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 were 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
The water lilies are not the ones by Monet, I’ve seen hanging in the museum
Covered in glass
made only to glimmer by the reflective light,
fingerprint smudged as if someone thought to reach in and pluck one
- pull it up and out of the water, attached to the silt
like an umbilical cord
The ones I hold are real in a small dirtied dammed pond on a capsized canoe
And we break the pads from their stems and cut the stems from the silt
And we think that to drink the water through the stems will take out all the bacteria
And it tastes likes fish scales and the scent of snakes,
And I know you’re lying when you tell me we’re survivalists
And the sun catches you and I think of drinking milkshakes in Santa Claus, Indiana with you
And I pretend this lily-straw we’ve made, because you’ve watched too much Crocodile Hunter, is made of paper and the water is chocolate
and I don’t think of all the little things that call it home.
I don’t think of that at all.
Twitter: @RachCraftsTales
A Letter to Monet by Kevin DeLaney
you're supposed
to feel things
behind beauty
there is supposed
to be pain.
but when
I look at you
I feel nothing.
I don't feel weight.
I don't feel broken
or any sort of sad.
I don't even feel
thankful.
I don't feel
like fucking or
any sort of heat.
I hardly feel strange.
when I read you,
I am coherent
and I can remember
my own name,
and that is not
supposed to happen.
I should feel
some sense of death,
and I feel none
but sincerely,
there is no shame...
it's not you,
it's me
at least
your work
is pretty.
Twitter: @kpdela
The Pond of Life by Vipanjeet Kaur
A dream-like pond mirrors Life
like a glass painting:
A microcosm of the cosmos
and of human life;
An image of the illusive world;
A dark water palate
reflecting loneliness of Life
where mix, merge and emerge
coloured dreams of Life –
The turquoise of the sky and
silver grey of clouds
painting the centre,
The tree top olives colouring
its bankless margins;
A backdrop for unfolding
the play of Life –
Enacted in the foreground by
Water lilies-red, pink and white-
The majestic aquatic autumn beauties
Shining like stars and fireflies,
Twinkling, illuminating and dotting
the dull sky-like surface.
Standing upright with slender stalks
on the circular plates of green leaves
after shedding impurities of Life;
Emerging immaculately from the mud of life;
Dreaming of rebirth and resurgence;
Deep in meditation or sleep
within their enclosed petals
like souls seeking redemption.
Opening the cup of petals at night,
like seekers awakening from trances
bearing the enlightened light
and effulgence of moonlight,
and worthy of partaking nectar of purity,
They bloom and embalm
the darkness of night
giving wholeness to the transient Life.
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.
wordpress website: https://vjpoeticmusings.com An Impressionist's Perspective by Pasithea Chan
Who needs an eye when holding a brush
with a heart full of love to paint beauty?
Why reminisce beauty when you can witness-
love’s purity and experience its peaceful bliss?
You don’t have to be Hercules’-
Amalfi to understand a lover’s agony-
or sympathize with Melite’s envy.
Death does not distinguish between
lament for lovers or unrequited love.
Only an impressionist seeks clarity to be free
from a sky that pulls aspirations with memory.
His brush pulls lives into a scene with sentiments.
Only a cataract eye overridden by artistic mentality
leaves out trees’ shadows haunting reflections.
that haunt lovers’ souls before waters.
The pond’s waters pulled Monet with its lilies-
pulling the river from rushing back.
His brush joined them in their colorful strokes
to sing life’s it is what it is peacefully.
Today he invites thee to be like him free
of interpretations held in minds & simile.
Monet’s Water Lilies’ Pond shuts down a sky
crowded with echoes of lost wishes and goodbye.
Let its blue hues carry you on its lilies’ tunes
to where Alice lives on with your impressions
on the beauty of living in the present.
A Poetry Showcase with Pasithea Chan (September 2022)Changing Light on Water by Louise Longson"Colours pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep."
(Claude Monet, December 1914)
A cold brush of sleet stipples
the windows with sound, tapping
in the grey-rose dawn. A dream-
jumbled code of unsolved impressions
lays wresting, half-forgotten
on the tip of my vision, hesitating
like a horse refusing to jump. Broken
now into blurred, incoherent shades,
the cool-blue world seems far away, far
from familiar; increasingly coloured in red
and sepia tones, even as the winter-soft
yellow light washes over the waking day
Bio: A qualified psychotherapist, Louise Longson works remotely from her home in a small village for a charity that offers a listening service to people whose physical and emotional distress is caused by loneliness and historic trauma. Not having to go into the office since the start of the pandemic in 2020(a 2 hour plus round trip) allowed her the time and headspace to write. She has since been widely published in print and online. She is the author of the chapbooks Hanging Fire (Dreich Publications, 2021) and Songs from the Witch Bottle; cytoplasmic variations (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). Her poems contain themes of trauma, abuse, loneliness, grief and loss, seen through the twin prisms of myth and nature.
Monet With Water Passes By Me by Maid Čorbić
I am unaware again
that my life has no more ravages
only my hopes still stand
to be an old man
and to strive for my dreams
I know I have to be so strong.
because the meaning of life for me is
to save myself from hell
and that every day I strive just to be
all that I am and am not
I know that my fate hangs in the balance.
but that monet has become all to me.
because without him I am nobody and nothing.
and I have to make all my wishes come true.
while my body swirled at the bottom
and I am ready to sign my agreement
as long as the soul is still looking for its own sea
because without him I became an ordinary man,
a desire for direction and a goal that has become irrelevant
all because of the children's black game!
Bio: Maid Corbic from Tuzla, 22 years old. In his spare time he writes poetry that repeatedly
praised as well as rewarded. He also selflessly helps others around him, and he is moderator
of the World Literature Forum WLFPH (World Literature Forum Peace and Humanity) for
humanity and peace in the world in Bhutan.
The Lilies by Thasia Anne Lunger
The Lilie's
never
give up
They float
and bloom
They refuse
to go under
The lilie's
have learned
how to
stay calm
and persevere
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Thasia Anne LungerMonet/Hockney haiku by Ivor Daniel
I am so seduced
by your water lilies I
take my glasses off
squint and look deeper.
More like water lilies than
actual lilies
like Hockney’s big splash
pools look more like swimming pools
than swimming pools do.
Inspired by Bob Dylan poetry by Ivor DanielBlue Moon by Marianne TefftBlue Moon appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of Literary Cocktail Magazine in May 2022.
You splashed your watercolors
Across my stony heart
Like Monet in his garden
You made me your work of art
With perfect lines and sketches
You knew just where to start
By sunrise I was dreaming
We’d never be apart
All your shades and shadows
Painted pictures in my mind
A brilliant fairytale that came
Once upon a time
Never-ending rainbows
Telling stories line by line
By sunset I was dreaming
Of our Technicolor night
Like chalk dust on a rainy street
Love slipped through our frame
No dashing knight to count on
No pot of gold to claim
No longer close by my side
You still come now and then
The album in my mind’s eye
Tells me where and when
I’ll see you again
Blue Moon
Water Lilies Ballet by Jacqueline P. Dempsey-Cohen
A frolic of dustlight
a merriment of sunlight
slowly deliquesce
into arabesques of color
violet shimmer, cobalt gleam
cadmium yellow, viridian green
tonal mist glimmers the air
a playful pirouette of pigment
sending sense of sunlight asunder
Yet below, quiet wonder,
a muted requiem of hue
cobalt swirls with palest blue
vermillion fades to rose
A delicate dance
in shadowed depths
Sunlight plundered.
twitter @boscoedempsey
A Monet haiku and monoku by Lev Hart
#1
sunny afternoon
painting the light
within Water Lilies
#2
art gallery visitors lost amid Water Lilies
bio: Lev Hart, having lived on this planet for 69 years,
is becoming impatient with the tardiness of his
rescue ship. Meanwhile he has majored in English,
worked with homeless people, moved to the Gulf of
Aqaba, and returned to Canada. His beloved and he
have been together almost forever.
The Water Lilies in Claude Monet's Mind as I Feel Grave by David L O'Nan
A whole, a dump, I worship in my sadness.
To be a flower that is not dead in this dark room where my mind has shed.
I feel like I cannot break any further as my body hits the water.
Caution: the water is too cool. But it looks warm enough to me.
A blue day reflects through the trees and my eyes obey the power of the water lilies.
The fears begin to fade, although I have not moved from my internal shade.
I have dreamt myself into a Garden, I have began to feel Giverny.
You hear the echoed voices from outside from the unruly.
Tune them out and swim in my friend! Your only true friend right now is the imagination and escape.
I have deleted out the traumas of my past, my current, my midnight tremors.
I have held the water lily in my hand and worshiped to the gods of art, of beauty.
Repaired. In a sweet dream. Kidnapped away to the Water Gardens.
A blink out of the trance. Neglected. The dream vanishes. I want back my Paradise. Another dream some other night....hopefully Monet will haunt me again.
Two Haikus by Jessica Swafford
1)
Pink water lilies
gone - gasp as frog quickly leaps
safe from my big foot
(2)
dragonflies gather
quiet multitudes swarming
water lilies gone
A Super Deluxe Poetry Showcase from David L O’Nan (from several books pt 1)Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.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 WrenBare Bones Writings Issue 1 is out on Paperback and Kindle
Fevers of the Mind 