I can't say that
I ever thought he'd
Be the same as me
But I must admit that
I never considered
The possibility that
He felt nothing inside,
An animated creature
That behaves only
According to its latest
Whim, whatever it desires
At that particular moment,
With no regard for
Anyone who might be
In the vicinity.
Indifferent
With every shingle-lifting gust,
The unwelcome wind pummels the
Humble dwelling, Inside, a small,
Elderly woman wonders how she'll
Pay for the damage, times being
What they are. She shuffles
To the stove and turns on a burner,
Carefully setting the tea kettle on it.
Another series of indifferent blasts
Rattles the walls, nobody calls.
Bio from 2019:
Guy Farmer writes deep short poems about the human condition. He has published a full-length poetry collection entitled Unconventional Being, available on Amazon, www.amazon.com/Unconventional-Being-Poems-Guy-Farmer/dp/1722369477, and also shares his work online on his website https://www.unconventionalbeing.com/ His poems have been published in various online journals and websites.
i'm sick of always
having to be strong
i want to be able
to be vulnerable, to be
soft, to be every
part of me;
you don't even like my
strength when i am a warrior
you only like that i am resilient
and that i keep coming back—
i am sick of taking hits
of being praised for how many
times i can rise from the ashes
of chaos,
i am sick of being expected
to solve all my problems because
i am strong and smart and capable;
because if you knew how hard it was
for me to reach out maybe you wouldn't be
so quick to dismiss me.
there's nothing wrong with feeling
i remember once
when i was crying,
and someone accused
me of faking it;
reminds me of the person
who said depression wasn't real
and meant it—
if depression weren't real
there wouldn't be so many people
who were and are suffering,
if depression weren't real
then my uncle wouldn't have taken
his own life and he would still be here;
there wouldn't be this guilt in me
for realizing when he died that i didn't
want death just the end of all this
pain and rage and sadness—
my depression makes me feel everything
so deeply,
and after years of apologizing for it;
no longer will i—
there's nothing wrong with feeling or being sensitive,
but there should be something concerning about
lack of compassion or empathy.
the last letter
i still have the last letter
from my uncle
before he took his own life,
and he encouraged me
to follow my dreams;
so here i am
working this job that i hate
striving hard to make my
dreams a reality—
i refuse to give up on my dreams
or on myself because i know
that i am worth it,
and i won't give up on me because
i have seen how miserable people are
especially those who have forgotten
their dreams and don't even know
who they are or what they like—
i refuse to let society make me numb
to my ambitions or swallow my aspirations
i refuse to be just be another cog in a machine
that doesn't work for anyone but the rich,
i refuse to be anyone less than me.
when i am drowning
imagine, for a moment,
that you are suffering;
and you need a life boat
but people insist you
are a strong swimmer and only
throw you life preserver rings
when your legs are tired
from all the swimming you have
done prior to them arriving—
that is what depression is
because even when you give
them subtle hints that you are
suffering,
the help they provide is rarely
adequate;
i hate being told to just smile
and i'll be happier
because smiling is proof of nothing
i can smile even when i am completely
broken and numb inside and you
wouldn't know unless you looked into my eyes—
i don't think people are good at reading
emotions because they always miss
when i am drowning.
i'm not wrong
there's no right way to
be human,
and yet society still expects me
to want to fit into their narrow
point of view
of what a woman should be;
i am me
and it's a freeing feeling
not to have to worry
about the status quo—
they don't see women as people
just property and broodmares,
but we have ambitions and we
have dreams and we have magic
and power they could never
dream of which is why they try to
silence us at every turn—
but i am not the woman that will be
quiet because i am tired of being made
out to be in the wrong just because
i want more than this world we've been given.
it's really you that's ugly
i saw them bully a kid
until he took his own
life,
and people wonder why
depression runs so rampant?
any one who is seen as different
becomes othered,
i have been a misfit my entire life;
used to wound me but i have
learned to love myself and my own
company because people can be
vexing with all their demands—
what i really wanted as a kid was
love and acceptance,
the sad thing is i had to turn to myself to find it;
i know now that i am worth it and so
are my dreams
but little me believed that i was
a burden and incapable of being loved and
unworthy of having friends—
to everyone who bullied me and those
who continue to do so i hope you know
it's really you who is ugly,
so maybe work on your own insecurities
and heal your own broken heart.
Wolfpack Contributor Bio: Linda M. Crate
Blooming up as sun tortures a mind
Your hello,
An echo moistened by dust
A traveling spittle of rain
And subsiding into a crevice of mistakes.
Wishing you were the juxtaposition
between beauty,
and the sorrow of a burning flower.
Raindrops Mimic the sprinkles of sound
Against the tin of a lost hello
Crowded inside voices,
are only calm -
when they are power
Power was built by energy, sight,
and the holding of truth.
Deep in a heart, the gut of the gods,
Life is crisp in the glow.
Death is moistened by a crooked mind blown -
apart with the memories.
A Lost hello was reciprocated into a shower of unknown.
We stammer in the wind,
as the mind dreams up an eternal shade.
I sit there in the grip and trip in the circles around my feet.
Nor can a dance be,
Nor can a bruise heal,
Nor can a hello be returned -
once it has been broken
by what was heard, initially.
Today we are sold into the friendship of nerves.
They tangle a supposed soul
They, like all seeds,
grow once they are breathed into existence.
And then stems sewn into the heavens as historical
As lost hellos.
Caskets and Libraries
How is the garden this Spring, so far?
The wedding feels like a line of caskets
We are cold, walking away
And these libraries we read all the sonnets,
And the romantic era poetry.
The room just smells like toes
in old socks that can't fit on these old spirits.
They just creep their heads out of the books.
I can't stand walking these beaches
With my Brixton Hooligan falling into the sand.
You were taken before me,
and that seems like a penalizing breath to take
This sand is fucking truculent and burns in the boredom.
I'm trying to hold onto this gravity
While I swim indigested in the stomach of Earth
Because that is what i've been told to do.
I'd much rather see if I could fly
To see if I can reimagine all the colours we owned,
And kiss every line of your face
As I fall.
The Skeleton of the Hawthorn
The highway began to eat the stars
Driving fastly past the Hawthorn trees
We made a wish off the bones
Of the dainty skeleton tree as it bit the breeze.
Watching the mass of blades
Parade in the dark of night
As it were to close in for a kiss of death
I push away the fires in its warm breath
Shaking branches off and letting love become savage
As the shuffle of the road
Whips in with the wind
The creation of the ladder
Climb up
And bend down the sky
To take a teasing peek at the blinding God.
Funeral Jacket
We wrecked our way to the funeral parlor
And we had drugs in our eyes
We pulled out our wallets from our tucked in dirty slacks
And watched the women cry for criminals
And left dirt all over the tracks
Where lines of people greet the family and the family friends.
God rest this old gigolo
Raised on candy and lipstick flavors
Assailants bump into the crowd and I feel a little claustrophobic
The room becomes a foggy night
I stumble to a flowery patterned sofa
Curled up and about to barf
I sweat over my skin in a funeral jacket.
Midnight swims in my head
And I want my thoughts to be less melodic
And less tragic
So what emotion am I supposed to have,
When my fever chill passes over my broken body?
I'll sip the 2 hour old coffee
From a stained olive green mug
And haunt this room like a mime
Bleeding white paint over my funeral jacket
No clubs or bars open to lay in my brown recluse charm.
I know everyone says at funerals the nice things you've done,
I just want those at mine to say
"Once in Heaven, Once from the circus, Like Always"
Death By Dame
It was a Sunday afternoon
I met this old guy flying by the saloon
In his cadillac falsies.
He was always a smooth talker
Out on the town, selling lies
Like a newspaper made by the town flirt.
Tobacco drips from his mouth and,
he watches Main Street strut to the pounding
of all those rusty trumpets.
His mind will never be that of something but obscene.
He's got pills for it all,
And he's got six divorces
All the motels know him by his name.
The cracks of all the flattery
The stains of all the boiling howls against his skin.
He loves the fishnets and the blue lipstick the most.
He thinks he's got the Midnight by the stilettos
But this night has a .38
Can't dial another number to a name
His death will soon follow by dame.
Save Me From the Bend
There are some afternoons you find yourself on the bend
In a fight, for the attentive eyes of night
Away from sunlight and smothering
Like mucus stuck to skin
Forgetting my gardens, my phaeton drives
My disease of anger,
Can now rest easy.
Wanting the energy of the moon to -
massage my mind.
Hum until the monsters leave
The day feeds all the chewing for fallen angels.
I want to rest in the thoughts of an evening
When anything visible or invisible can breathe
At the parties, alone in shadows
Hushes of the rain
Oh, just save me from the bend.
The Nameless Lust
Your sex was a tyranny
She was a succubus
I still a loner
She was lingerie
And lace like concrete
Skin that burned
I touched her lips
My soul has been sold
Blood thickened when churned
The flicker now a flame
Spreads like wildfire through my bones
She just hides away her head
And I crawl back into my veins.
The Connection & the Split
We become interconnected
Through both bone and blood
Became sweet like pickles
Held each other under perjury moons
and surgery slums.
Then broke apart like sugar cubes
Each sprinkle represented the lost distance.
Privileged
A warmth of tobacco winds
Blinking lights on broken cars
Sirens crushing glass
Here, the fury of privileged suits
Red hat papas wondering if their sandwich will get cold
during the last moments of Earth.
LIES
Leaking out,
Fires from your mind
Is your truth,
Lost to broken dreams?
Erasing feelings
Only leaving fingerprints of your past soul
Scared of your own reflection now,
Lies don't impress
Do you?
Impressions within, lay within
Or all you have become are LIES?
Wolfpack Contributor EIC Bios: David L O’Nan & HilLesha O’Nan
Some Things a Lady Just Wears WellWolfpack Contributor Bio: Jennifer Patino
I am the Audrey
with the pink chucks at the party
wearing oversized shades at night
Scary thin, decked in
dazzling cubic zirconia,
coming down
from a med withdrawal
after my last psychotic episode
involving a Golden Hollywood
delusion & fear of having cancer
Some Gregory Peckerhead
bums my smokes when he
has a full pack in his pocket,
but my sweet meter is high,
like those fools at the makeshift
blackjack table with pixie stick dust
on their upper lips & caked
between their nasal strips
because their vice supplier
never bothered showing up
It should be Halloween, but it's too warm
& there aren't enough demons
on the dance floor
I let the moochy one lead me there
where there's an awkward
exchange of one liners
His Bogart impersonation is the worst,
but I know i'm falling in love
because impulsivity
is the new 'You Can Heal Your Life'
& dammit, he can really move
We're the clean up crew, sober at dawn
I'm Sabrina sweeping up glass
& scrubbing vomit from the floor
He's singing 'Get Me to the Church on Time'
because it's Sunday
& lapsed Catholicism is a topic
we discussed hours ago
before the kisses, before
the Moon River descent,
before the exchange of names
He's driving me home
in a minivan
His mamma's rosary
hangs on the rearview mirror,
catching the sun
causing disco prisms
& paparazzi bulbs
to sting my face
"Hey babe," he says
stroking his stubbly chin,
"How 'bout Breakfast at Taco Bell?"
It's no Roman Holiday,
but I'll call it a win,
except when we get there
it's not open
We met and departed by that same seashore house.
When you first looked at me, and laughed
in a shy, yet very conversational.
A slight flirtatious touch to my shoulder
and I was in love,
the sun reflected blades of energy across
where my heart lit on fire, and my soul dropped to
the sands for you to pickup, and take ownership.
In your ticklish grin, I could do nothing but be mesmerized
by your eyes.
We'd walk the sands, and one Sunday evening
as the glow of the moon shun on the waters
I said "You look just like a movie star from movies I've yet seen"
She said "Yeah, they say I look a little like Audrey, you know Audrey Hepburn?" In the most charming demure laugh I've ever heard.
I wasn't quite sure until I researched, and there they were
just like her,
and her eyes were dancing back to me.
just like her,
her voice just swayed me away like a fool,
For some reason I felt if nothing was impossible, is this possible?
For hours and days on end
I could hear her music boxes playing
faeries and ballerinas, music notes in the air for me to grab
Was I living a myth?
Was she the reincarnation of her, sitting by black and white dollhouses aligned by jasmine?
And the Summer faded, and so did the Fall,
the Winter was as gusty as ever, and Spring had its way with the flowers. Creating new universes and felt bloodless, and used by the sins, and used by the lies, and abused by the skies.
In the rain, I picked the apples from the trees nearby
While in thought the lakes I would walk by were suddenly velvet
with rose petals stuffed in fairy tales, inside the polyphenols.
I would drink them in if I must, to make this last.
I began to chant her eyes in magical chants, offering gifts to the Gods to bring her my love, and her love to me.
I wait as she has married, I want to just see the eyes again.
Days later her reflection whips its way back to my soul.
A walk down the city sidewalk, and "I say hey,
do you remember me from my Summer getaway?"
She says "Of course, you're the one who didn't know about Audrey"
Suddenly I felt lost, dumb, and obviously not the only shy boy who was in love with her eyes.
I sat in love, by myself in thought.
In my city, lost and wondering if i'd ever see her again.
Will I ever feel that touch to my shoulder, the smile that erased my feeling of failure for just a little while.
I saw her again, after a lover's spat. She was alone , awaiting a reprieve she felt.
No longer was she full of energy, but more like me
Depressed, confused and like me, lost.
in rain storms she was dressed more like a woman who left a fashion ball than living without a home under thundercracks.
We went back to my sorry 1-bedroom, and talked for the first real time about her, she spoke of a failed love back home, and
she finally took the time to understand me, and I pretended not to understand everything about her that i've built up in my mind.
We were spinning jars on the floor, playing Miles Davis as the rain pellets smacked the window.
We were picnics in the park, I'd stare as the strawberry leaves her lips. Entranced by her eyes.
We were hand in hand watching the tiny finches flapping in the puddles.
Leaving soundwaves of songs in the ripples.
Praying hope into our souls.
We were watching the magnolias flatten by the sun rot, as we sat
on stacks of Alfalfa Hay.
I knew she had to get back home after the many days of finally knowing love. She still had this Golden ring on her finger that began to shine like dishwater yellow to her.
How did the narcissism of the highway man, the traveling heart breaker not fall in love with the eyes, the smile, the gentle walks, the woman inside that fully understood the man I would become?
How did he get so lucky to have his fairy tale become true?
I hope to one day be back by that seashore and see her walk back
in a Holly Golightly divorcee cackle, and have arms ready for mine.
Even in the fog of her leaving, her eyes
The wailing of spirits from the ocean, her eyes
Sitting atop a reflection of an empty wineglass, and her eyes...
The secrecy of love note trails that lead to the top of her stairs,
while he was away.
The same trails in which her tears would drop when someone wasn't looking as she took walks by herself, like I.
I await with the wind chimes.
I await in the milk white flowers that rest in the wind.
I await sitting the lonely mask in the corner of her eyes.
I plant her a garden, and believe in tomorrow.
To share our black and white mirrorball. I'm just a pebble wanting to be picked up to be swept away.
Forever in her palm,
and forever her eyes.
Wolfpack Contributor EIC Bios: David L O’Nan & HilLesha O’NanPoem by DMB (Death Metal Buddha) 'Audrey Hepburn'
An American icon,
Setting the standard for Hollywood elegance;
Unique beauty and incredible talent
Accompany her audiences and costars;
Wound and endowed with the resilient nature
Resplendent genus to cultural activity;
The ultimate girl to role model difference
Fell in love with the Corps de ballet;
Smuggling secret messages in ballet slippers
There is more than charity in her name;
A desire to make the world more beautiful
Sweet lil Academy Award winner,
And she did.
Facebook Group: Fevers of the Mind Poetry, Art & Music Group
*Poetry, Haikus, Sonnets, Poetry book Reviews, Music Reviews, Essays, Art promotion photos, Photography, Interviews*
Open submissions with bio. Please give us up to a full month from your sent e-mail date for acceptances/rejections. I will answer any status questions but remember to give us at least 1 month from your sent e-mail. We will NOT be sending any rejection e-mails. If we pass up a poem just keep sending new poetry, writing or art. Please let us know if something has been previously published, we will make a judgment call on whether able to include.
*All poetry will first be put on our blog and be eligible for a series of end of year print anthologies compiled by Fevers of the Mind Press and sold on Amazon paperback & kindle.*
Themes in addition to General Submissions could include, #StoptheHate Social Justice Poetry, The Audrey Hepburn Challenge, LGBTQ Matters/Pride Month, Avalanches in Poetry 2 Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen, Mental Health, History, Old Hollywood poetry, Influenced by Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Jack Keroauc, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, artists, Instrumental music, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bukowski, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Keats, W.B. Yeats, E.E. Cummings, James Joyce, Ginsberg, Lorca, Henry David Thoreau, Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt, Ted Hughes, Elliott Smith, Tori Amos, Ani Difranco, Marvin Gaye and many more. Send any work with bio to feversofthemind@gmail.com author photo helps but isn’t completely necessary for anonymity is wanted.
For More go to Amazon and look for the Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020 Deluxe Edition paperback & kindle Split editions Volumes 1 & 2 from the Deluxe edition available on paperback (look for post on Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020 to know who are contributors in each book), Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest Volumes 1-3 available on paperback and kindle. Also there is a Poetry Only combination book of Volumes 1 & 2: Avalanches in Poetry: Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen available on Paperback & Kindle. My poetry books (David L O’Nan) New Disease Streets (November 2020) The Cartoon Diaries (2019) Taking Pictures in the Dark (February 2021) Our Fears in Tunnels (2021) The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers (2018) Lost Reflections (2021) are all also available on Amazon. For my Amazon Author Page (may not have all listed at first) I have had work published in Icefloe Press, Royal Rose Magazine, Truly U, Dark Marrow an offshoot of Rhythm & Bones Lit, Ghost City, 3 Moon Publishing, Elephants Never, Nymphs Publishing, Anti-Heroin Chic & more. I have edited 5 Anthology editions & have poetry, prose, short stories, photography in Fevers of the Mind Poetry (&Art) Digest/Avalanches in Poetry Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen. A Best of the Net Nominee for 2021.
