Poetry: David Allen

* Author of the Month *

David Allen

CONTROL

I am steadily
becoming unsteady,
especially when I write.
Sometimes I am amazed
when I put pen to page
and the lines appear
before my inner editor
can check them.
They resist change,
except, perhaps,
a word twist,
here and there
to pretend
I am still
in control.

FORGOT WHO THEY WERE

We had a parakeet once
We got him when he was barely hatched,
Still cutting his beak on a sandstone
And preening at his image in a mirror.
We named him Petey and taught him lots of tricks
After three years he drank beer
From the rim of my Pop-Pop’s glass
And he rolled marbles along
The tabletop and picked up notes
Written on thin strips of paper
And delivered it to people,
Scurrying across table,
Sometimes scampering along the floor.

My dad made a small chariot for him to pull
And we even taught him to ride
Our dog’s back and let Tippy lick him
Once he delivered Petey to our table.
That bird did so many tricks and was trained so well
That he forgot how to fly.
One day while he was waddling along the kitchen floor
My mother stepped on him.
We buried him next to our cat, Scratches,
who died one day when he tried
to play with a mouse and sprung a trap
breaking his neck
 Both of them apparently had forgotten
 What they really were
A cat and a bird.

POEMS ARE LIKE LOVE

Look,
the poems
don’t always work.
It’s like finding love.
How many words
must we try
before we find
the perfect rhyme?
About as many lives
as we sort through
looking for that perfect love.

DAVID ALLEN BIO

David Allen is a retired Journalist who lives in Central Indiana. He is the vice president and contest director for the Poetry Society of Indiana and poetry editor of the online literary magazine Indiana Voice Journal. He has published two books of poetry, “The Story So Far” and “(more)”, both available on Amazon at: at https://www.amazon.com/David-Allen/e/B00DT6TM7Y?ref_=pe_1724030_132998060

Setu, September 2018