Poetry – Fevers of the Mind

The Pandemic Factory Poetry Series: Gerard Malanga by David L O’Nan (freewriting/stream of consciousness) aka Fumbles Through the Cloverleafs

photo from Gerard Malanga’s book Incarnations.

I saw you taking pictures of the birds, while the wind whipped around the skin of the street. The nude trees laughed and shook.

A newborn archetype for the devil developed out of the silver screen then became bleeding silkscreens and wonderful fumbling cloverleafs that ran through our feet.

Digest all this rain that falls from the veins of the sky. The corners of the 9 o’clock train stops looked like waterfalls from the orbs of your blackened eyes.

You help the dainty devil, you watch as he shrivels to the wheelchair, and the artistry soapbox he will sit. You read him poetry, he stares at the moon and forgets.

He forgets that he’s a wonder, he forgets he is the Dali, the Picasso of popularity and the silence and the underground all at once.

The invitation to the cesspool, where we dance in the cool. The amphetamines rule and we become angels vacuumed from the ledge.

Some say a little like Malanga, Others say the reincarnation of the myth. Worlds that altered. Worlds that bothered. And worlds that are magical and incensed.

We live now running scared. Feeling shaky and watching as the bullies become our brooms. They sweep us off, take the art we bring and burn it in their tombs.

Caught me as I fumbled over another cloverleaf, into the shadow of old saints. They preached Jesus to the mirror. And the mirror reflected waves of redundancy, slightly altered versions of me.

Take in each cloud and welcome it into the smoke. We weave in the beauty and the broken. Like fashion and death are one in the same.

Love is the party, the shame is the sullen. And the afterglow is the pulling the mussels from the machines. While the Cephalopoda watches us closely and hides all his ink.

Learning bravery from the scared little fish. Learning to be genius identical to his.

And we wonder for hours and hours if this disease is our final bliss.

Wolfpack Contributor EIC Bios: David L O’Nan & HilLesha O’Nan

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with EIC of Fevers of the Mind David L O’Nan

encyclopoetic by Yrik Max Valentonis

gray concrete with quotes on pavement — photo by George Kourounis

encyclopoetic

poet robot
churning out verses
mechanical rhythm
metronome progression
electronic algorithm
pre-programmed imagery
looping tropes
inserted throughout stanzas

My blood is poetry
every scar an epic
each cut drips haiku
coursing through my heart
everything is poetic
cybernetic fusions of biological, mechanical, and emotional
processed and digested
manufactured from pain and pleasure and thought and action

writing an epic poem
about the intricacies of banking
as complex, detailed, and interesting
as a legal contract
jargon and lexicon and doublespeak and acronyms
to befuddle and obfuscate and confuse and misdirect and bewilder

how shall I contrive
playing mutable linguistic games
plot occurs upon reflection
this theory is false, not right now, but will be eventually
the aftertaste, a minor key lingers
psychic algorithm calculating the future

2 poems from Yrik Max Valentonis

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Yrik Max Valentonis

Poems by Yrik Max Valentonis : Lost in Urban Landscaping #2, #6, #46

2 poems from Yrik Max Valentonis

photo from pixabay

Seems Like Yesterday

Every King and Queen had an astrologer.
Plagues ran rampant through the world.
The world was going to end.

Oscar Wilde died in 1901.  A millennium year.

The change from 19** to 20**
	Y2K
A mathematical shortcut, leading to a 
logical error.

Setting the clock back will not raise the dead.
but it will allow for Shakespeare and Cervantes to be born on the same day.

Will setting the clocks back kill?
or will my birthday be re-assigned?

The thing is…
there was no year 0.
but there was a beginning
	(somehow)
We don’t know when.
	(some of us disagree0
Will there be an end?
	(how)
When?

Our Mythology is composed of movie monsters and video game faeries. 
Our heroes appear in comic books with capes rustling in the wind. 
The storytellers of our tribe.
	Idols
Merchandizing of plastic menageries. 
Lessons learned re-enacted, mass-produced. 
Repeatable. Copied. Xeroxified.  
Industrialization through henry Ford’s assembly line, cost effective mementos of a cultural event.
A tie-in, a spin-off, the sequel.

The more scientists learned about the human mind and its processes, the more artists explored it.
The Arts has become the study of studies.

The joy and pride of accomplishment is what makes the labor cost effective.

Success is a monkey piling up the furniture to reach a banana.
Victory is a weed shooting through the cracks in the pavement.
love is matching socks with static cling to each other.
reward is skinny-dipping in the woods after a long hike.
Achievement is sweat.
Truth is a side-long glance into someone staring at you.
Praise is a small fire on a chilly night.
Life is what you feel.

It is important to know who your friends are.

Lost in Urban Landscaping #9

And words of wisdom

scientist philosopher 
writing the humanity manual
codes every emotional variable
logic of actions
explanation of motives
list of assumed truths

my grandmother watches the magick 
of my computer the gold 
of her icons carries a code 
of arcane user input
faith in the unknowable 
projections of outcome

And in a word

generating commentary
firm beliefs with proofs and denials
accepting minor variations 
inconclusive rationale
an evolution of theory

questions that arise and
means to find answers for
every dilemma a person 
to speak with and
tools for testing whether
I can live with myself

And the word was

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Yrik Max Valentonis

Poems by Yrik Max Valentonis : Lost in Urban Landscaping #2, #6, #46

Retro Writes: The Music by Bill Strangmeyer

At the time it was a distinction, a distinction from the movie-talking mass. I saw its grim, limited appeal at a club called The Seven Stars where the kids, the guys, sold cold-hearted serenity and sleep-walker pills.

What held us together was the music that now we call doo-wop. All the leather jackets gathered round the record player, hair greased back and pointy shoes.

The distinction of parts was important: five or perhaps four lines; but the figures therein were few, three or four slow, two or three fast. But any smallest variation was the point. Add satin, grit or whiskey to the tone. Add an attitude. Fake sincerity and remember:

You dress like a saint.

We walked in a certain way, pleading our cause. Our cause was not justice.

But since then I have in no way felt so keenly the rightness or wrongness of any chance word or gesture and the sergeant-at-arms would grin upwards through gritted teeth in approval of the loyalty to the complicated rules of every song the same and felt by the obsessive believers to be different, maybe closer to the ideal or with some almost imperceptible, riotous twist.

Most valuable were the long, slow high and the deft, rapid low and possession of both was a glory, but the girls didn’t get it unless they had matching party dresses. Then they might be admitted, but their game was no cult and there were fights at their parties. Too much awe, too much aww.

A word could settle status and “Hey,cool” had many nuances. Anything could trigger anything. It was a matter of style in the longest and misaligned, grayly varicolored decade.

Art can focus the mind on narrow details.

Bio: William Walrond Strangmeyer was born in Roanoke, Virginia, but grew up in Brofus, New Jersey, attending Rutgers University for years of switching majors. His influences are adventures in bar rooms, doo-wop, rock, Palisades Amusement Park, Paris and the usual Beaudelaire, Eliot and Pound. He has read all around Paris and some in the U.S. And has been co-editor of a literary magazine Upstairs at Duroc. His mission in lit is truth telling, however grungy the beauty of it. He loves people in the abstract, somewhat less in practice. His main character defect is loyalty.

Folktober Sonnets by Paul Brookes

Autumnal Green Man

Spiders thread my lips lightly together.
My leaves become their actual colours
and fall from my face, red, yellow, ochre.
My voice rustle of green leaves is no more.

I am the scent of ripe apple and pear.
I am the rain on sodden bark, slow time.
My days shorter, dark sooner, light rarer.
I am burning leaves. Face of Harvest time.

After the fires, my mouth nose and eyes spout green
shoots, new leaves bud and grow on my barkskin.
I flourish once more. An aspect of dream.
Memory of ice. Warmth without, within.

In stone, wood or paper I decay lose
definition, but still my image grows

2. Erl-King

Hear the gust music my air blows through this reed?
Inhabits your ear, delights all your senses.
A new birdsong, fresh animal track, beads
a sprightly beat, warm summer days, tenses

new sugar tastes on your tongue, blood hums your bones.
Now you see me, in rich purple, rare blue.
Your mouth opens, I reach out, touch your grown
laughter, imprison your youth in situ.

I am your first child who needs shelter, hugs,
clothes, your patience and long conversations.
I am your elderly parents that tug
at their recall more and more frustration.

Enticed by freedom find yourselves in chains.
I laugh and play a sprightly flute on your pains.

3. Freybug

"Be not afraid of fray-bugs which lie in
the way." so English martyr describes me
1555. I'm a frightening
obstacle to overcome. Popery

railed against, authority imprisoned
him, requested he recant, he refused.
They ordered him burnt He welcomed
hugged stake said it was cross of Christ. And loosed,

" Welcome Everlasting life!" Not afraid
of me when he met me in various
ways. Burnt February of year he made
mention of me his words always pious.

Some say I'm reason, today's way who blocks
fanaticism, shows easy paths plot.

4. I, Ginny Greenteeth

I, Ginny Greenteeth invite all of you,
boys and girls to dance and play on this green
mat, I've laid out especially for you.
Look how the sun shines on it. The wild sheen

invites your feet to press upon it, fetch
football to its wonderful pitch, not
scuffed up and muddy but fresh and fine, stretch
your legs, leap on this cool turf goal spot.

Don't read those old, battered out of date signs.
Don't listen to uncool mam and dad bleat
to you about playing safe. Where's the fun time
in that? Risk it for a biscuit. Compete.

I will take you where you can play all day.
Step on this duckweed, don't do as they say.

5. We Were Green

tending to flocks of mother and dad's big cattle,
we hear clapping of bells, a call
to colour of bells, we fell into twig
of twilight, a dark cave of hammers fall.

They said our words were not understanding,
so we went with them, our garb they were not
knowing, and we were green and lazing
They took us with them to a big door knock.

Inside they passed foul tastes bruv and me were
having none of until we could split pods
roll the bean inside our strange tongues slur
and soon we were pink again and their god

taught us their way of understanding to
I can say these things. Am servant and do.

6. The Marden Mermaid

Bell banging, clattering keeps me awake.
so rope that held it snaps and it rolls here.
Sunk into my home this bright stream's intake.
I wrap myself inside it, searchers near.

I sleep while twelve white freemartins with yokes
of sacred yew and mountain ash bands dredge
and men bind rope to bell, drawn out by folk
in needful silence. Raised to river's edge,

I asleep inside. Excited driver
calls out, "In spite of all the devil's in
hell, now we'll land Marden's great bell.", diver
with bell I announce "If it had not been

for your wittern bands and your yew tree pin,
I'd have had your twelve freemartins in!"

*Freemartin was a sterile cow

7. Sheela Na Gig

I sit in stone above this church door.
You must crane your neck to see me carved here.
I am bald naked my pendulous raw
breasts hang just above my spread legs. Come near.

Life enters and returns to me. What
is it about me that fascinates you?
Celebrate my fertility and shock
of my age. Once I was hidden from view.

I was in darkness, a cloth thrown over
me. Somebody was ashamed of what they
saw in me. Cloth lifted, life unsmothered.
Folk passing through my door see my display.

I don't know why I was placed so high up.
I look down, vulnerable, opened up.

8. I, Owlman

I, Owlman fly above the church steeple
in corrugated cardboard wings made by mum, stapled and brown sellotaped in full.
Didn't mean to scare those girls who walked by.

My feathers are all soggy in the rain, fall
apart. Soon owl will go, leaving just me.
Mum took sharp scissors and curled all
these brown paper strips now all soggy.

Kitchen roll tubes are like a skeleton
under my wings. My claws weren't very sharp,
so I used kitchen knives after she passed on.

My late mum is an owl now with a harp.
I used to only go out in the dark
as an owl. Now I, Owlman in my heart.

9. Every Woman Needs To Be a Dryad

I am all my tree, and my tree is me.
Cut my bark, and I bleed. I float on leaves.
Lay your back against my skin, tell story
after story. Words are my memories.

I asked to be a tree when He refused
to leave me alone. Endlessly chased.
I got tired of always being abused.
He says my sexiness makes him sex crazed.

As if it is my fault He feels like that.
Told Him I don't make Him do anything.
He's responsible, His choice how He acts.
As a tree I hide, watch all happenings.

Every women needs a secret place.
A place where she has no fear to face.

10. The Standing Stone

I am just stood standing here. Don't know why?
Folk gawk at me, as for a miracle.
Run their fingers through spirals chiselled by
someone who had a reason to channel

their beliefs into my solid body.
Probably same folk who quarried and moved
me here, raised me up here meaningfully.
Stone doesn't hurt, doesn't bleed. Pressured

into what I am. You make me something special. Set me up for some strange purpose. - Once I must have had some meaning.
I find meaning in holding up the skies range.

I may topple over at some near time.
Till then I'm stood standing, a weathered sign.

11. A Jabberwock

Welcome, Welcome a frumly Jabberwock.
Put away your leptimous gronky blade.
Its harkless flames are spidgeons on umnous clock.
Mouth your impsy words flunty pullisades.

Welcome, Welcome a durkast Jabberwock.
Offer it afterswoon tea and lockly scones,
raise a swabbly glass to its fibblywock,
raise another to its true coddlemoan.

Lets celebrate one another's jull,
in this grameless land where pomelders play
amongst sundblast and tough crockly mimples,
Sleep mafely in the grummidge of today.

Only when we grell of ourselves in horkly,
can we live gethertookness in borkly.

12. I'm a Hobgoblin

I help you out round the house at nighttime.
I'm naked but for all these hairs on me.
"You mucky bugger." Your wife sees my grime.
"Your hairs all over the bloody bath. Look .See."

She does not know me, per our old agreement.
"Have you been washing livestock in this bath?
These hairs are too coarse to be yours. I've spent
too long cleaning up, after you. All faff.

I'm better off on my own. You make work."
Your wife's rant might mean I don't get fed. Neat.
I'l sour your milk. Clog your drains. Can't catch jerk.
I'm an ornament, I'm a bucket. Fleet.

Can't trust you when you lie to your fine wife.
She should marry hobgoblin, get a life.

13. I, Blackthorn

My leaves in autumn yellow, winter fall
leave me a stark twisted black skeleton.
I dwell on woodland edge as thicket wall
hedgerow. Hawthorn, Elder companions.

My barkskin rough, scaly, bright orange flood
under my dark grey surface, thickets dark,
dense, thorny, sapwood light yellow, heartwood
brown. Thorns long and sharp if pricked, turn septic. Mark

musk-scented small, delicate, white flowers
oval petalled cluster into a star
shape early spring. Blossoms, thin, rounder
tooth edged white, with red-tipped threads. Globular

small blue-black or deep purplish, round lip glossed
summer berries ripen after first frost.

14. I, Nucklalevee

My mouth is wide, I breathe on your ripe crops
make them wilt, breathe plague into your horses.
My vein and muscle is not wrapped and topped
by skin, poisoned and scalded by doses

of water from the black sky I retreat
into saltwater waves back to mother
who tries to keep me close bound to her sweet
all the length of the hot days in summer.

Come winter my hooves canter ashore, two headed,
my horse head a living wave, tall
as if a rider my body grown through
the horses back, my other head, one eye ball,

wide mouth agape, my arms trail down touch earth,
I bring drought, disease, your prayers and worse.

15. A Cerne Abbas Giant

Once fully clothed, a cape over my left
arm whose hand carried a head by its hair,
a knobbly cudgel in my right I heft.
Soon my carried head and cape is not there.

And someone carves an erect appendage.
First a stubby thing then made to include
my belly button. I reflect this age.
My chalk refreshed regularly. A prude

I can't be. Once they hid, tried to get rid
of this added bit. Now all is brightened.
I'm cared for, watched over, weathered, In spit
and shine, folk climb me, perhaps enlightened.

I'm what you make of me, you fetch yourself,
and all you've been through, your wealth.

16. By Peg Powler

You call me a hag. Foam flecks on water,
are my suds, thin layer here is my cream.
How beautiful are your ankles closer,
closer now to the edge of my fine stream.

Let me look. Let me see your lovely skin
and delicate bone. I had to grab one
to feel it's soft curve, to taste blood within.
Let me take you down, where there is no sun.

Come canny lads and lasses, you're my bait,
delicious food, playing close to the edge.
Let me take you to my place in the spate,
where no one tells you what and when, my fledge.

I'm more than a warning of dangerous water.
I'll not starve. Kids are nutritious.

17. A Queen of Elfthame

I rule a nameless land, my glamour shines
a clear skinned thin high cheeked young
woman whom
some human males boast conquered many times,
will find a gift from faerie has its own boon.

It will ask that they lose what they treasure most.
More they stroke my thighs in private, more humans notice their magic measure,
more kiss my full lips more public their fate.

They name this land and define those within.
It's name will stay unknown to them, as will life of those bairns from our togethering.
These men will burn as witches, a deal fulfilled.

I will coddle these halflings, my children.
They'll be a bridge between our rich living.

18. I'm An Apple Tree Man

invented as good stories to engross.
Perhaps I'm real in imagination.
I am wizenned as a rotting fruit loss,
Muscled as toughest barkskins creation.

Make up tales about me and this orchard.
A penniless man sups his last cider,
rests his back against one of my trees hard
skin, I appear and find him gold and finer.

Perhaps Lord or Lady of Dreams gifted
you visions, that's why sources are hazy
tales told so well, they are uplifted,
so readers wish them authentic story.

Telling false from true is necessity.
A good tale told lives in the memory.

19. The Sin Eater

As you die I'll feast on your thou shalt nots.
My fried chips is your lust for another.
My boiled egg is your envy of others lot.
Roast beef is your thieving from your brother.

This lean bacon is your Pride. So proudful.
These baked beans are your endless gluttony,
Laziness your job, turnip your Slothful.
Salt and pepper Wrath forever angry.

Thank you to your family and friends pence
and free meal of bread and ale. The rest dream
I dreamt myself with each mouthful. Have sense
shun me now. Your dead Heaven bound serene.

I'll heft these inside myself. Pale Hunger
my constant friend for a short while longer.

20. A Mordiford Dragon

Her mum and dad told Maud don't bring that here,
over our threshold, take it back where you got it from, so she returns me to a near
wood, feeds me milk filched from fat cows and ewes.

Grown out of milk, she fetches rats and cats.
Soon my wings are broad and wide, I ascend.
Maud is so small from here. I swoop on fat
beef and tasty sheep to slaughter and rend.

No, no, no. She screams at me. I'm hungry
I tell her. Soon her friends the villagers
are marching armed towards my wood, angry.
One lances through my neck. Fatal damage.

I imagine her parents saying I
told you so. Maud weeps for me as I die.

21. Dorset Ooser

I'm a mask. Two holes for eyes where there
are no eyes. Inside these small spaces is a
larger place where a brain would be where
thinking would take place and a tongue to say

what comes to mind, instead I'm emptiness.
When you wear me I don't have your brain,
tongue, but you are different more or less
from when you don't wear me, you're not the same.

I have horns and a moveable jaw. When
you speak through me, I don't speak. I always
say nothing. You have all the words to bend
to thoughts I never have. These word ways

are a mystery to me. How am I
speaking now? I'm only a mask. So why?

22. A Lincoln Imp

Tell you why I'm motionless here, grinning
down at you. Satan let us out to play.
Mate and I sat on a church spire twisting
it. Chesterfield never had better days.

Next we blew through that door. Tripped up Bishop.
So serious. In the Angel Choir broke
chairs and tables till angel out a hymn book
told us to stop, so I lobbed stones at bloke

while mate scarpers to Grimsby, where angel
catches him,smacks his arse, turns him to
stone
as he did to me. At least mate can waggle his smacked arse at visitors I'm alone.

Need a bit of fun in this God given
place packed full of all praying and hymning.

23. My Wyvern

I am what you make of me. Make of me
what you will. In my wake is grass marked,
slime, or frogspawn and flounders spawned? Angry
twine of my knotted tail, my temper dark

and venomous? An image on a shield,
a tattoo on your skin. Bat winged, razor
claws. I'm Tyrannosaurus Rex revealed.
or Pterodactyl, extinct become lore.

Mouth open forked tongue often out. Beware,
an image will attach itself to you.
It's not me. Simplifies me. You declare.
I'm more complicated than this crude view.

I'm called a dreadful creature, by some. Seen,
maligned by others . I'm found in between.

Sonnet Series: “Wombwell Cemetery” by Paul Brookes

About Bats: The Chiroptera Sonnets by Paul Brookes

Arachnida Sonnets by Paul Brookes (an occasional series)

The Insect Sonnets by Paul Brookes

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