Jess Levens – Fevers of the Mind

“Roman Candles” inspired by Elliott Smith online blog Anthology

Tincture of Opium by David L O’Nan

A  saddle strapped and swallow down the tincture.
Assimilation over these years worth of crashes to curves of corners.

It is much heavier than before
It is much heavier than before
I begin to resemble a caricature of a zombie-
drawn by the superficial you.

Under a slightly warm night sky, barely alive
I was dreaming of you dancing on unbroken bottles.
Then again, they break again, and you're always surprised.

Much heavier than before is the cutting
Much heavier than before is the failing
I watch you fainting out a smile while bleeding away onto the floor.
I watch you believing in which heaven you have restored for this day.

The evolution of the tincture.
What is willing and what is wading
You’ve tried to prove yourself almighty.  But 

It is much heavier than before
It is much much more heavier than before
Wishing I was inside that mind with you.


Poems about Elliott from Afta Gley

Untitled

hillbasement 
musician, from your 
soughtfor transition,
your oblivion ambition, 
may you never, never
land


October 21, 2022

dear Mr. Smith, twelve
years ago I was too sad
to go to work, but

decided to work 
through the depression. there
by the Dumpster: a cat.

who knows? maybe you
guided your namesake to me.
so very grateful 

TWO FROM FOUR DAYS AGO

lighting a candle 
for 34 minutes, youre 
missing Elliott 

nineteen years ago 
I knew everything else 
meant nothing to me 

Elliott Smith waltzed 
with his metaphors, partnered
by no one at all

SO UGLY BEFORE by Lynn Elliott

A great man once proclaimed
He was damaged bad at best
In my heart of hearts
To know him I feel blessed

There was beauty, truth and honor
In his troubled soul
People clammered just to touch him
and it took it's toll

I see him in the morning
As the sky is turning blue
I feel him in the stillest night
Sometimes as if on cue

I mourn his loss quite often
Celebrate him even more
For bringing out the beauty
In what was so ugly before.

XO. Lynn Elliott

Unknown name poem by Lynn Elliott

It's so easy living in the past
Sleep walking through each day
Living where I saw you last
Pretending I'm okay

XO Lynn Elliott

My Elliott Smith story is a little different
I broke my neck and suffered a traumatic brain injury water skiing. For 5 yrs I was pretty much a zombie. The only thing I could feel was fear. I'm not a fearful person at all but that's how all tbi ppl feel
I was listening to everything's OK by Elliott
and it made me feel safe. It was the beginning of my recovery. I listened to Elliott almost every hour of every day.
It inspired me to start writing songs and poetry, which really sped up my recovery even more. I'll never be like I was before but my injury stimulated my drive to write and share what I write. So I was in my 50s when I started.

My bio

I rescue special needs dogs. I did extreme sports most of my life. Surfing, skiing. diving, soccer, tennis, gymnastics, etc. I worked for the airlines so I did a fair amount of traveling. I'm an outdoorsy person. Elliott Smith is more than a great musician to me. He is my safe place.

Ripples by Khadeja Ali

inspired by ‘Everything Means Nothing to Me”

days start and end in blank white and solid black
shapes that will not harmonize rigidly exist in my eyes
when finally touching, the sharp lipped edges cut 
and me, wanting so badly for lines blurring, insides blending
But there is no chance of grey. No body electricity to make it work.

was I once a kaleidoscope of magnetic color
shuddering with vibrating life, dancing constantly? I think so
if not singing, was I humming to natural silence?
now is there a piercing screech in my ear, or nothing
No ears-plugging or opening my mouth anymore. Frozen.

lying down is not an option; when did I start standing?
since when can I not move? This is not me. Is it? walking I was
but stiffly erect and standing at once. When started my movement’s death?
my mind’s edges are so sharp, but inside empty as air
Squinting hard. There’s nothing to see.

my energy; drained by a taunting echo of everything
wavering glass below me reflects my iron face
So glorious am I, yet—I’m nothing to me.

“Junkyard Full of False Starts” by Jennifer Patino

I'll refrain
from the
'gone too soon'
sentiments       Instead,
I'll boast of your intellect

There's a way back to blue
& to you, but we couldn't
remind you in time

& wasn't that you,
that one time, pounding
your chest
like a barbarian?

You couldn't speak
truthfully
to people
without scaring them

I know, I know, I know,
the burdens
you tore from
your aching shoulders

I know, I know, I know
how terrified you were
of even the vague idea
of growing older

You were only one, ever one,
little inside, unnamed,
but mighty            Someone
we'll think of
while
staring at flames,
hearing your phantom drunken
crooning on repeat,
when we're tired
of fighting,
or just tired
of the taste of the
city streets
where your ghost
lingers on
beneath neon lights
& in the silhouette soul
of every
ragged musician
in a beanie
we happen to meet

I'll say it, I'll pray it,

               RIP

Little Mr. Socialite by David L O’Nan

We’ve all been strapped to and strapped by the spellbinder
He walks up to you and expects you to drop the ceiling down to become his platform for a show.
Handed the keys, by osmosis you become a local legend.

To the city that continues to decay,
there is only so much here to reel in.
The cocaine socialites keep barking for you to leave their hipster colonies.
Fuck you! Fuck You! Fuck You!
You can’t talk sense to the overconfident.

They want the world, and they want the life.
They want the respect, Rifles and knives.
They want to joke and manifest a spiritual world in which they are absorbed of their behavior.

Hell to the homeless, hell to the mental health
“I don’t care about your personal lives” I care about my termination.
Your words will never get past these windows because I’ll just run out
And bark out orders like a witch in a bad dream.
Blah…blah…blah Fuck You! Fuck You! Fuck You! You can’t talk about our prince and princesses
That push the drugs and sex behind bars and counters that blow up this neighborhood.

You will vanish as soon as you appear.
Hours later you’re in another chessgame. You’re in another straight line socialite walk.
From one blink to the next you’re game changes. Drawn to your fuckin’ pawn.

He is in charge of our children. Teach them well.
Teach that future well.
Afraid of a soured reputation.
Bullying has never left your privileged brain.
And your story will never be told as long as the socialite holds the powder and the power.

Roman Candles by David L O'Nan

I’m feeling tricked in this cold October rain
The entire town are shooting Roman Candles in masses
Hypnotized in another wired dream.
Nauseated and feeling blind, worthless
The rain burns the cuts on the skin.
The friction drowns me with the idiots.
I’ve never felt this tired. I’ve never heard this much screaming.
The Roman Candles, Firecrackers, the Halloween monsters.
The shoes are beginning to sour.
The red just keeps getting darker, yet feeling thinner
The slitting and sitting with the rattle again
Have I ever been real?

The Kill of the Darlings by David L O'Nan

Another abused evening. Copper skied and bloodshot eyes.
The kill of the darlings reads on a flashing screen.
I was introduced to the spilling and polishing of my sweat to the sheets.
It must be raining, raining in my death.

I’ve been waiting, smelly and divided
On a pitch black night with coal mine moons.
I’ve been asked inside to feed the tiger.
The locomotives keep moving slower through the brain, through the cast.
Through the fade, they praise the ugliest ghost after all.

Becoming so angry by medicine and shiver out new fears.
I wait and wait and wait. Just knowing you have his name tattooed in your blood.
I wait for you on the inlay filling of broken sidewalks that have survived the earthquake.
I wait for you to come home with him.
To bust him with this chain or break a bottle over his skull.

Yet, I should realize you’ve the not caring if I ever lived or died.
Adaptation, realization and broken, a crinkled tarot card.
I’ve been calling another busy signal suicide hotline.

Winnemucca by David L O'Nan

Days of being dazed, drugged, and dangerous
Now in Winnemucca waiting for a new train.
To rescue me from the lights of the cities to the deserts to thaw.
Not feeling the jazzy hope that all these horns convey.

I’ve been travelling like it is a system wondering
If the honey was ever laced, were your smiles ever more than pain.
You played beautifully being beautiful and being muddled at the same time.
You played beautifully being heartbroken and wearing a new ring from another lame maniac.

Wafflin’ drunk on something, traintracks shaking.
Winnemucca gives me the eye of some crook.
I’m asking for tickets, asking for wishes, I’m asking for some powerful graveyard dirt.
I’m washing my hands of you since yours are covered in the outlines of sweat from the burns.

You’ve been a cough, to send away the clouds
You’ve been a leap, through the meek and the lack of sound.
You’ve been admired, but admiration wasn’t enough.
You’ve been dashing, dashing straight into the wreck.
And I will fall and eventually so will you.

I may fall sooner, but tomorrow is a full moon.
I could still be in Winnemucca, I could be dead,
or banging on pots in the streets of Chicago.
You could still be married to the errors,
you could be flooded out of house and home.
Digesting more fertile dirt.

Catharsis (collaboration poem K Weber & David L O'Nan)
also part of the Empath Dies in the End series

1. (David L O'Nan)

I was in the process of purging the ideas of you
The wrens, the beetles, and the crabs we’ve been energized by
On days of smiles. The parks, the oceans,
the imperfect apartment ceilings.

In the middle of a catharsis
I was fast to the falling down the mountainous zoo.
In the deluge of rain I remember smashing against your dress.
Umbrellas breaking, wind straining, yet in the distance we see a sunset.

Now I’m wondering are you ever really leaving me?
Will we meet again in this organic hex that has been swirling
From the ground to the trees.
To the shearing of my humility, my impulses are pulling with each inhalation.

With palms on head, a robin stares at me from the ground.
Right against my boot it seems not fear my 50 foot shadow.
Just searching for some worms through the puddles we reflect in.

2. (K Weber)

Winged leaves breathe
Between fingers of ashen
Branches where birds’
songs rest. The pulse
of a rain-tapped dusk
counts down the last
snippet of sun. Light
gets drowsy as windows
on one wall yawn
to a close.

Red Ant. Black Ant....The Stars (collaboration poem with Jennifer Patino and David L O'Nan

1. (Jennifer Patino)
They spoke of interior silence.
A way to navigate cacophony
with a smile on your face.
These forced emotions, pulled
to the surface, daisies squeezed out from beneath the grime
of disconnect.

One has to die to hear advice better. A portion of the self must be sacrificed to allow change to claim new roots. I think I'll bloom in winter. Switch the expected at the last moment so the patient ones can be satisfied. Those drought souls have waited for a resurrection long enough. They will have their day safe from the blinding sun. They will feel rain on new skin and be quenched.

2. (David L O'Nan)

I’ve been searching for your footprints all over the place.
The joke is only red ants meeting black ants on my shoelaces.
I’m disgusted I can’t past this place. Scared to walk out to new noise.
I’ve feigned happiness and I’ve dreamt up new stars.
I’ve been alone and hid my aches away.
The nightmares absorb in the pillows, as long as I stay hid.
In the shade. I got to my tree.
And I try to remember the invisible me.

I know you’ve been waiting for me to at least show a hello
I can’t keep the creatures inside and the rush becomes a roar
And the hush becomes hypnotic and
my window becomes the source
for the entertaining eye.
So go on, and move on with what you want.
The devil is dancing and waiting for your soul.
You know you want love, but this will just be another gaslighting poem.

The lake, the flowers, the light. Go the distance and find what’s right.

I met you in a trance. I was scrawny and I was a mess.
I thought I was becoming famous. And you thought you’d be the root.
I would grow from you and learn to be a jolly shine under your foot.
It’s a shame I only can understand what is anger, snark and shame.
If I could cure myself, I would try to shave away your pain.
The scene won’t have any of it.

The Dark Aesthetic/Wives in the White Light by Jess Levens and David L O'Nan

1. (Jess Levens)

The sky is quintessential October—
wet without rain; dusk in daylight, blurring
any distant thing. Blurring what is real.
Desaturated evergreens birth out

dead leaves in every citrus shade, plus
plum and pear and red delicious. They
clatter down, loudly in the quiet fog.
The chill bites flirtatiously, without pain.

Outside my window, a lone coywolf in
the farmer’s clearing stares back at me through
this dark aesthetic—howling into my
home; into my head—barking out malice.

2 (David L O'Nan)

So you keep your wives in the White Light
And the mass is enchanted that you bring
The entertainment and the insanity from the mistakes.
Like paper we’ll fly with the crisping leaves.
Some cut just like that paper,
some just itch as the wind bites down on the skin.

The wives you hide in white light
Scurry like a squirrel trying to hide a direct hit.
From grey to brown to orange to green trees-
that squirrels will scurry from the pain.
So slip outside of your skin,
Watch yourself in the mirror with another angry grin.
Revenge glowing in your eye.
And the harm you want is the harm that’ll cause you to die.

There are wires just falling everywhere…the storms are brewing
And the we all become impaired.
Hiding your wives in the white light behind the shed.
Are they in blinking blue and red lights ripe for the restoration.
They are just waiting for you to fall asleep and give up,
in your irate dream.

Continue to pour yourself that drink.
Continue to pour yourself that wolf’s howl.
Continue to transition from the rake to the shave.
Repair is on the way.
But the bedpans and the creatures inside may be the cream,
and your body may just be the trough.
The Wives in white light are just looking for you to break.
The narcissism will eventually implode
And the darkness will be decorous with light as they take you aside.

Bled Out For Liberty (collaboration poem Giulio Magrini & David L O’Nan

1 (Giulio Magrini)

The younger ones look at us and smirk…
We remember the smiling of our youth
Furtive… covert… and shrouded

Those memoirs are today’s mystery of youth
And live behind the curtains of our past
They are cognitions divorced in time but parallel confidence
What is the necessity of covert masks in the present
And our frustrated guilty memories?

2 (David L O'Nan)

I've began to feel afraid.
that i've bled out for liberty from my imagination-
that was never brave.
The loveliness just disappears.
Morning whispers engulfed in last night's tears.

I was concentrating too much on the lies.
Assuming everything from youth to existing was from the failing eye.
We were watched down on by the lighted figures.
Not wasted anymore yet cultivate me with all my failures until I die.

You're private and play hide away.
You're intellectual and passing around the plate
Damn, i'm still living slender with my fist taped up.
Everything from midnight to morning is just medicine
just passing through.
I go from I love you to i'm sorry i've been holy for you.

Maybe my mind has bled out only lies.
And my exit is the last leaf on the tree trying to cover up his face.

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/10/22/current-bio-for-fevers-of-the-minds-david-l-onan-editor-writing-contributor-to-blog/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/07/13/a-poetry-showcase-from-giulio-magrini/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/09/14/a-fevers-of-the-mind-quick-9-interview-with-giulio-magrini/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/09/12/2-wonderful-poems-by-jennifer-patino-inspired-by-plath-and-sexton/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/09/07/a-poetry-showcase-from-jess-levens/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/09/30/a-fevers-of-the-mind-quick-9-interview-with-jess-levens/

https://feversofthemind.com/2022/05/25/poetry-showcase-from-k-weber/

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Jess Levens

Q1: When did you start writing and who influenced you the most?

Jess: I started seriously writing poetry in December 2021, but I have been a writer for a long time. I began my career as a journalist and photographer in the Marine Corps in 2002, and I’ve been a writer in some capacity ever since. My influences—and I hope they shine through in my poems from time to time—are a mix of classic adventure fiction authors like Melville, London and Kipling, and poets including the Roberts (Frost and Bly) and Dickinson. I also love the New England transcendentalists, Thoreau, Emerson and their ilk.

Q2: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?

Jess: I’m not sure I ever wanted to be a writer, specifically. I’ve always been a creative person, and that comes through in different ways. In my day job, I’m a graphic designer and video producer. I love photography, and yes, I love writing. I’ve always been in awe of and jealous of painters, and I feel like poetry is my way of painting with words.

There was a specific moment when I knew I needed to write poetry. Last winter, I was watching The Durrells in Corfu with my wife, and the mother recited Dowson’s poem, Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam. It blew me away. Shortly after that, I wrote my first poem which would become Tides (Prometheus Dreaming, May 2022). After that, I was hooked.

Q3: Who has helped you most with writing and career?

Jess: Well, my dad was a very creative person. He always encouraged my writing (and inspired much of it), and he passed down his wonderful/infuriating ADHD brain to me. As a journalist in the Marines, I was fortunate to have two mentors who truly cared about quality writing and my progress as a writer—Ethan Rocke and Scott Dunn. As a poet, I’ve found great help on Reddit’s subs r/OCpoetry and r/poetry_critics, and more recently, I’ve found a wonderful community on Twitter.

Q4: Where did you grow up and how did that influence you? Have any travels influenced your work?

Jess: I grew up in Pflugerville, Texas (for reference, this is where they filmed the TV show, Friday Night Lights). Shortly after High School, I joined the Marines and was stationed in San Diego, then I moved to Rhode Island, back to San Diego, then Massachusetts, then Tennessee, and now back in Massachusetts for good.

I think the way my place of origin influences my work is still unfolding. I grew up in a Southern, white, conservative, middle class family, and as I’ve been out in the world making my own experiences, I’ve been able to look at things I thought were gospel (pun intended) through a different lens. It’s apparent in some of my work. Empathy and open mindedness are ongoing endeavors that require deliberate practice.

Q5: What do you consider your most meaningful work creatively to you?

Jess: Without a doubt, it’s the current poetry collection I’m working on. It’s deeply personal, technically sound, and I’m incredibly proud of it. Earlier this year, I found my old creative writing journal from my early 20s, and it is just filled with shit (which I thought was quite good at the time). Now, at 39 (or 40, depending on when this is published), I’ve really found my voice. My writing has a clear purpose, and I’ve harvested more life experiences for inspiration.

Q6: Favorite activities to relax?

Jess: Nothing crazy—hanging out with my family. Watching TV, hiking, fishing. I work from home, and I usually like to get up before everyone else and go for a drive in the New England countryside with the windows down and music up.

Q7: What is a favorite line/stanza/lyric from your writing?

Jess: My first couplet from Tides will always be special to me. It’s the first piece of “real” poetry I wrote:

All bones and brains in battered boxes—
my father’s ashes lost at sea.

A more recent stanza I’m especially fond of is from my poem, Powder Point Bridge:

We’re flowing back and back when she flashes
teenage eyes from the side of her shades and 
I go all irresponsible; the kids, 
the house, the job all vanish for a breath.

Q8: What kind of music inspires you the most? What is a song or songs that always come back to you as an inspiration?

Jess: I’m not sure I find a ton of writing inspiration in music. When I’m out exploring/thinking/brainstorming, listen to a lot of dark classical, post rock and lo-fi hip hop. My ADHD makes it difficult for me to focus on tasks if I’ve got vocals pumping into my ears. When I don’t need to focus, I tend to gravitate toward artists with strong lyrics—the Decemberists are probably my favorite. Their singer, Colin Meloy is a fantastic writer, and I really respect the writing of Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service). Right now, I’ve got Ethel Cain’s album Preacher’s Daughter on repeat.

Q9: Do you have any recent or upcoming books, events, other projects that you would like to promote?

Jess: Yes! My first chapbook, A Break in the Spine (Alien Buddha Press) will be available Oct. 26. If you read it, all your wildest dreams will come true.

Bio:

Jess Levens lives with his wife, sons and dogs in Holliston, Massachusetts, where he draws inspiration from New England’s landscapes and history. His debut chapbook, A Break in the Spine, is available from Alien Buddha Press, and his poetry has been featured in Fevers of the Mind, The Dillydoun Review, Prometheus Dreaming and Roi Fainéant Press, among other literary journals. Jess is a Marine Corps veteran and Northeastern University alum.

A Poetry Showcase from Jess Levens

photo from unsplash.com (Jamie Morris)

South Cemetery (Mist)

Gray posts hide, still, in grayer fog—
granite fangs at the mouth of granite stairs
which climb to the top of a hill of bones,
retained by ancient masoned granite stones.

The verdant sponge demands respectful steps,
else frolickers, perhaps, would swallow down 
into the mud and meet my heroes there;
not face-to-face, but-bone-to-bone in time. 

They’re the shells of men who fruited freedom
and lived to see the Revolution through 
and the farmboys-become-soldiers who crushed
the Antebellum’s fausse vie amoureuse.

Alongside them sleeps the wars’ widowed score,
pinned faithfully ‘neath gothic, demure things 
which moor my drifting thoughts to family plots,
discharging les mots macabres dans ma tête.

Deathbed Revisited

Hello, Dad. Your corpse is showing.
Jesus Christ. How can anyone 
feel so lost in such a small space?
It’s finally come to this. You … you …  

Your rusted breath disrupts the beeps
that cut the silence in your room. 
Locked away deep inside your brain
or somewhere else altogether, 

I am without you in this place.
I see your patchy skin is here, 
and so are your jagged toenails, 
but your laughter is not around. 

Your unfunny jokes are not. Your 
mistakenly-purchased women’s 
sunglasses are not—just your shell. 
Your last decade is in this room.

Your shameless, often shirtless frame;
you drummed Wipeout and Rawhide on 
your belly in our old duplex—
now, you always need a sweater. 

Your hollow gut stretches across 
your ribcage like a leftover 
birthday balloon—tied to a tree 
and deflating at Brentwood park.

Our three-day trips to Houston were 
like jewels in my boyhood crown—
poolside at the luxurious 
Grant Motel. I can remember

diving for pop-flies on the lawn 
and staying up too late watching 
horror flicks—Mom would not approve. 
Eating pounds of spicy crawfish …

Our trips stopped at a Mack truck’s grille.
I grew up—you grew dependent
on painkillers and money wires
to pay for three-day stints in Austin’s 

most squalid roach motels. You still 
owe me for the fleabag room where 
your skull met the concrete floor; where 
you went to sleep for the last time. 

Years of love and disappointment 
fight in my mind while relatives
buzz in my ears. Shut up, Carol! 
I don’t care about your kidneys.

We need to be alone. It’s time
to say goodbye. This is it, Dad.
This deathbed—my stomach is sour.
Your life support has been unplugged.

Like the Grant, your facade has been
torn down and posterized, living
only in faded photographs
and ever-distant memories.

Soon, you will be ash, wrapped in pine.
Ash—all that’s left from your last years;
fantasies scribbled on paper
under the grate of my fireplace.

Musk

They burned you down and boxed you up,
then sent you west, to me—all tamped
down in a watertight wooden
urn—chucked into the Pacific.

I’m still annoyed the opioids
let you avoid the man you should
have been. Now, just Grandfather X;
no context—disjointed stories.

Absent, one, and the other, gone,
and two steps still add up to none.
Just a one-eyed stranger in my
pictures—you’ve known them in my dreams.

I thought I smelled you on my porch
one night, but the musk was only me.

Heatforms

Heat is a summer storm with all the windows
down—corpulent droplets to combat
air so thick it instantly makes my clean
shirt stink like a pair of dirty gym socks.

Heat is the frustration of my mother
forwarding anti-vax chain emails to
everyone she knows and choosing a lie
over a relationship with my boys.

Heat is my rage—hot like a smoldering
gunbarrel on an elementary
school floor, pried from the cold, dead hands of yet
another free man with God-given rights.

Heat is the stinging in my cheeks and the
lump in my throat as we tell our sons to
play dead and drench themselves in friendly blood—
the anxiety of dropping them off.

Heat is the calm when she touches my hand.
It’s the chill when she tickles my back and
peace in her eyes. It’s the pink-skinned pit bull
crammed tight between us in bed every night.

Lurk

Call out to me, O Cloudy Shade!
One word would win my trust.
Am I to meet my kin again?
What lurks behind the dust?

Pray, answer me, O Phantom Friend!
One word would win my trust.
Am I to wander spectral fields,
or feed into the crust?

Confide in me, O Humble Haunt!
One word would win my trust.
Coat in your cold, my burning ears.
Moan truth in ghostly gust.

Declare it now, O Ruthless Wraith!
One word would win my trust.
Speak, loud, your secret to my soul.
My madness screams—you must!

The Swell

Morose—it swells and sloshes, this
creaking levee in my eyes.
It drizzles down and stings the snow,
for no old gods are hulking here.

Why must I shoulder “cease to be?”
Does green still smash skyward up the
permafrost? Doubt—absence feeds the
swell which wreaks its wrecks in me.

Bio:
Jess Levens is a deep-image poet who lives with his wife, sons and dogs in New England, where he draws inspiration from the region’s landscapes and history. His poetry has been published in The Dillydoun Review, Prometheus Dreaming, Abditory Literary Magazine and Roi Fainéant Press. Jess is a Marine Corps veteran and Northeastern University alum. Follow him on Twitter @levensworks.