew FreemanMoonage by Lesley Curwen
Haloed lunacy floats crosshatch beam
through umber cloud and bulrush-crown. Bleak horizon swallows photon-feed
down continents of eyeless waves.
Landward, pines guard empty chairs
against moon's threat, a pump-song
chuckles chlorine, muddles jets
of aquamarine gems.
Poetry based on photography “The Lone Road to Moloka’I” from Maggs ViboPoetry based on photography Challenge from Ankh Spice pt. 1
Bio: My name is Lily Maureen O’Nan. I am a genderfluid transfeminine writer, artist, musician, and a double major in sociology and psychology with a minor in gender studies. I’m also multiply neurodivergent, but place emphasis on Autism. I am the sister of David O’Nan. My pronouns are they/them and she/her. I write a variety of genres, and have one self-published book entitled Cracked Around the Edges. https://transdisciplinaryneurodiversity.blogspot.com/2022/03/name-is-lily-maureen-onan-and-i-am.html?sm_au=iVVrZppJZf6F0kVMHtJqHK0qJ6jF1 Twitter @LilyMONan
1. When did you start writing and whom influenced you the most?
Lily: I started writing philosophical rants down on paper when I was 14 or 15 after being told I think existentially by my therapist at the time. Soon after, I started writing my signature stream-of-consciousness poetry, which has evolved significantly over the years. I have always been most influenced by Beat literature, so I would say that Kerouac created the foundation for me to become the writer that I am today, however, more recently, I would say Ada Hoffman has been a huge influence on me and got me interested in the genre of speculative fiction written by Autistic authors.
2. Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
Lily: Honestly, I have somewhat known that I wanted to be a writer since I was a teenager, but I did not fully commit to writing completely until I went back to university, published my first book, and started work on more projects. After having won a scholarship for a grant that I wrote for about disability and adversity, I feel like an accomplished writer in academia, and that gave me more confidence to work on my own personal writings.
3. Who has helped you most with writing and career?
Lily: I would have to say that my book would not have been published if I did not have my nesting partner, Jessica, as co-editor to format the book correctly. I also have to thank my brother, David, for being a strong support, and the late Bill Sovern for giving me a stage when I needed it.
4. Where did you grow up and how did that influence you? Have any travels influenced your work?
Lily: I grew up in a very small town in Kentucky called Sebree and it influences a lot of my work, as it was not a pleasant place to live, so I had to use many forms of escapism to deal with the trauma, therefore, it is reflected in my work a lot. I also spent a short time in New Orleans growing up, and that has also had a significant influence on my work because it gave me a taste of various cultures and subcultures that I would have otherwise not been introduced to. As far as travels go, Chicago has indirectly influenced my work through a past polyamorous relationship that did not work out as planned.
5. What do you consider your most meaningful work creatively to you?
Lily: My most meaningful work has yet to be published, but it would have to be a flash speculative fiction piece that I wrote. Most of my poetry is untitled.
6. Favorite activities to relax?
Lily: I am a voracious reader. When I am not doing schoolwork, I am reading for pleasure or developing my social life more. Listening to music and social media are other ways I choose to relax, and honestly, I write to relax at times.
7. What is your favorite line/stanza/lyric from your writing?
Lily: I cannot reveal my favorite line from my writings, as the piece has not been published yet.
8. What kind of music inspires you the most? What is a song or songs that always come back to you as an inspiration?
Lily: I would have to say that I am most inspired by industrial and folk music. There are quite a few songs that come to mind as an inspiration, such as “Venus in Furs” by The Velvet Underground and “Waitin’ Around to Die” by Townes van Zandt. Lately, I have been listening to “History is Everyone’s Fuck” by Street Sects a lot and it is inspiring me to want to start a new music project.
9. Do you have any recent or upcoming books, music, events, projects that you would like to promote?
Lily: I am working on a book of poetry, a collection of flash speculative fiction, a memoir, and possibly a book of essays. I read poetry at The Bokeh Lounge, and you can more than likely find me at Poetry Speaks. I have read there during the past two events. I am also considering starting a new music project.
Bonus Question: Any funny or strange occurrence you’d like to share during your creative journey?
Lily: I got mistaken for a friend of mine at Poetry Speaks while being called to the stage, so that was kind of humorous.
Ever since I remember as a little boy
my grandmother much younger than I actually thought
She appeared to be lost and looking for the lost sunset all day
Another cloud goes by and she smiles and says "it is about to become really pretty out here."
She would sit in on a knotted wood framed chair and watch her world disappear as the moon came out to remind her for a moment of who she is. As she twisted some twine together hoping to someday make more blankets and sweaters.
The woman with style at the 1950's ballroom halls.
The men would look and she'd flash her ring
A quick look at her military man in a picture frame. Smiling in the dust that buries the room. Her yellow wedding dress sits in the attic.
She remembers the walks in the park with her lost friends.
She remembers the children as they were children.
She remembers the kicking and jumping, the twirls of immortality.
By the beach she would splash for hours with a wagging tail dog.
She remembers the endless fashions she would help mature a town from rags to class.
She looks blank and cries to a mass of blanket that she has been working on for weeks.
Was that military man remembered for his drunkened slams of fists against the walls?
The accusations he'd proclaim as he ran with the mice in packs to the whores and sweating out Sunday mornings. Dripping, stained and stinking in a plaid jackets.
I have to calm her down. I play the "The Nutcracker" on a record player, as she masks herself back into a ballet. She begins to sway arms slowly but surely. I feel she is on that endless dancefloor again.
Or was she ever? Was she just imagining a time when she was free again?
About 6 months later I had lost this Angel to the dance away. The sunsets would always come. Even in the darkest of storms.
She'd say on her last days " I want to Remember You, but I can't" " I want to know all children and tell them not to be afraid"
Now i'm in my 40's I see another older woman. Struggling to remember most days. Does she mimic this dance? The mother I
always depend on. Will I finally have to learn to be myself? I wait for the sunset for hours by the river. Always curious if she is also looking for that same spinning sunset that seems endless and impeccable and immovable. Has it moved all these years?
Fidgeting with the jute twine. Where can I go hide?
Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.I Am Here Veronica by Pasithea ChanI went to see you yesterday like I do every weekend, but like
Always we’ve just met over lunch, and I have to introduce
Myself to you and tell you all about me once again.
Hell is when you look at me doubtfully
Even though I know you feel me trying to
Reach out to you and reassure you that
Even if you forget me I will never forget you.
Vivid fails to describe how witty and colorful you are in
Everything you do from how you show me your hairpins to how you
Reminisce the good days when you used to paint
Out in the backyard and talk about how you met the love of your life.
Never did I imagine I would have to explain why he can’t come and see you
I have to find the strength to not grab you and tell you I miss you
Cause it hurts so much to remind you that I love you with
All my heart and give you back some of the pieces you’ve lost.
Author’s Notes: Acrostic spelling I Am Here Veronica, inspired by the song “ Veronica” by Elvis Costello.
Fevers of the Mind 