 An Autumn Scarecrow If my song for you is Autumn From the roof I shall sing to a soft chill My voice is an earthquake quivering out these little sonnets and trails of letters Coming down faster than the snow We soon stand still in the early season blizzard It will blade through all of the farmland The prairies ruined with guillotined scarecrows bleeding straw like a hydrant This is our beauty, this is our moment Will you say I love you back from this Midwestern view? And we can warm each other in praises In the hills of sleet where we shared our first kiss your hair falls over my body like the stars tonight And magnetizing our hearts together in our newly found love. Let us birth the Winter Solstice in the death of leaves I really never cared much for all the scarecrows Anyways, they were nothing but a lie To keep the dying birds on the street I know, I know I can love you At least for awhile in this arctic shift as my heart beats lazily the colder it gets Well, do we escape together? Before all the tornadoes of Spring hunt for fresh meat to begin the hunt for a new shelter Share this breath with me a little longer before I have to think of the potential hazards. -- David L. O'Nan  I love poetry. It's hard, in the wild world that is publishing these days, to know where to look to find poetry that stirs your soul. David L. O'Nan has not only written volumes of poetry and short stories, he seeks creative expression, drawing together poets, artists, musicians, and more. To be inspired, to perhaps share your work, or if you're searching for something new, drop by his website, Fevers of the Mind. Welcome, David. I have so many questions. It was hard for me to know where to begin, but I think it must be with yourself and your poetry. You know (of course you do) that the name of your website and press – Fevers of the Mind -- grabs a person. It certainly caught my attention, and I wondered how you’d come to think of the name/title. That was before I’d read much of your writing. Now that I have, I think I understand a little better. Your poetry is astonishing, beautiful, and more often than not, heart-wrenching. What it’s not is light or simple. So, David, what is poetry to you? Poetry to me is an expression of art through words, it is a therapy for me, poetry is just a rattling compulsion of words that train through my head and purges its way to forms controlled, hazy, or whipped around tornadic. When did you start writing poetry? I began writing poetry in phases. First, I would listen and read what my older brother wrote when they were a teenager. I would always be a sucker for lyrics in music. I grew out of the Everybody Dance Now and Metal music from the 80’s and began listening to The Beatles around 12. I wrote 2 blah songs around that time, that in retrospect might have been okay for a 12-year-old boy. How has it changed through the years? I wrote many goofy, weird dark humor and otherwise nonsense short stories through high school, which when I would turn in during “Creative Writing” some English teachers didn’t understand. Around 18 I began to feel a little more depressed, frustrated by how my single life was going so I would right more angsty, frustrated poetry. Eventually, I began writing more serious, tapped in imagery material around 23 after another relationship, and then becoming entranced with another which I was unable to fully materialize due to circumstances that were out of my hand. Since then I’ve written on and off for years. I took several years away from writing and then the passion fully came back when my father passed away in 2016 on Christmas Night. Since then, I’ve written more and finally put out through self-publishing work from years before. Digging even deeper, your poetry is complex as well as profound. Emotions often tangle, even emotional extremes. Do you draw from inner or outward observation or both? Please, tell us more about yourself and your work. My poetry isn’t complex to me. The words and imagery may not be there at all at times, and other times it rushes out in a hypomanic story that has to come out quickly. With Generalized Anxiety/A.D.D. and whatever else I encompass all of my emotions at that time to the highest degree my mind will take me without (for me) being over the top. Sometimes the poem will be there ready for me to add in imagery, and other times I will have to refocus my mind to that energy through music or thought. I will form short stories that become poems (or forms of writing) and will work some real life feelings and in other moments I will add in how a character in my poems would feel. It is psychological really. I am a natural empath and can pick up on emotions well and it affects me in one way that in a poem usually that comes out. I’ve been reading The Famous Poetry Outlaws Are Painting Walls and Whispers. I don’t read books of poetry all at once. To me, that’s usually counterintuitive. What I’ve read so far is fun and – this is not flattery – brilliant, but… I wouldn’t even call it dark humor. Sometimes, it’s just dark. Is it that I don’t the right sense of humor? Or is it, in fact, meant to be dark? What are your own thoughts on this wild ride of verse? Well, the first thing I want to say about this book is I re-worked this book this year (2021). It has been scrambled about since I first put it out in 2018. I have updated to look almost like a Coffee-table sized book. I have added photography to the poems and some have been updated since the original incarnation of the poems that were published years ago. I try to stay thematic in putting together a book, but that is when my attention deficit issues might strike. This book is meant to have some dark undertones of confused humans, the characters in the poems could almost come across as selfish or wannabe heroes. It is a book about confusion in life. To not be sure if you’re doing the right thing, or maybe have a very hard time doing the exact right thing because you’re always trying to make yourself better or a different version of yourself. Sometimes that is scary, sometimes it is humorous & sometimes it is in between. If you can’t decipher who you are, the hope is that someone cares enough about you to decipher your coding enough to carry you through our current infinity while hopeful for what is after. Beautiful. Thank you. Inspiration... Clearly, Leonard Cohen’s life and work has inspired you. Am I correct in my understanding that you are compiling a Part 2 to Avalanches in Poetry, Writing, and Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen? Will the collections remain only online? Do you find it hard to believe that there are many people out there who don’t know about him? What about his life’s work is so special to you? I sort of learned more about Leonard in my early twenties. For awhile it took me awhile to get him until I really began reading his books and his lyrics. I wasn’t fully sold on his songs post 70’s and that was what I was mostly first hearing outside of Suzanne. Then I really began soul searching during some hard times and meditated in his “Songs of Love and Hate” and they tapped into my current emotions at the time, and over time I became infatuated with his whole story and his first 4 albums often resonate with me the most. I feel like a misplaced in time soul and he puts me there through his words. That is what I strive to do when I write. To put the people reading it into the mindset of a time and place. As of right now the Second part to the Avalanches in Poetry Series is only online on the www.feversofthemind.com website in blog postings. They are usually titled “Before I Turn Into Gold” in lieu of Avalanches in Poetry 2 however, since I had thought about putting a personal book out before with that title. A line from “A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes” by Leonard Cohen. My anxieties currently are too much for me to handle curating in a book form of this at the time. I also have a full time job, being a father of 3, and a husband without a vast amount of time to fully put my creative endeavors on the forefront. I am also hugely influenced by music, retro culture in general. I have always been a fan of The Beatles esp. John Lennon & George Harrison, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits (mostly earlier work), Bruce Springsteen, Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, Prince, Elliott Smith and thousands more. I think people don’t fully understand the poet that Leonard was. They focus on 3 or 4 of his songs and to them that is it. They think of covers of Suzanne, Everybody Knows, Hallelujah. I must admit, I love Hallelujah. Are there any other inspirations that you'd like to mention? I almost forgot to mention how the poetry of Plath and Sexton developed my early writing. Also, reading Kerouac and Ginsberg helped me transition from diary angst poetry to more storytelling. confessional poetry & character driven work. Two poems in the Famous Poetry Outlaws book actually derived from a novel I had written a few hundred pages and then gave up " The Bible Belt Bachelor" circa 2005. This was heavily influenced by Kerouac's "On the Road" and "Dharma Bums" with some Salinger " The Catcher in the Rye" thrown in. You share your appreciation for artistic expression through your website and anthologies. You and your wife HilLesha are the editors of the anthologies. Would you call yourselves co-editors? That is, do you work on the same project at the same time? Do you always agree on what’s to go into a book? With the anthologies my wife has a lot of input with imagery of how the look of the books are presented. She has been a blogger/writer for 20 years and she knows what looks well cosmetically for book covers with our photography as the cover art. As for all the editing of poetry lines and inclusion into the books that would be me mostly. My wife has a few poems in the anthologies as well. Her poetry is usually vision of dreams that she puts to words. I wished to dream my poems and able to remember the details she can for her dreams. I often dream too convoluted dreams that make little sense to put to poetry though. The latest anthology, Overcome, is a response to the pandemic. Would you tell us about the compilation? What were you looking for in the submissions? Well, Overcome, which is the 5th edition of Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art Anthology Digest, basically was an evaluation of poems that had already been submitted to the site throughout the year by several very talented writers & poets that thematically came about since we all are fresh in this pandemic and often pandemic style poems will be a fresh strawberry on the top of our dome. The compilation includes photo accompaniment to many of the poems to accentuate the point. The poetry was submissions of not only pandemic themed poems, but social justice, hope for a better future (the hope for an ending to this plague) The picture we chose for the cover of the book is a walk down a long road, there is a curve and perhaps on that other side is where the dawn returns and we leave that dark terrain. For a list of all the poets included in this anthology I will provide a link. This link also lists all the poets in all the anthologies Fevers of the Mind has put out. http://feversofthemind.com/2021/08/27/announcements-fevers-of-the-mind-issue-5-overcome-anthology-is-out/ You do so much for the creative community. Is there anything new on the horizon or anything else you’d like to share with us? I am beginning this week on an online exclusive write as I go blog book called "Before the Bridge Fell". It is a brand new idea. It will be made available through postings on www.feversofthemind.com and then I may print off some small books to hand off at shows I hope to perform at next year. David, thank you for your generosity of spirit and for gifting us with your time and talent. Thank you also for sharing a few of your poems with us. Poems and links follow.  The Poetry of David L. O'Nan Ripped Off My Jean Jacket As the symptomatic leaves begin to fall I watched noiseless waterfalls - drink in the deranged and lame Our bodies are blush, decorated into these parks by the stabbing strokes of a paintbrush Brush away these harsh devils Wiped away all of my tattoos My head is clammy and sweating Watch the stars penetrate the heart From the moon, I have become the decorous the ultimate gentleman - to all that is blind whip-in the inhales And shoot the arrows to the waves. If I am uncovered, if truths are found to be false I will carry myself like a casket and image myself as the lifeless wooden doll I collapse to the thundering faint, to the floor I ripped off my jean jacket the wild, the seeds plucked to be reborn Long nights listening to this same rain falling the owls are silent in their hoots the traces of our footprints - are known to be crazy we are picking the serpents from our boots. So, is this the white noise? I live in either gray or electric shock an impulse is easier to swallow but sin takes time to regurgitate. Oslo in the Heart It was 4 seasons in Oslo Where they greased the wheels for our eyes when they bleached the brides my skin has turned to purple veins, locked my mind inside a wall of chains all the Norwegian women bled like rubies over a beach of shells Candlelight on the bones inside the moon cooking the peasants in a witch's ritual. Oslo was in my heart when we wed Winter crosses full of wet lead tuning my mind to a dripping paint and rippling vapors whip in every corner. Oslo was in my heart that day we danced a fandango through the avalanches lay bare sleighs the mountains had broke for all the old anger in the stones. Oslo nights in wonderfalls heartbroken men and shallow women calling for the moneymen to come from the big U.S. city the commercial life the vacations and all the models bankruptcies in graveyards the drifting of the wind. Shenandoah Tramps You walk the streets like you are still in Tabriz You miss the Iranian Summers While fumbling full of wine you feel the prickly goosebumps from the breeze. And we begin to walk with a squint as the sun masks the city eyelids bouncing, and quivering drunk lips. You desire the kiss when the night stirs dressed in scarlet red looking for that efficacious effect We are like the stars in the sky celebrities in meteoric flash We are just lost from the waste to the lakes trying to unlock the code to flee us from the beams of Heaven's Gate We can wish on these wine bottles throw in the pennies for a little luck we can invent beauty out of the contagious Shenandoah muck. Our city is just a bullet town Our love will fall like tramps in the rain with our hands becoming umbrellas trying to protect us from the downpour awake our celestial shine with this oncoming train. And here come the dollies and all of the sheepmen who gather ours fossils and they use them for swanky chaotic sin our rose is a misery burn the shell right off this redolent city. The streetlamps are as dim as a yellow puddle with a hint of chickweeds growing around the blacktop tumors. And all we can talk about all of the music, and hum until poetry rifles through our brains. Studying the fallen art stuck to the limbs of trees On the edge of what was Calliope. When all was tame and flowery, The strong was not frail without a care Our frames were not broken, just skeletal grey And we would dine on evening air and dance to the melody of church bells the hymns were our parade. Drinking Blue Moons I was burning through the poker chips Looking eye to the cavernous eye of some demon I see all the misleading in your passions. If all your passions are the flaming dollars and all shoes want to dance for the triumphs You have a Malibu boy doll home with wives that sashay in the golden fields beautiful gardens and thrusting seeds water this, burning just a little. And we all want your suits and all the glory the perfect hair and the ungodly White teeth Maybe the jealousy lives in all of us but we know you're as fragile as a toothpick - when your way begins receding. Drinking Blue Moons when the red wine runs low You begin pacing like a war of pistols when the bombs begin flashing your photos - to the world we know you, there are truth whisperers Your flavor of the month decisions begin to disease with constant new kisses After dark in powder kegs love hearts dancing around the bones to erode them three sheets to the wind and your toy world is for sale and crumbling. Love, love, love is in the twist of a bottle-cap Love, love, love Is putting your head next to the ammunition the boattail bullets dips you in to the a round of ripples Love, love, love Your blondes in black in the background crying. All the women are there from all your hidden life messages to a Lucy, an Alexis, a Leilani, an Olivia From the bedrooms with White curtains and all that money - was never his to begin with Will he rest in peace in a graveyard of suitcase tombstones? All of the Miles Between Us There are many miles between ideals and many indecisions. Between the straying women Riding new wheels and feeling weightless. Do I feel artistic, or just punch wildly and swing around to a phantom touch? How can I be me? When I am constantly feeling stalked by the shadows, the voices, and past scars the new wheels begin to break and roll down the road. I see you play the actress You play with the best of them Just call you Joan Crawford, Just call you Mrs. Hepburn I can't see myself in these mirrors past the steam there you may be Is it the lipstick or the lie? Just cradle me you are my melting candle Like a mind without sympathy Hear the wails in the air, I'm constantly in a crawl for you but you felt more secure by naked irises and secure by the many miles between us. On Rippling Streets and Possibly Dying Inhale, exhale, now uncertainty awoke or maybe i'm a splattered angel to the road. In feathers like a cardinal in hot August breath Burning away to the move of a wicked gravitational spin I'm on a rippling street, dust swirling like my head covered in an old business suit, damp and frail watching abandoned Subway trains moving once again. I see a 1940's traveling preacher on the corner. One moment he's for Jesus, the next he's in it for the flames. I stare into the hypnotism of a long walk to triumph I have to face the destruction of regret and neglect myself in cigarette smoke that wrestles the air - to the gray we all see in this converging heavens From this industrial sewage drains to the tobacco fields the trees lift from the ground funneling energy from the clouds. I'm on this rippling street And I think i'm lifeless a hex to the all the beauty of colour a hissing in my shoes they begin to race by you to get to me Do they see a man, a skeleton, or invisibility? And the Wolf Shakes In a camera's view I am the tortoise When hidden away I can be the hare With whistles, dry kisses, and dangerous fixes I can suddenly be the crushed worm. I feel the hierarchy of changing the wind cracks these castles to rubble And you dream of the vicious and you dream of the gentle warmth in the shelters when the wolf shakes. Eventually, the Winter will slip through Those cracks and eternally We feel we become the peasant's meal The bears begin knocking and Goldilocks is illuminated Always hiding like the scared child When it begins thundering the war sirens. The bullets, the bombs Squeezing like the boa even when we run The parades become eerie and the howling sounds like hell Tight and abusive, the frightening smiles and nods those demons drink in the rain and leave us all thirsty with endless clouds still bleeding. Imagine the harps and flirtations of the angels only to be tricked by the chivalry of the devil I see the spit of poison reflecting up - from the bottom of a wineglass. And God can be the illustrator when you are fearful when tasting of the bread and the Holy Bible is a straitjacket to whisper you back to sanity. These wars were made for men certainly not made for love the damages have painted a death, for the wash. Now the washing away. The floods finally have come. Wiping away the hoax of the drifters in these torrents to rebuild our trenches where we can desire to live again When will that wolf leave. will the sheep ever get to play? Leonard Cohen's Ghost To dance, dance, sway, just sway with all the Gods, the ghosts, the deities that we pray to. Restless orbs hovering through my bedroom. On the walls that they call home. In their wooden eyes and popcorn ceiling shedding I feel a leaky roof's carcass form an IV drip of falling rain On the bed sheets, on my cold Manhattan muscles with all the holiness, the prophets, and the seers - that surround Drinking the electricity from my blood. In my slumbers I see the hereafter In windows bonded by straps Paralyze my brain to a schizophrenic trap Patch myself back with apologies and prayers the Soul keeps straying to and from this thin layer between me and the concrete sky In this room lives the melancholia Reflections of Orion and all my visions, Judases, and the disease - in synthesis My bones fail, and muscles endlessly ache they crack and break 'til I cease to be Being an old man dressed in yesterday's fashion. I sleep in my suit, with another suit for pillows to cushion The opium that fills me begins to possess me when it becomes night. I may be left abandoned, yet you want to steal my soul. You reach from the floor and present my death as Christmas Day. I have your stains in my DNA, And your perversions scarred in my brain I looked to you during grief and hunger And you, the angel, the woman, the saint - the kiss Gave me a drink from my flask on the worst of days I retire away from your memory. Where can I find the safety again of family? In New York the rats know you by your name. And you gamble with them in Central Park Drink your coffee with the visions of Virgin Mary the herald angels we Hark! I begin to dream away a crystallizing of waterfalls the moving mountains on my deathbed calls. My children have all left the buzzing city I have grown skinny, skinnier every day with this beard always itching. The room feels like it's a melting paste. And I sketch all the martyrs, my family, and founding fathers And I pray to a wisp of light that shatters against the lamp post. In all of its fury, I meditate through this path I confess to a mass of angels lifting away the flames from my soul. I want salvation as I see the jetlines of Leonard Cohen's ghost. Smoke Halos in Endless Winters The infatuation with you was immediate You complimented me on my style, an old shirt. Your tanned skin danced with the sunlight for the Summer As I sit in admiration for you in the crackling dirt. I infected myself, haunt myself with your routine. Day after day the ring on your finger seemed to be on display. How you cried in your loneliness and longing. And I wanted to be the shadow that meditates in your soul. In downtown circlings we roamed The same crowd of people we knew I wanted to draw you closer Your heart belonged frozen to a soldier's march in a sick hue of blue. Even when he screams You sat as the trophy on his shelf. There was a line of men like me some had love in their mind, others were just bawdy Many admirers left blushing at the parties and in the silence And in the New Year's trips I was hanging on to my sanity from the tip of your lips I wish mine were. And I would cry for your nomadic footprints That I lost and battled myself to find And every time I thought you have found clarity The green pebbles from the red, Then you became a borderline aurora My body thrown in the piles of dead, just another audit for the cemetery. You would come home in tears, a distance My arms still open many months for your embrace. After months of your endless nights and dark mornings The smoke halos above a frozen bay. I'd hope for the energy of my heart to be revived I wanted to charm your broken one from the ashes in your shoes. I would hint annoyingly trying to drag out a smile. And you would hide behind a mask of newspaper I would write you poetry, and I bled out my blues I would ask for a dance though I didn't know how I would gladly try even if my legs worn to broken. If at the end you were the ultimate prize. I would've danced my tears to a drought I would've lifted you up above the clouds And touched the wings of the angels to revive us from the Earth's shutting crust And the younger years become a dusting. And full of those hearts stuck paralyzed. The strings of years form on my forehead A husband and a father And I know you are around I still feel the fighting of those ghosts I feel you are battling them also though the nomadic walks begins to slow. The footprints of Winter now have a home.  Here are bitly Amazon links to my self-published books & also the Anthologies we’ve put out. Since I didn’t go through college for editing, my books can be raw and have small editorial errors. If anyone ever wants to discuss putting out my personal books edited by someone who can pay attention more fully to the details let me know.  https://amzn.to/3bJsjhp for my revised updated with photo book “The Famous Poetry Outlaws Are Painting Walls and Whispers” with photo artwork by Margaret Viboolsittiseri.  The Anthology link for Fevers of the Mind V: Overcome which is only available on Paperback. https://amzn.to/3kazO5B       The Avalanches in Poetry: Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen (2019) this was the original book. My poetry in this book has been revised is on both my website and some included here with this interview. https://amzn.to/3kactkC all artwork by Geoffrey Wren whom also was a friend of Leonard Cohen.  Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020 (2021) is a huge Anthology book with many great interviews, bios, poetry over the past year of 2020. The book is huge and costly on paperback but is also available on Kindle. Amazon sort of sets these prices that I’d make a lot cheaper if it was just me. https://amzn.to/31z6I9L  Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art Anthology Issue 3 (2019) The Darkness & the Light https://amzn.to/3GSKzDw   The Original first edition of Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art Digest Issue 1 (June 2019) https://amzn.to/3o1wQBF To read some of my other work featured check out these links: https://icefloepress.net/2020/03/03/five-poems-by-david-o-nan/ https://icefloepress.net/six-poems-from-new-disease-streets-by-david-l-onan-w-a-digital-collage-by-robert-frede-kenter/ https://feversofthemind.com/2021/09/09/2-new-poems-by-david-l-onan-on-icefloe-press-click-links-today-those-hazels-they-slice-and-living-in-this-toxic-coalmine/ https://feversofthemind.com/2021/10/09/wombwell-rainbow-book-interview-lost-reflections-by-david-l-onan-part-one/ This is a several part interview and also has some selections from the Lost Reflections book. https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2021/10/six-poems-by-david-l-onan.html?spref=tw https://feversofthemind.com/2021/10/27/frothy-landscapes-from-david-l-onan/ https://feversofthemind.com/2021/08/06/check-out-my-poem-by-the-almond-tree-currently-on-the-new-issue-of-anti-heroin-chic-heroinchic-weebly-com/ https://feversofthemind.com/2021/11/01/writing-suicide-notes-in-the-bluebird-by-david-l-onan-poetry/ https://feversofthemind.com/2021/03/01/poetry-i-tremble-like-dying-flowers-by-david-l-onan/ https://punknoirmagazine.com/2021/07/05/4-poems-by-david-l-onan/ https://spillwords.com/my-black-dahlia-poison-caterpillar/ https://spillwords.com/an-artist-weeps/ https://spillwords.com/the-helix-nebula/  www.feversofthemind.com for many creative poets, photographers, artists, musicians, interviews and more. Twitter: @feversof and for my personal @DavidLONan1 Facebook Group: www.feversofthemind.com Poetry & Arts Group  (the Quick 9 Interview logo) from Margaret Viboolsittiseri and the wolf design was purchased elsewhere.
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A Little of This, a Little of ThatKeep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy that does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children. – Gibran Khalil Gibran Archives
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