Five Poems by David L O'Nan

 

A Quicksilver Trilling

 

Once upon a time we met the platinum blonde with a letter in hand and a Loro Piana Handbag.

She was quiet and frantic at the same time, the obstacles of running from beautiful to damnit!

You popped bubbles in the hot flames, in flamenco streets with bleeding trains that lead you

from the whistles to the cheating rainfalls.

Now, she’s as quiet as a storm swept flower.

Now, she’s an atomic bomb in my heart of desire.

She’s as damaged as the ignorant meal to the fiery belly of a carnivore.

Meeting the vagrants are as easy as meeting you she’d laugh to herself.

Maybe she’s just a little deaf when this city shakes in a quicksilver trilling.

A little blind when the joy with from a celebration to a thronging.

 

So you missed the thrills of the small crowd now.  That city took your bravery and your crown.

It’s hard to be superficial in your walk.  The thrills of a million helicopters circling down.

your heartbeats a quilted bundle of wires. In the Hollywood hideaways the public does watch.

Hurry up to snap a picture of her durable nucleus falling apart. Behind the bars, to the many

alcohols and elixirs falling straight down the cold rocks.  Her beautiful monuments show some cracks

and the drinking of the sweet fruit tree has become a little thick in the dust cloud social ball.

Maybe she’s just a little deaf when this city shakes in a quicksilver trilling.

Maybe she’s a little thirsty when the water is sealed from the dams to a willing thirst.

This blessing is just a disguised curse when she’s dressed up for another Judy Garland downward spiral.

 

I’m starting to rethink this shadow looking at his shoes, playing little Mr. Socialite wearing a poor

man’s Bruno Maglis.   I’m standing here holding your golden cup.  The feathers of your golden goose,

and a shrivelled-up ticket to the sacrifices you make at Tiffanys.  My culture lies behind the ropes

holding the inside of my head.   To play lover and not to play dead.  So you can play elegant and hip

for the artsy coffeeshops.   They can spell your name in the drink and your heart melts, and you finally

feel like a somebody.   So you tip those baristas and joke about the rats.   They don’t know art, don’t

have MFA’s and haven’t been bought their gardens to thrive.    I just watch the fakeness leave your

timid hazel eyes. And you try to just to the restroom and cry, I hear you in their weeping like a saturnine

coyote.

 

There are a couple of genuine fools, walking around pretending to be the rules of cool

They folded under the pressures of rebellion, but they are beginning to wonder my darling.

They are wondering exactly how many canvases you have put your brush to.   Since you tell them all

you’re so smart and like a branch I’m just this poetic clown stuck with oversized t-shirts and the smile of

a stripped screw.  Don’t worry he’ll pay for this free meal at this simpering Italian Restaurant.  Then he’ll

be on his way back to the job of being a wonderful muse when the art professors aren’t calling you.

Never to share a true linen of a sunrise together. Tell me exactly what art is when you don’t know the

art that is natural weather.

 

Oh, maybe she’s a little deaf when the city shakes and is shrilling.  A little quicksilver trilling.

The sunrise is a little overbearing.  Can’t see the canvas from the golden glare that I’m wearing.

 

Operation, a colourful tornado on a disco floor.   Weak legs are dancing.

Drunk and the quick pills are mixing.  And you’re a drunk and grinding against pistons of strangers

trying to keep from pissing.  They want to call you up for a night of glistening, and introduce you

to a hypodermic waterbed.   You forgot me behind the trees. A little dirty when you have to sit and

plead.  You have nothing you really need, but everything you want is in the halos of that river.

Well, the birds wake up a little earlier than you. And they seem sick without the worms to chew.

There isn’t a masterpiece for them to view.  You went right into the darkness with your colors and your

strength.  Frail bones fail frail forests.  Simple supernatural spells bring crumbles to a magic mountain,

the journeys are hard to walk when the valleys and the lakes are droughts and scrawny to swim in.

Oh, maybe she’s a little deaf when the animals stopped howling.

The wind is full of heat and rain is even melting. Around the curves the body is sealing.

The city is shaking to a quicksilver trilling.

 

From the windows, we used to see the clarity of the glass.   Now it’s a little oily and overcast.

It’s a holocaust, razor sharp raindrops with teeth that bite, just like a brand-new disease.

The queen must hide from the flee. Our humanity isn’t built anymore on heartbeats.  Sometimes

humanity is built from cardboard signs.   Hold a little higher and ask for a prayer.  Ask for a shave of cool air to save you from a Tinseltown cataclysm.

So what does the wonder girl do, when she goes from the pretender to blue to the shrew

Does she realize her hair wasn’t always so cute? Does she realize the geniuses are all crooks?

Does she feel the jazzy palm trees have always been a little plastic and fake?

Much like the hypnotized starlets in the platinum blonde deconstruction game.

Oh, maybe she’s a little deaf from the chess game that keeps yelling checkmate!

Maybe she’s been blinded by the hysterical cut-throat authority waifs. Maybe she’s just part

of this jealousy, vanish haze they thrown on you to make you a product.

A little pill sick when the city keeps shaking tiny slits of cracks in this quicksilver trilling.

 

Now, she’s as naked as a blurry mirror.  Now she’s feeling as pitiful as a stuttering preacher.

Now her art is less of a picture that hangs above bountiful nouveau vanity mirrors.

Her art is the magnetism that pulls the moon through her evening’s veins.  

Her art is when the clouds move in and pulls the curtains of stars over her delicate frame.

Maybe she grew tired of her ears constantly ringing.  Loud masochisms and feminine leeches

luring and lingering.  A city shook to pieces in a quicksilver trilling.

Callie’s Dad : Obituary

 

I found myself an ill mess

sweating all over my bed

switching alarm clocks on and off.

I could swear my heart was

pounding nails in my head

I was all engaged in the world of me.

 

Well I read somewhere that

Callie’s dad died about 3

Summer’s ago.

4 Summers since I knew her.

And we had visions of a

wedding, but July dresses are

much to sticky and itchy.

 

So I think I remember the man

vaguely, Callie’s Dad.

Met him at a family barbecue.

He seemed drunk and rude. But he shook

my hand and informed me there was still some catfish bites on the grill.

 

So I remembered your mom,

always answering the door, a

little teary, a little dreary. A

dirty rooster t-shirt and makeup

many hours worn and hair she

combed flimsy.

 

I once gave Callie a school ring

and said with this we’ll forever be.

And like a dumb young boy I skipped

home or drove in some out of date car

with neurotic loud voices and

shredding guitars. Callie ignored me and kissed

my cheek. And she said

“goodbye” as I was still developing a personality designed for her.

 

Now, with cloudy coffee, a

wasp in the room. I am

thinking of our drive-in movie

date, and her daddy threatens

her with the tricks that a full

moon will bring. All the men

are searching and hunting and

the women are the prey he says.

 

He wanted her to always stay.

But she strayed to another.

A blonde combover 27 year old, Miller Light addict

A town boy with no city, no artistic aspirations.

He could read the hell out of a TV guide.

 

In her father’s obituary I find

out he left this Earth with 5

different wives. I am sure the bills

will never end. And Callie surely doesn’t remember me

more than a 2 week boyfriend.  Her and blonde Dennis

have 6 mouths to feed and I’ve got a closet full of magazines

with cracks in my seams.

 

CORPSE FLOWERS

 

Oh my honey is blown out like a cyclone, the air smells like corpse flowers

The storm must have been a bad one.  Unruliness was the only rule.

The town deputy is speechless.  And his racism is lost in translation.

There are sips on Jameson.   There are muttering hippies looking for a blanket.

There are men with straw hats spray painting signs about torture.

There are no abortion signs falling down like dominoes.

 

What I hate to say is, maybe our town needing a tornado.

Maybe every girl and every boy needed to rummage through this junk.

To find what is authentic and what is damaged.

Where are the friends that said they’d warn us?   Where are the protectors?

Fragmented gentlemen.   Exploited women.   The foes meet the flock.

The blisters are popping from every hitting rock.

 

An old man’s last breath, quell his appetite to be released

from the worries of glory and the worries of having to live in a battle

day in, day out, naked, bruised up, bravado doctrines, and hungry skeletal stomach.

His lady, tired of his whiplash and persisting witchery

decided to empty her lips of it’s dry intimacy, take the dolls and the talisman

and drop a little iodine in the jar, make a bottle of poisonous wine.

 

The sky has cracked now, raining down a hailing of tiny eyes

we are invaded in waves to the crutches of a slanted hallway

We love how to shadows look in the hidden arms of new divinity.

They lead the dragon to the bait.   The flames now icy.  Our bodies impressing gods

to a new spiritual colour.   Excavated a million miles of corpse flowers.

A little wind just blew in.

Fishkill, NY

 

It was a lame morning, another

picayune argument amongst

the early risers and the late-night ravers.

I was tender in my muscles

I was craving the sugar I once found in Fishkill, New York.

 

We had many moments together in a late Spring Week and a half.

From a Friday the 13^th (another speeding ticket)

until Memorial Day (another Uncle buried)

That man fell over dead in a redundant consignment shop.

Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Dale Earnhardt, and a collection of racist dolls.

He had a woman he was seeing there, while his wife was working hard

making money at the bank.

He was pretty much a rain drenched jerk. No umbrella while chasing lace.

 

While in Fishkill I took Sugar off the hitching thrills

A free spirit, with the Lord dancing in her bellbottoms.

Let me in to your flaky rides to the city my darling.

She failed to tell me she was twice married.

Once at 16 again at late 17.

Divorced when the babies never came.

 

I said well I’m just a 19 year old bad writer.

Not ready for a family or to exchange rings just yet.

Let’s just walk around the river and kiss by the trees.

She said “well I guess that is fine with me, I’ve only known  you since

the birds began singing daily.”

“Just drive me in your yellow car and away from my mama’s watermelon seed porch”

 

So she thought everyone was out to abandon her.

She began to mature more and more on the next lonely night.

I pretended I could stay forever, then like a punk I’d escape when feelings felt to real.

Escaped to a drunken night on my cousin’s boat dock.

 

She said “I am glad that maybe my instincts are fully developed”

“And maybe you are just another boner in Fishkill’s Friday trash pick up”

 

Away for another 6 months

the yellow car now with a broken door handle.

I got a job as a butcher cutting meat in a neighbouring town.

Did a little grilling too. Did some cheap stealing and felt cool.

I always thought about quitting every day.

 

Then I saw through a blurry eyed morning.

She was there in the store with a man twice her age.

Moustached and muscles, tattoos of fast cars and demons.

I said hello, and she faked a smile.

To detract from her new green apple, I was showing too much red,

blushing because I was realizing that hidden love in my  heart never left.

 

She whispered to me when he went to get some fresh cold cuts

I’m in the tiger’s cage now, I could feel her loneliness and rage.

She left me a letter that read “maybe someday”

sitting on a tomato paste can. I slipped it behind a cobwebbed an of beans when mustache

began looking.

Maybe maturity comes from a narcissistic smoke as it fades.

Your “ideal women” and you’re a scared boy battling urges to leave.

I couldn’t find her again and the good-bye left me pining for years.

I always wondered as I quit that job.

Dressed in jeans, a dirty hat and paint smeared jacket.

Began to head away from I-84. 

I bought some shoes and exchanged payments with some villagers for some basic goods.

I found my love throughout years on the road.

 

Learning to swim as a man

Once I got cleared out of Fishkill’s throat.

THE LUKEWARM TRAIN

 

There are days you remember the rambles of Chattanooga Misty.

Not quite bright, not quite dumb.

She was a lost Girvin girl living in the Kentucky woods.

She maybe was just born into ignorance,

perfume all the smoke from her cigarettes before she comes back.

Didn’t know that her ass tore through the seam of her jeans.

 

She was looking to scoot away from the rabbitholes to the rabbitcage.

And so she learned to be a smooth talker, hide that shy, act that brave.

She was not too fond of all those presents.  You’d just to present to her to win her heart.

She’d rather be glum, take in the latest drug, and drink until heart cannot beat.

Well that’s a wild one for you, feeding the bikers their barbecue and their beers.

 

Sets you up for a ponzi scheme, and then disappears into the arms of a deadbeat.

His politics have become something of a joke.  His hair that was precious and begins to croak.

And now she’s wondering why her tan is no longer a cloak to hide her real self.

She thinks you can’t read her,  everyone who sees her becomes a mystic and can see

the flowing ego that won’t let her doves free.  She’d rather spend time as a thrush digging up worms.

 

Well when she’s going insane, I won’t be anywhere near.  I’ll be riding high in musical notes.

I’ll be chattering with the jealousies she hid in her bones.  I’ll be the water, the nature, the trees

where her nest fell from long ago.   When they ask, oh, where is she at?   Maybe, I’ll be truthful or state

a fact.  She’s been running away for about a thousand days from herself, her mind, and her beauty.

She’s been a little glum,  brainwashed, trilling in the mud, and unaware of the twilight sorrow.

Well the crows all ask, for a quick boarding pass to see if she’d like to bring her fruits and berries into

their decoy jungled home.

 

I’m sure she’ll just pretend to be a new disguise, as always. Maybe from brown to blonde today.

Maybe I’ll go from celebrations to breaking in the snake.  Maybe I will be the one that’ll finally break

break him and just leave him a nervous rattling drum.  Rippled streams, leave him hanging and never to

call him back when he needed you most.   So who is really the lost one here?   The stones throw will just

shatter those crows.  Because he just sits there year after year refusing the find new homes.

 

When he’s going insane,  just sitting in pity and haggard,  stuck in his eternal humdrum woes.

She’ll be stepping aboard, from East to West, seeing the world in an everchanging brain.

She’ll go from palm trees to mapleleafs, and drink the margaritas and drink in a Summer rain.

She’ll be the one, living on stepping stones and hitching into the soundwaves of a lukewarm train.

 

David L O'Nan is a poet, short story writer, editor living in Southern Indiana.  He is the editor for the Poetry & Art Anthologies "Fevers of the Mind Poetry and Art. and has also edited & curated other Anthologies including 2 inspired by Leonard Cohen and Hard Rain Poetry inspired by Bob Dylan. He has self-published works under the Fevers of the Mind Press "The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers" "The Cartoon Diaries" & "New Disease Streets" (2020). A compilation of 4 books "Bending Rivers" a micro poem collection "Lost Reflections" and new book "Before the Bridges Fell" (look under books tab in Amazon) under Cajun Mutt Press & "His Poetic Last Whispers" (2022)  David has had work published in Icefloe Press, Dark Marrow, Truly U, 3 Moon Magazine, Elephants Never, Royal Rose Magazine, Spillwords, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cajun Mutt Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Voices From the Fire.

Twitter @DavidLONan1 @feversof  and www.feversofthemind.com Poetry & Art Group on Facebook.

Website is www.feversofthemind.com for many interviews, book reviews, short stories & poetry from many.