Five Poems by David L O’Nan

 

The Whiskey Mule Diner (on Caroline Street)

 

I was wandering out of Whiskey Mule, the night began fading

The city is falling all over itself and dude, you smell like onions

Taxis are hissing passing by just pissing, ripped pantyhose legends prancing drunk.

Just ask the crooked mayor, he’s had his share of temptations.

He’s burned all his morals and held his head high as he’s collapsing.

Three women all believe that he’s dedicated, but he’s living deep on the tip of the Dead-End hill.

 

The diner’s lights are blinking an epileptic fury.

The faithful and the shrinks are washing their cuts in the sink.

They have been harassing their soldiers through the flesh wounds of thunder.

Bullets and promises go damp with the blood circling the city streets.

Just another cup of coffee surrounded by dust, rust, and feathers. 

Our minds remember the times as a child of walking with family and preaching God to unlit skyscrapers

Bring light to this city you damn bawdy building! 

Nasty voices call down to teach us new sinning that we never knew would go past the blinds of those windows.

 

The cobwebs in the corners of the Caroline and Market Street are doing a Cain and Abel waltz.

Across each other, intertwined while the poisoned neon glow of the Whiskey Mule hits it.

Old men walking crooked onto the sidewalks with lust in their eyes and itchy coats and itchy crotches.

They want to see the man play something from the 1950’s ‘til he is out again poisoned, asleep on the jazz piano.

Lifting Jesus to the ceilings,  the waitresses are all crying except for the one who’s always smiling and fetching her phone number to a plumber, a priest, or a pariah that wandered in from the subway.

Sometimes this place has felt closed for hours,

sometimes it feels like it never stops breathing.

The fevers in this place is imminent and you walk out with hash browns in your hair.

Feeling like a motherfucker stuck in the drain.

 

At Whiskey Mule you began your marriage to a suicidal levitation.  You want to sit on

the back of a 1969 boss 429 mustang and pull at the corners of the hairs on your head.

Wailing to a friend that’ll die with you in the end, "buddy, Let’s create some shooting stars tonight”

And you’ll battle the fog in your stupor, and you’ll wish you had more pancakes and in circles

you’ll go, pushing and shoving hobos until you’ll step on a broken bottle and crawl back into the diner

...And some Barbara Mandrell will be playing Sleeping Single in a Double bed.

You’ll feel like the stomach bugs are carving through your skin. 

Go home to the wilderness of a quiet

apartment building that is surrounded by demons running around your head.

Drop the needle on the fading night.  Another day stalks in and abruptly gathers energy from the

lightbulb sun.

 

Watching the squalor fight the dandy with the curly hairs falling out of your itchy scalp. 

No longer a village wimp.  You’ll take the bait to the next offering.  Tracy will shake the bottle

and you can’t resist the bounce and the waves in the glass to the swarming through your throat

And you’ll dream of the fandango on a cobblestone bruising and the sunsets will sound like a sultry one-night stand.

Forget that crippling walk for just a little while and cut that rope from the sky, little man.

You’re asking to be certified, You’re asking to be hypnotized, but you keep asking to be recast as something

that doesn’t reflect in a puddle’s mirror, Jack.

 

The Whiskey Mule Diner on Caroline Street has good food and sometimes bad.

It has murmurs of grandiosity and mistakes to be had.

It has the memories, the merging from man to fallen angel.

It has the lazy eye blinking, It has the wisdom of a desire to escape the straitjacket.

And perform magic that illuminates from the squeezing.   

My mind is heading to a new home,

Whiskey Mule

 

Pinot Noir

1971, Bakersfield Cold day, cracked around the edges but laying sweaty under itchy blankets. After 3 A.M. drinking Pinot Noir with mustachioed confessions. Can’t trust sidewinders walking when their sliding on slick brick roads blinding- The regular man walks around with sociopathic confidence, and he dreams of all the wars ending long enough that he can find him a lady. He wants a family and he wants to die from the cigarettes, he wants to live on nothing but pennies. He wants it all to be wrapped up for him like a present, but does he know how to praise. So he decides not to fear him, he shall not be dismayed. He walks with him on a sunset through the meadows- looking for that new wave. Drinking Pinot Noir and thinking outside the box. He’s that same old man he was yesterday. He’s invented himself excuses, he’s playing fast and loosely. Calling all the phone numbers in his paper wallet. Which lips will he kiss tonight, or will he be just biting on his? Chapped up and feeling cold- boned, drunk and sad. He drops out a few dollars for dinner with a nobody he knew from 19 years before. She didn’t like him then; she doesn’t like him now. But he’s already got images of him pushing up her purity veil and calling her his forever. More pinot noir for the dipshit. Close your eyes and wake up with the phone dangling from the phonebooth and a hard-on grin, jazzed up and creepy. Your brother’s wife and kids find you there. She is laughing pitifully. She has never cared for you really. The children hide behind an umbrella and a mask of ass and back covering their face to hide away from Uncle Stranger. He’s just a drunkened wolf wandering the streets, howling between the sheets of both polars he must face, day after day. He never really knows his eyes and can barely feel his face. He’s just molded full of lines with pinkish skin cheeks with an early morning yellow pickling through. Boy, he’s a pinot noir away from chasing Jesus to the cross. He wants to be crucified first, and let the city wash away his sins. That olive green mattress and his wino schemes has led him to three divorces and one incredible night that he relives over again and tries to regain back in his pulsing mind.

 

All That is Left for Wanda

 

I called her up on a whim after a muddy day, a useless brain

My hair was messy, not quite wakeful, I remember a time we skinny dipped together and had a picnic 

about 20 Summers ago.

 

All that is left for Wanda

Is a smoking gun and a bottle of gin

Her eyes are heavy with worry

And her heart is heavy with sin.

 

I heard  through having to know

that fuckin' Larry was living in a prison cell.

He was a measly twerp back then, and a barroom skunk.

Even after all these years, I can still be irritated when trying to hide my empathic heart.

 

The world around her is fading

As she stares off into the abyss

Her thoughts are dark and twisted

And she yearns to escape all of this.

 

The whiskey begins flowing like a river

and it taste about the quality of a ditch.

She dances to a sad tune by Crazy Horse.

She doesn't know where she's going.

But she knows it won't be coming soon.

 

She thinks of me as a little nosy and nutty,

some body odour, a wet dog on a rainy day

breath like Papst Blue Ribbon and well-made chili

Dude, just give me a break. I'm tired of man. Always talks of jailbreaks.

You sound raspy and one breath from a lung collapsing.

 

But I'm still wanting you Wanda, and she just laughs.

"There's a memory of what could have been"

She begins to become quiet, glancing at a newspaper.

Feeling emptiness, looking at an unfunny cartoon and laughing like the insane.

You can see in her eyes she was staring down the roads of her past.

 

The clock is ticking faster

As the night draws to a close.

And all she can do is wonder.

If she'll ever find repose.

Smoggy night, frogs sound drunk. Neighbour boys throwing rocks at trucks.

The wind is stout and erect, and pulling our brawny bodies down easy in the chilly rain.

 

Is there no hope for her

As she takes one final swig.

And throws her keys to the mud.

Tells me she's heading to a rich palace far far away.

She disappears past the scarecrows and the hypnotizing Eagle eyes

Leaving only memories of what she hid.  What was said.  What was gained.  Can't soothe the sick.

 

The shadows reach out to her,

She staggers into the night.

The panoply of chickens follow

and my disease is too thirsty to ease her pain.

 

We both gave into the madness.

Mine is from years of regret in a rocking chair,

mine is hilariously laughing myself of the ironies of death.

We all walk these twisted winding streets.

All that was left for Wanda, was hissing, was the sail to the chasm.

Kept Going

 

As a youthful ant, believing love was real

I’d search and preach, sometimes i’d creep

From Earth, sands, heartache, one with the unnamed

With laughter always knowing I had been used

I was stepped on, ripped apart, but kept on walking

 

As a descending star

I’m falling, sinking, faint, into the grey

Bewitching breeze, bending wishful knees,

Believing in the green

With tears always knowing I had been used

Like overnight love.

 

Was left solo, alone, but kept shining

 

As a boring Hybrid Tea Rose

Some have glanced, they have danced, drowning in 

The ideal romance

Never finding a home, shunned once we see the evening’s eye

With a wilting pedal drying from the use

Never to be blackened, I kept my brightness

 

As a cresting unbalanced river

I’d be rowed away, negated to be safe,

Reserved for the rain

I could have easily flooded the plains

With a rippled cry, feeling useless

Never to be eroded,

I kept on flowing

 

As a human feeling

I’ve learned my strengths,

Became tough through the adversity

I’ve learned to forgive, 

Hoping to someday myself be forgiven

Never to be corroded by fear

Silent Room Painting

 

Oh, painting on the wall

Like the devil

Burning victims with a smile

Room still silent, 

Never minding that tears are loud

I’m cruising by,

Mind playing energetic

Floating like a missile across the veins

Echo, echo, vibrate, nothing

Cold glue stuck upon the heart, your shoe

Walking lightly,

Then stomping, seal it tight

No one is new, no mind is new

It has been used by many younger, much braver

Whispered wiser

Painting on the wall, so greedy

Clapping together colours that are clashing

Beaming eyes living for my ashes

Claws digging inside my soul, scooping out the clarity.

David L O’Nan is a Midwest poet, editor and founder of Fevers of the Mind (www.feversofthemind.com) 

He has been nominated for Best of the Net numerous times.

His books include The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers, Before the Bridges Fell, New Disease Streets, Cursed Houses, The Cartoon Diaries, Our Fear in Tunnels,  Taking Pictures in the Dark and Lost Reflections. 

He has edited and curated Fevers of the Mind Anthologies and several inspired by special editions from Kerouac to Plath to Cohen to Bowie and more.