Day Eight – Owlman

 

-Pat Perry The creepy owlman

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.

-Paul Brookes

Image by by HilLesha O’Nan, David’s wife while she was visiting West Virginia. -(he/him) David L O’Nan is a writer/founder of Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art. He has several self-published books and curator of 5 Anthologies. His work can be found on www.feversofthemind.com .   You can see his work on Anti-Heroin Chic, Icefloe Press, Cajun Mutt Press, Royal Rose Mag, Dark Marrow, Ghost City Review, Nymphs Publishing, Spillwords, Punk Noir Mag and more.  And has been a Best of the Net Nominee in 2019. Interview Continued Q4: What is your daily writing  routine? A:  Unfortunately, I’m scattered.  I go into a week with a writing plan.  That soon becomes a broken puzzle.  I have Generalized Anxiety, ADHD, OCD and it is constantly trying to fit puzzles together and getting frustrated when the pieces don’t fit.   I don’t have a daily writing routine. I am happy when I can find the time to just write anything.  Sometimes, I come up with poem titles and work around that title to come up with material.  I am usually overly busy and get work done in spurts.  I either will write 5 poems within a couple days, or go a month without writing anything.  It is all according to my energy I am able to exude at that moment.  This is how it goes with my attempts at being an editor as well.   If I don’t feel I’m doing a good job at either writing or editing I can shut down for a bit. Q5: What subjects motivate you to write? A:  Usually, if I’m listening to more music at the time it will trigger my want to write.  When I’m listening to music that triggers emotions or anger then I’m more prone to pull out more material at a quicker time.  I’m mostly motivated to write about emotional triggers and less about an object placed in front of me.  I can be inspired to write though just by looking at artwork or listening to instrumental music.   I’m an overly emotional person, so the words, stories are squeezed out of tears, laughter, shakes and kicks.    A lot of it is bottled in and I walk around either silly or grouchy and then it comes out fully in writing. Q6: How do the writers you read when you were young influence your work today? A: The writers I read while young helped me develop a rhythm in my head to write.  I don’t always punctuate perfectly, I flow thoughts out freely.  I developed metaphor and rhythm from reading song lyrics and poetry throughout the years.  I write how I think and less about structure. I’m sure that doesn’t always win any points with other writers or sometimes editors.  If I tried to perfect structure I would de-construct my own structure.  These wires take quick photographs in my head for memories to capture so I can write out the images.  In characters I create, or in my own skin. Poems from “Lost Reflections” A BRAVE HEART, A REBELLIOUS HEART I was born into a natural rebellious state of mind With a dream of a brave heart, Yet there are no fears, Mishaps, nightmares when you trip in your freewill Can I preserve my rebellion for the ultimate battle, And the patience to Bind my heart to bravery A deep breath and realizing my challenges Defeating the consequences that lay inside your fears THE SAME In your arms i’ve died a million deaths The death called love The same flowing blood from two sacred hearts The blood is unity, of love That uncomfortable juice, that mythical feeling TRANSFERRING As a dream Thunderclaps Raining sheets And blinding wind whipping through my chest Through misery, love, torture & sin The needles, of screams ripping through the indentations of my skin I’m coughing out my spirit Swimming through a tornadic spin Eyes swallowing Transferring of breath The storm kissed my mind But ripped off the head THOSE SAME WHITE WALLS Fall apart Those same white walls Crumbling little ant eyes lost looking at the melting moon Forming solid as it smacks the ground A bridge for you to walk on To creep into that moon on a virgin night That you can hide inside the silence With all the stars to chatter, gossiping As lively as greed CRACK OF THE WIND With a crack of the wind The moans bend over a shaking house A winter’s bruise is calmed by the warmth of love The healing began when the coagulation broke And the freedom of mind rested the demons, The fears, the endless end Now, there is hope in a gust of wind Instead of inevitable destruction MALINGER He came in with a strut Pulled at their heartstrings A debonair heartbreaker Tried to blend into moonlight When his legend of notoriety, disgust spread He begins to mourn, becomes a malinger Observes all the crusting flakes of a noose Watch the nervous breakdown boil & dry ENGINEER I watched your engineer yourself from peasant to prophet While spirits swarm in your beds, frost coffins People began to believe a liar, a shade A sunlight’s fade Gossip drools from your false tongue THE RAILS A middle aged hobo with no charisma He lived out of a pitch black cavern Perception that he was a civilized reality Shows a pail, penurious, insipid train The rails are slippery to traverse only from Coma to coma Shall you live to your completion dream in muddy tunnels A FLEET They destroyed all in front of me A cagey crowd demeans me I try to escape my mind Pulled back under the tow of tears I begin to fleet through circles Hitting each wall over and over again Pushed back through the walls of fears Parasitic, they are ‘till only my bones REJECTED Clouds tied together by the ropes of light The request to empty our sky made by voided hearts The famous and the damned begin to pull with all their force The powers in the heavens rejected the request Instead, they vacuumed the seeds like crumbs. TAVERN In a morning fog A blistered old genius ripped from his mind Frozen out of the flesh Stumbled out of another tavern Another burning bridge Mortality questioned The abyss wrinkles up the wisdom Spotless thoughts define the defeated The war turned crystals into bullets

Sheela Na Gig

kilpeck sheela na gig

Sheela Na Gig, Rodel
Such a long road to drive.
I find you weathered by Harris winds,
worn in the smirr of rain,
hollowed, unholy mother.

I seek your protection, projection
of fertility, one stopped hand
holding a child or a lamb;
the other lost in a shape
that meant something once.

My barren belly
concaves in the wet
afternoon, my waterproof
the only second skin I’ll own.

Yet there’s hope in your arms,
the cleft in your legs, an open
O
on the rough bricks of stone.

-Lynn Valentine

-artwork by Anjum Wasim Dar

Do Not
Do not make me sit
before a mirror
in which my eyes meet those
of a bald stranger
You hate it but
Long hair is grace
It gives me space
It is nature’s gifted power.

-anjum wasim dar
CER Copyright 2021

Rising

She is rising from the earth to sing
Her age old story on drums
That beat in heart rhythm
And carry on the wind crying
For help and guidance
So she can gather strength
As she walks through fire
Her clay body molding to new shape
Life pieced apart and rebuilt stronger.
He is behind her watchful as she dances
And sings incantations to evoke elders
The forgotten ones, remembering how
To bring them forward he is waiting
For her to signal the way ahead
The time to move on
She whirls lights from the fire catching
Skirts that dance as though alight
Her trance from now to wherever
Is watched with bated breath
She will dance faster, slower, faster
Not stopping until the answer is there
Only then will exhaustion take her
Her words before sleep to be passed
Among the gathering folk
Whispers from person to person
Man to woman, child to adult
She said the goddess spoke to her
Our mission is to carry on before the fire
Listening to the earth and saving her
The message has never changed
We carry on dancing and drumming
The earth is passing the message herself
We must listen for her roar could deafen
Even those who want to silence her.
Ailsa
©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2020

http://ailsacawley.com/2020/04/05/rising/

 

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.

-Paul Brookes

Bio and Links

-Ailsa Cawley

has been writing stories, poems and verses since she was a child. 
It’s not always what is considered poetry by some, as she isn’t a lover of sweet, schmaltzy rhymes! 
She is currently writing her first novel. A psychological thriller with a paranormal element, and she hopes to bring out a poetry collection one day! 
She lives on the Isle of Skye. While some of her poetry is written from personal experience, others are written from her slightly dark and twisted  imagination. 

-Lynn Valentine

Lynn Valentine’s debut poetry collection will be published by Cinnamon Press in April 2022, after winning their Literature Award. She has a Scots language pamphlet ‘A Glimmer o Stars’ out with Hedgehog Poetry Press, after winning their dialect competition in 2020.  She was recently awarded runner-up place in the Scots category of the Wigtown Poetry Prize.

National Poetry Day 2021

-Matthew Clegg says

@fayay ‘s (Fay Musselwhite’s)’Goat Boy’ is right up there for me; I love @JMThras ‘s ‘Our Man’ sequence; @Joe_coghlan‘s [brand new] ‘John Clare in Norfolk’ sequence have been on my mind a lot recently, though there have been others over the years, may others.

-Matthew Clegg from his collection “West North East, Longbarrow Press, 2013). Chosen by Jamie Thrasivoulou.

-Andy MacGregor. Chosen by Regine Ebner who says “‘The north wind’s a crooked jailer’… Like much of his poetry, it has a deep, haunting feel but this one ends with a wisp of hope that moves me every time.”

ECLIPSE

We’ve tucked the skylights in, stapled the curtains
to the wall. Still the night won’t close,
not completely. In a pale orbit of your hair I sit

watching the sky as if what it does it does so
with purpose, like these dusky string lights
that pass for the souls of orange groves

drawn back to Los Angeles by the August heat.
I turn them off. You’re inside with a migraine,
refusing your pills. Even a seed could plant itself

in your throat, a strawberry’s, a spider’s, a man’s.
When your skull struck the concrete
like a match, some light went out for good and now

I must hold you through each eclipse, each passing
shadow of that other world—the one
where I caught you or your last lover hadn’t

sunk black holes in the drywall with your head.
No one meant to hurt you forever,
not when you asked if you looked like Jean Seberg

and I said, Yes, as Joan of Arc, or when you said,
Tell me the truth, and I told you
how the moon returns from being impossibly thin,

how gravity clings to our missing pieces and one day
they will close a lid on the sun
and kings, priests, soldiers will tremble and pray.

-Nicholas Yingling. Chosen by Kari Flickinger. She says “Like most poems by  @Donyingling  this one makes me weep every time I read it.

Bios and Links

-Regine Ebner

is a teacher in Tucson, Arizona.  Her poetry has been featured in Black Bough Poems, Consilience, Sledgehammer Lit, Loft Books and others.  She loves and writes about the great Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest. 

-Kari Flickinger

is the author of The Gull and the Bell Tower (Femme Salvé Books). She has a new chapbook forthcoming. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the SFPA Rhysling Award. She is an alumna of UC Berkeley.

-Matthew Clegg

was born in Leeds in 1969. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1997, and from 1999-2001 he was poet in residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. His published works include Lost Between Stations (https://longbarrowpress.com/current-publications/matthew-clegg/… ), West North East (https://westnortheast.wordpress.com ), The Navigators (…https://matthewcleggthenavigators.wordpress.com ) and Cazique (https://longbarrowpress.com/2018/10/19/cazique/…). He has worked as a Literature Officer for Arts Council England, and has taught at Sheffield University Lifelong Learning, and for the Open College of Arts. He currently lectures in creative writing at Derby University, and he lives in Sheffield.

Image by by HilLesha O’Nan, David’s wife while she was visiting West Virginia.

-(he/him) David L O’Nan

is a writer/founder of Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art. He has several self-published books and curator of 5 Anthologies. His work can be found on www.feversofthemind.com .   You can see his work on Anti-Heroin Chic, Icefloe Press, Cajun Mutt Press, Royal Rose Mag, Dark Marrow, Ghost City Review, Nymphs Publishing,

Spillwords, Punk Noir Mag and more.  And has been a Best of the Net Nominee in 2019.

Interview Continued

Q2: What was it about Plath and Sexton that appealed to you? 

A: Well, my brother Ethan had a collection of Anne Sexton’s poems.  I never knew imagery could have been expressed so emotionally prior to that.   The use of metaphors to describe misery, love, humor,lust, depression & death were endless. It opened up the Pandora’s Box of words to me.  After Anne Sexton. Then it was Plath, Kerouac,  Burroughs, Ginsberg, Maya Angelou, and the influences keep growing. Lorca, Neruda, and now modern poets that I now talk to is fascinating when before writers and poets was folklore to me.  Now it is an identification to me when I’m not just a father, husband, worker at a finance fileroom. I can escape to the mythical world that seems so real for me that is writing and hiding in other people’s dirt. Their words cover me.

Q3: How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?   A: Well in school, I didn’t always fully understand poetry from pre 1900, or maybe it was just

A: A symptom of having undiagnosed ADHD.  I enjoyed history and learning about lives of people, other writers.  However, it didn’t take me until after High School Years to want to know more about poetry tradition.  Keats, Poe, Blake, Yeats, etc.   I have kind of backtracked in my history in knowledge of poetry.  I am a student, but I hate to be forced to write a certain way. I don’t always fully understand meaning behind older poetry until I can look over numerous times.   As in contemporary poetry I didn’t really think it was as wide spreading (yet needs to be even more so) until after I began reading at open mics, and then hosting my own series of poetry.  I felt the only poetry that was being read was attempts at beat poetry & street poetry.  Trying to be edgy, yet nothing having a full story inside the lines. It took me to do research myself, getting involved mostly on Twitter to fully understand there are still poets that have the love to write.  (Not a facebook fan much and don’t have Instagram)

Poetry From “Lost Reflections”

A CHANGING OF WINDS

As a lonely twister eats away our town
A whistle blows through your frail bones,
As fragile as parchment paper
The decanter crashes to the kitchen floor
Your blue eyes live like a suicide
Skin itches to a burn
Your courage lost in a circadian rhythm of change
All the songs are now lost
You left
The woods are spotless

LUCID

A strong ocean wave hits
A target of heart
Of our prayers
A body in tremors
Where the scent of rose overcomes
A murder truck stop
A Friday night
A haunted bedroom
In the waves we vision the sky
That sky that becomes one with the ground, now
And we spin through our skin
And become lucid

ENEMIES BEHIND FENCES

We still get those no trespassing signs
With barbed wire cutting our hands
Our enemies waving us through
Smiles eating at the precious air
Be aware
Those are jagged halos
Pricking at your mortal vision
They pick you up with a soaked hook
Creating new paint for an old soul
Suffocates
To an artillery of clouds
Watch the ashes electrocute in the wind

ANGELS AND FOSSILS

In the sand is the answer
To the fossils of many sacred bubbles
That burst from the ocean waves
Across the clouds,
The angels in tears
Fanning in new funerals
Sending out new invitations

CLEMENTI MOON

Oh, the pianos fall
And we see in the distance
A heaven warps in the warm keys
From a melted soul
A ghost she left hovering little tiny dust of miracles
Sonatas for the Gods
She waltzed herself away too soon
Hanging by 1 finger on the Clementi Moon.

LUMINESCENCE

Maimed by the luminescence
Shedding my light through
The thinning dim bulbs veiled as skin
I have become ravenous for ripe thought
Accused of being the eccentric appendage –
To a derailing mind
My last decree of love written faintly
“in dark skies where our fears dine”

THE BEAUTY OF THE SEAS

Beyond the beauty of the seas
Are the bending spoons
With the masked freedom
I freeze when touched
In polygon corners
With red tearducts reflecting
Back at my maddening smile
Clouds of ducks fill the air
Bald eagles cripple in my steps
When the world gets sick
And the angels are replaced by snake oil salesmen
Caught and immobile
They move in
And they are hungry
The appetite for the apple
And the throbbing heart of the wolf

LION

In a parade by your kingdom
You soak up all the attention
As boastful and hungry as the lion
You, with the smile that you own as bulletproof
Everyone will treat you like you’re the only power
Watch out for the wires
They are falling and surging
The underlings have today
And they crush flies with bare hands
Idiots!

BIRTHDAY REVOLUTIONARIES

My friends are the bleeding carnival
They are also grocery store garbage
That are artistic,
They are also codeine driven
Sometimes they crawl out of their graves
Long enough to be birthday revolutionaries.

COWARD

If only I could crash through the center of your soul and eradicate the negativity of your past.
And paint your crippling mind into purity and hope I would.
When all is lost
A shadow shakes and will sunshine follow, or does it stay hidden?
A coward behind loose clouds

LAZILY

She crawled lazily as a spider
Through the cracks of the walls
Inside your heart of a bleeding moment
A voice was ulcered out of a gypsy phantom
The sky opened up, and sung a bruised harmony
The spider had to climb into a human’s hair
To hide away from the fears
Until the last raindrop pimpled the ground
And it was safe to be free again

World Teacher’s Day

Dr. Benway teaches, mixed media on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2019

-Marcel Herms