Oconis & Daly — May 2026

Tony Daly and Michelle Oconis traded art and words. Michelle shared this image, titled “Urban Blight,” with Tony:

In response, Tony wrote this poem:

PTSD on Zoloft

walk through the valley
in the belly of the beast,
stagger over shrapnel
and broken things,
slip in blood and oil
and ruptured things,
block-out sirens
and screams and
intrusive things,

stare at graffiti
once protective barrier
of cascading hues
sprayed across the Harat –
now crumbled,
fallen,
de-
     stroy-
          ed,

study remnants
of pretty things
floating just outside
conscious porifera:
fondant roses,
watercolor sunrises,
cats with funny faces,
acrylic oceans,
loads of digital flotsam,
images bleed pastels
of imagination into
horrors of reality,

willingly ignore stench
of rotting corpses,
pain
     of slowly
          melting
               a
                    w
                         a
                              y …

* * * * *

Tony shared this poem with Michelle:

Differences in Bonfires

Sitting around a fire at one of my son’s 
Boy Scout campouts, I listen to the parents 
discuss fire, in the same awed tone I did 
when I was ten. They banter about best 
ways to make it climb higher, and who 
could accomplish the deed best.

One pulled out a heat gun to measure 
temperature, strictly for comparison’s sake, 
calling the barely six-foot-high flame 
the largest bonfire he’d ever seen.

I must have stifled my laughter well, 
as no eyes looked my way, 
while I drifted to shades of memories
of past flames, like these, 
laughing with cousins and siblings, 
melting the soles of our shoes 
on fire rings so hot 
impurities would flake off 
the welded together tractor trailer rims, 

and, of course, bonfires, real bonfires, 
bonfires at the school’s homecoming games, 
bonfires at graduation parties, 
bonfires at friend’s houses and 
bonfires deep in the woods 
where only specially fitted trucks 
could go and parents couldn’t see, 

bonfires so tall, you couldn’t make out 
where the flames ended and the stars began,
bonfires so hot, you couldn’t walk 
within ten feet of them, not even 
when you saw that girl from school
you wanted to talk to 
before she talked to someone else.

In response, Michelle created this image, titled “In Awe of Fire”: