Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art Issue 6: The Empath Dies in The End Coming Soon!

(c)HilLesha O’Nan

Coming very soon Issue 6 of the Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art Print Anthology will be available for purchase on Amazon. I’m still putting together the submissions to doc format. This will feature the collaborations that i’ve (David L O’Nan) have done with several other great writers on “The Empath Dies in the End” series of poems last Fall (the remainder will be placed in future anthologies including The Whiskey Mule Diner for the Elliott Smith inspired pieces) this issue will also include features from poet/writers Christian Garduno, Pasithea Chan, Kushal Poddar, Michael Igoe, also included is our photo prompt challenge poems to a photo supplied by writer Kevin DeLaney. Also included so far but definitely not limited to are poems/prose by Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon, HilLesha O’Nan, Ethan O’Nan, Victoria Leigh Bennett, Peter Magliocco, Donna Dallas, Joan Hawkins, Lorna Wood, Matthew Freeman, Lesley Curwen, Tova Beck-Friedman. Collab poems I did with Tony Brewer, Ron Whitehead, Petar Penda, R.M. Englehardt, Spriha Kant, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Amanda Crum, Merritt Waldon, Andrew Cyril MacDonald, RP Verlaine, Oz Hardwick, Stephen Kingsnorth, K.G. Munro, Ava Tenn, Robert Pengel, Dee Allen, K Weber, Maria A. Arana, Aaron Wiegert, C.L. Liedekev, Elizabeth Cusack, John Drudge, Carson Pytell, Jay Maria Simpson, Jennifer Patino, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, John Grey, Rickey Rivers Jr, Duane L. Herrmann, Staci-Lee Sherwood, Doryn Herbst, Mike Zone, Jessica Weyer Bentley, John Zurn, Jeremy Limn, Lynn White, John D. Robinson, Monica Sharp, James Schwartz, James Lilley, Mykyta Ryzhykh, Gabriella Garofalo, Sandrijela Kasagic, Rachel Coventry, Gayle J Greenlea & Anneka Chambers

Check out some links to other

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 Showcase: David L O’Nan from Cursed Houses pt 1

A Review of “Before the Bridges Fell” by David L O’Nan (review by Ivor Daniel)

Bare Bones Writings Issue 1 is out on Paperback and Kindle

https://amzn.to/3tNR3ON Before the Bridges Fell

https://amzn.to/3gt4LDy Avalanches in Poetry Writing & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen (the 1st Leonard Cohen inspired tribute)

https://amzn.to/3i94vKA Lost Reflections

https://amzn.to/3TT0Uxe Bending Rivers

https://amzn.to/3EwKWmU The Cartoon Diaries

https://amzn.to/3XotUjq The Fevers of the Mind Presents the Poets of 2020: The Poetry Only

https://amzn.to/3tTf0nS New Disease Streets

https://amzn.to/3UZwtqB Our Fears in Tunnels

https://amzn.to/3Ey1ivx The Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art Digest Issue 1 June 2019

https://amzn.to/3i99ZEM The Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest Issue 2 In Memoriam August 2019

https://amzn.to/3gqq5JX Fevers of the Mind V Overcome

https://amzn.to/3VB74n9 His Last Poetric Whispers

https://amzn.to/3GDgGcr The Fevers of the Mind Presents the Poets of 2020 Deluxe Edition

https://amzn.to/3gtitGC The Fevers of the Mind 1& 2 the Poetry Only

https://amzn.to/3AD0Drl Taking Pictures in the Dark

https://amzn.to/3Otay8E Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest Issue 3: The Darkness & The Light

https://amzn.to/3UXxP4V The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers

Poetry based on photography “The Lone Road to Moloka’I” from Maggs Vibo

(c)Maggs Vibo

A Lone Road on the Island of Moloka’i by Maggs Vibo

Our plane putters over patchwork pillows of rusty clay 
Celebrating the day's first rays at a coffee plantation

Top down, and around the bend the breeze kicks dust into our locks
We visit spaces of ancient mysteries and forgotten history
Not far from a phallic rock and a peninsula of exiled patients

Where jagged cliffs leap to kiss the sea
Towards desolate paths that stretch and smile at roosters crowing
as if echoing the road sign:

Aloha
Slow Down
This is Moloka'i

Untitled from Jacqueline Dempsey Cohen

Here the earth glows,  
breathes from its molten core
laying bare its soil 
reborn with radiant heat
This iron-rich clay beckons
hands to touch and feet to scuff
staining fingers, soothing toes
caressing knots of need.
Untouchable limbs frame the path
relentlessly muted 
urging travelers ever onward 
to mountains birthing fire.

@boscoedempsey 

A JOURNEY by Petar Penda

He took a fiery road
towards distant hills,
with wild shrubs on its sides
not to let him turn off the path.
This solitary journey led to
his self-knowledge of
the lack of something central
which permeated.

Copper Dust Road by Robin McNamara

I’m on a dust road
unburdened by winds /
unshackled by conformity. 

Humbolt of a cloud; 
wispy in the sky 
where the land lies 
with dust and rust 
and rock and ruin.

I saw a desert man he
was wearing wisdom of
an Indian spirit / I crave  
the aqua of his knowledge.

My face copper-rust from 
the swirling dust of the road  
to nowhere /
rattlesnakes and coyotes on
each side watching /
waiting patiently for hope to die.

ABOUT TO ACHIEVE by Spriha Kant 

Crossed many long tortuous paths
beaded with many thorns
showering under the sun’s anger
Every time, found me 
a bird flying
to touch the horizon.
Now
Cooler sun
Roaming clouds
Swaying thickets on both sides of the path
as if about to welcome me
to my destination
by showering me in water
from the skies.

(c) Spriha Kant

The Red Road by Elizabeth Cusack

Why is this road so red
And what makes it real?

Why is perception a tunnel?

Who decided our destination
And what do they know?

What is a bramble
And why is it dark?

Why are hedges bare
And why do thorns stick up in air?

Why do rabbits fall into lairs?

Everyone knows these skies will part
And our lives will not end here.

Beguiled by Lesley Curwen

Rust bloodroad flares to brightest crux
its russet track armed by hedges' dark
overed by long mynd and sailing cloud 

the eye swept back and back to fiery light 

its centred throb, perplexing Delphic shape. 
Witch trio aflame, altar to neon gods
or haloed mothers keening at a grave? 

She is on fire by Constance Bacchus

not going anywhere she is rambling on to the lake she stops off at one of two gas stations won’t eat anything but licorice candy extreme pop she spins out of control across so many hills the vultures at the top pay attention she has passed the other one watches the fire blend in arrives at the launch hardens her heart in the water you could say it fossilized you can say you miss it you can say anything you want it is cold doesn’t care breaks apart amongst milfoil

Inspired by Leonard Cohen lyric visual piece from Maggs Vibo  

Congrats! To Fevers of the Mind contributor Maggs Vibo 

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Margaret Viboolsittiseri aka Maggs Vibo 

Visual Poetry by Maggs Vibo: Drinking the Ash Pt 1 & 2 

Poem from Constance Bacchus : Memories from a party last 4th of July 

Poetry based on photography Challenge from Ankh Spice pt. 1 

Poetry based on Photography challenge from Ankh Spice pt. 3 

2 poems by Spriha Kant from Hard Rain Poetry Forever Dylan Anthology 

A Sylvia Plath inspired poetry showcase by Robin McNamara 

A Poetry Showcase from Robin McNamara 

August 2022 Poetry Showcase from Elizabeth Cusack 

Poetry by Petar Penda : Tiresias




Poetry based on photography Challenge from Ankh Spice pt. 1

can you describe this beautiful photo taken by (c)Ankh Spice better than Ankh?

“a thousand miles of grey wind-calved mountains on a veil-world, material for a sorcerer’s armour, fallen bits of storm-sky, shoals of glass sharks” -Ankh Spice

” a seascape – choppy, restless pewter sea in endless unbroken waterpeaks. Long dark hills brood sleeping-dragonry alon gthe horizon, a split of orange dawn/dusk firing down the spine. The rest of the sky is exhaled smoke, beginning to tint around the ember” – Ankh Spice

Waveforms by Lesley Curwen

wavelets / chins tipped  / hold sun’s embrace  
squirrel grey in livid rays/  their ranks of open lips
mouth sweetness/  at the eye of dusk
no swimmers here/  to rip their harlequin silk 
to shreds/  of light

ashore/  sole-prints are shadowed/  by day’s ebbing 
gold/  to be immersed in crosshatched expanse 
of tide/  whose basketwork 
convexities/  suck land’s mauve loom 
below/ a quilt of cumulus

a haiga description from Mo Schoenfeld

light slips, struggling,
night laps at the mountain top,
darker depths settle.

I framed a portrait for an absentee by Sam Hickford

Here is a cranny for you to seize, my love,
among the volcanic strait of smoke-stung cloud..
will you take it, as the wagtail claps
this wreath of Autumn, makes this land its vow?

As each trilled wavelet furnishes a mountain
for a chalk-board dreadnought to a droughtless word,
come. I watch the ocean’s opiate
break mirrors in the champion of its lens

and picture you cradled in these hues
of fire and lazuli and scarlet shards.

Shores of Safe Distance by Robin McNamara

When we divide our words between 
a stanza with image-filled meanings
and one with an abstraction of reality
not easily deciphered/ 
do we need anything more than the
acceptance of our verses read by the judgmental or do we find our oars and paddle out a bit further; into deep waters 
of thoughts, without a compass. 
With only the stars to navigate a way 
to your account of my words. 

What if I drowned, what if the storms of uncertainty was too much, 
what would 
wash up upon the shores? 
A body of work beautifully polished by the waves or a piece of driftwood? 
Would you tread water to find our existence, or would the stones under your feet compel you to go back and stare at the ocean from 
a distance and say; maybe another time.

That's All Folks by Elizabeth Cusack

The sky is burning—
It’s not exactly news—
It’s been this way since I was born.

There was an egg before akasha,
If you care about language,
And there was the ein sof,
If you care to read that tongue,
And there was an egg before the chicken—
This is very hard to grasp,
It has ruined paradise,
This inability to understand,
The great unknown was once one, 
And all multiplicities someday will blow apart.

A prophet comes along once in a while
And says, this is what it’s all about— all is one,
Call it love or whatever makes you smile,
But the fact is we are killing every one,
And as we come and go,
And as we kill our mother,
And read our revelations,
The steel-grey cable under the sea
Is recording every absurdity,
And as we remember the essential dead poets—
Remember what, exactly?
That everybody who ever lived is now here!

James Joyce got it in the Wake,
And they mocked him
As they do every damned prophet—
All the condemned are on this ride
As we read up on Aleister Crowley,
As we are on this burning earth,
As we read revelations from the dead
And martyred who died for clarity—
And don’t forget Stalin, Mao, and old Paul—
And as we drink the soma and submit when we are called,
We remember the ones who saved our lives—

Thank you to the poets, that we have a mind at all!
That is the final thing they will try to take from us all.

STRUGGLING by Spriha Kant

Kaleidoscopic dreams 
float like amorphous clouds
and the hopes shine like the sun
in her psyche.
Stuck amidst
the turbulent eddies
trying to drown her
in the stygian abyss
she keeps the 
waves of her
mind, heart, and actions
synchronously tranquil
for she is as vulnerable as a fire in the water
who can’t dare to rebel against her inner voice
ordering her to achieve something that will
raise the eyebrows and open the mouth wide
of the pessimistic commentators.



Links to some work of a few of the poets: 

A Poetry Showcase from Robin McNamara

2 poems by Spriha Kant from Hard Rain Poetry Forever Dylan Anthology

Dylan Poetry Showcase from Elizabeth Cusack

A Quicksilver Trilling by David L O’Nan : Poetry & Writing style lyrics inspired by Dylan

5 Poems by Ankh Spice : That which can be made visible, Hold the river, Feeding the koi, Act like you were never for sale, & Hathor’s gift

http://www.irisi-magazine.org/healing/healing-haikus-and-senryus-by-maureen-schoenfeld

https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/sam-hickford/