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

Poetry: David Allen

David Allen

CHECKING OUT

And then the door slammed
and he stood there
in the middle of the room
looking toward the finality,
as if he could see the tracers
of her striding angry,
furiously from him.

"F**k this!"
she had said,
and the shock
of those two ugly words
echoed inside his foggy brain,
already confused
and struggling
to make sense
of what had happened.
The coins and the change bowl
and paperbacks and pens
he had swept with an angry arm
off the top of the bookshelf
lay scattered on the floor.
In his hand he clutched
the orange she'd thrown
at his head.

"Is this it?" he wondered.
"Is it finally over?
Or is this some new torture,
the start of some new
chapter in this confusing mystery?"
Outside, an engine started and revved
and the peel of rubber
told him
another non-supporting
character had just exited
stage left.

*******************

Fallen Poetry

The rocky shore

Of White Beach

On a perfect

Summer day.

A few clouds drift by
In the baby blue sky.
It’s quiet,
The vacationers are gone.
I am all alone --
The atmosphere calls for poetry.
And then, suddenly,
A slight wind
Nudges the pen
Just enough to fall
Off the picnic table
And onto the concrete
Slab of the shelter.
Twice.
The pen nib is ruined.
I curse,
Take a swig of my beer
And go back
To the novel I had abandoned
For a moment of poetry.
Hmmm,
It looks like rain.

Setu, June 2018

Poetry: David Allen

David Allen

DEAD

Dead,
reliving the life just ended,
peeling it all back,
finally seeing;
evaluate each deed
each thought,
each act, each longing;
requited, unrequited
loves; chances taken;
easy ways out;
victories, defeats;
encouraging beginnings,
discouraging endings.

Examine,
ruminate,
evaluate,
relive each moment,
rethink each thought
(and why not? you’ve got
the time).
What do you find?
What have you done with your life?
And what will you do
with your death?

FALLEN POETRY

The rocky shore
Of White Beach,
Okinawa,
On a perfect
Summer day.
A few clouds drift by In the baby blue sky.
It’s quiet,
The vacationers are gone.
I am all alone --
The atmosphere calls for poetry.
But, suddenly,
A slight wind
Nudges the pen
Just enough to fall
Off the picnic table
And onto the concrete
Slab of the shelter.
Twice.
The pen nib is ruined.
I curse,
Take a swig of my beer
And go back
To the novel I had abandoned
For a moment of poetry.
Hmmm,
It looks like rain.

DAMMIT DAVID

“Got a comment?”
 I asked the Public Affairs Officer.
“When’s your deadline?” he asked.
“Three hours,” I said.
“Dammit,” he replied.
“How do you spell that?” I joked.

Setu, January 2018

Book Review: 'The Story So Far' by David Allen

David Allen

- Review by David Axelrod

            Poets are allowed to make lists to tell us their “Story So Far,” as long as it’s an interesting list. David Allen’s is and thus, so are his poems—a good life that makes a good read. American poets, in other countries, are sometimes chided for taking even little details from their lives and turning them into poetry. That’s a large part of the art that David Allen has mastered—solidly, happily in the American tradition.

            Allen is not averse to autobiography, not needing that mask of fiction behind which so many artists hide. Of course that is true in his title poem which catalogs his personal journey. It is most poignant in poems such as “Requiem for My Father,” which recites a litany of pain and in so doing purges the past, leaving a “demon-less Dad.” He writes to atone for the fact that “I Never Wrote a Poem About My Mother,” creating a poem even more powerful because it celebrates a life that was so often bullied into a position of  powerlessness.



            Allen’s poems are a often a plain song in performance of a homey philosophy. For those who search for god, “In the Country” asks “if god/ is afraid of the dark.” In “No Sense,” we contemplate a god who “is either/ absent minded,/ a practical joker,/ or a sadist.” His “Meaning” is something you can “put…in your pocket…go off whistling/ down the street.”    

           “Anticipation,” delights us with music “like a cool chill on a steaming/ day of city summer stranger streets.” “Nightmares,” turns philosophy into a song, something Allen may have learned from his father who “plays the mandolin/ when life begins to close him in.” Allen even has moments one could liken to Emily Dickinson, as in “Underneath.”

            The Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Louis Simpson, himself inclined to cataloging the oddities of “American Poetry,” has also noted that many poets seem to want to be novelists. Allen himself, in “The Final Chapter,” promises “No more novel, play or poem similes.” Luckily, he contradicts this pronouncement many times in this book. His relaxed lines and narrative tendencies might remind you of “novel.” In truth, he has a professional journalist’s talent for writing good lead lines, a poet’s ear for music and the strong endings of a story writer. Blending forms, he is a poet who more than gives us—he gifts us his life in poetry!

            He explains his modus operandi in “Running” noting how writing has been his refuge and salvation even as “book walls crumbled/ and, crippled, I learned to crawl.” Indeed, he’s gone much further than that humble admission in the Story So Far.  He puts a well-earned, positive slant on his accomplishments in “Seesaw Sensations,” exclaiming “Ah, so this is living.” Hooray for David Allen’s courage, creativity and poetry!

Table of Contents, February 2017

Frog Legs (A Modern Fairy Tale)

by David Allen

David Allen

Without realizing the consequences David  leaned out as far as he could, arm outstretched in some mad play to catch the Ring of Fate.

The carousel spun dizzily as the ring appeared in view. David knew no one else could grab the ring, the hare-lipped troll in David’s employ had seen to it that everyone else on the ride was an amputee. He knew they all represented his conscience, each a sin that needed to be atoned. But nothing was being left to chance. As the the prize came into sight. David stretched and leaned to snag his fate .
-
Damn! It was gone. The man riding bthe hippo in front of him -- a laughing old fart with four stumps and a backbrace, had snatched the ring with his considerable nose.

Who knew Pinocchio still lived?

They came for David  when the machine stopped, but he was already gone, disappearing into an alley, his left leg dragging lifeless behind him. He was wanted for “high crimes and misdemeanors” – the sins any good newsman is guilty of perpetrating with each stroke of a pen and click of a keyboard. He believed in the old newsman’s oath that it was his job to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” And now they wanted him to pay.

But he was already gone. The hangman would have to wait.

David was visibly shaken by his experience with the ghouls of conscience and the Ring of Fate when he limped to the fire escape at the end of the alley. Sweat poured from his pained brow as he contemplated climbing the ladder that led to his room above the kitchen door of Chun’s Chinese Restaurant. Joe Chun was there, emptying the remains of several skinned felines into a dumpster, but he had his back to the alley and missed what directly followed.

The frog waited for David to turn the corner before he spoke.

“What’s your hurry, friend?” the frog asked, stepping lightly from the shadows. He was dressed nattily, after the fashion of enchanted princes, and smiled at David, who had stopped dead in his tracks.

“Oh dear,” said the frog, staring at the limp body. “Why does this always happen to me?”

The frog knelt and checked David’s pulse. It was slow and weak. Then he slowly, sensuously, placed his moist lips over David’s face and tenderly caressed his eyelids with his long, sticky tongue.

“Uh, where, what?” was all David could mutter as his eyes slowly opened and he saw a chubby, four-foot tall frog dancing a little jig of joy next to his prone body.

“Oh goody! Goody!” The frog croaked. “It worked! It worked!”

“You have to be the weirdest thing I ever saw,” David said, as he stood shakily. It’s not every day you come into contact with a chubby frog wearing a bright red coat and plumed hat.

“Man, am I asleep? Dead? What’s the deal?”

“I am here to give great news,” the frog began. “I can fulfill three wish....”
Joe Chun’s hatchet made a swift impression on his mind before he could finish.

“Oh, what crazy frog legs we have tonight!” Joe said. “David, you must come in and hin me in partaking of this scrumtious delicacy!”

“Count me out, man,” David answered. “I don’t think i could stomach any French food.” He waved the cook away as he began climbing the ladder.  “Goodnight, Joe.”

“You goodnight,” Joe replied, dragging the frog corpse toward the kitchen door. “Me good eats!”

Later that night, sitting at his desk, listening to The Doors play “The End,” on his stereo, David contemplated the night’s events. Having the Ring of Fate stolen from him after buying a Troll to make sure no one else could grab it, was a bad sign, for sure, he thouguht. But what did it mean to have three wishes from a magical frog stolen from him by a second-rate cook?

“Face it,” he told himself. “Karma’s catching up to you. It’s best to  lie low for awhile. Good thing you prepared for the Apocalypse and have plenty of food and drink stashed. This story’s not over.”

 He leaned back, pleased with his preparation for any new chapter.

Suddenly there was a loud rapping at his front door.

Table of Contents, March 2017

Poetry: David Allen

by David Allen

David Allen

A Lie

once upon a time,
i found the secret
to the truth
and,
to protect my sanity,
i smashed it
with a rock
and destroyed all trace
of the liar.

Taking the Trouble

I walked to your
back door last night
and saw two legs standing
where mine might have been.

I panicked, stepped backwards
down the stoop steps,
retreated to the side of the house
and plotted.

Then I knocked on your door.

“Are you coming?” I asked.
You were confused, drunk,
shaken by his visit --
but smiling.

“How are you?” I asked his beard.
“I’m coming from behind my mask,”
he said. “My ass,” I thought.

You said you’d be along
shortly.

I waited through the long night
for your scream
or a slamming door.

Checking Out

And then the door slammed
and he stood there
in the middle of the room
looking toward the finality,
as if he could see the tracers
of her striding angry,
furiously from him.

"F**k this!"
she had said,
and the shock
of those two ugly words
echoed inside his foggy brain,
already confused
and struggling
to make sense
of what had happened.
The coins and the change bowl
and paperbacks and pens
she had swept with an angry arm
off the top of the bookshelf
lay scattered on the floor.

In his hand he clutched
the orange she'd thrown
at his head.

"Is this it?" he wondered.

"Is it finally over?
Or is this some new torture,
the start of some new
chapter in this confusing mystery?"

Outside, an engine started and revved
and the peel of rubber
told him
another non-supporting
character had just exited
stage left.

Setu, February 2017

Letter to Legolas - Fiction

by David Allen

David Allen

“I am just a stranger here

I come from down the road

And I did come to ask you all

To help me with this load

But I came to sing this song for you

And tell you where I’ve been

And maybe share a glass of wine

Before I’m gone again.”

                        Rabbit McKay

Friend,

            It’s happening all around you. Listen to the strange and you’re sure to bear witness to the truth. I have been wrong all along. All along I’ve been wrong. There are no many truths. The Buddhists are confused. Baba Rum Dum sure does drone out a nice neat message, packages it beautifully. It goes well with our American cultured minds, so tired of our parents’ Protestantism. We need something simple. We need to find some excuse to protect us from the dark. We believe religion will protect us from the shadows. But our parents are being murdered in our sleep while Christ laughs and dances a nifty cha-cha with his brother Satan. And so we turn to the East and bow to the truths of the enlightened ones. Yet, we still die messy little deaths in the mire of man’s hate and chanting doesn’t chase away the dark.

            What are we going to do? Can’t you see how much easier it is to accept the dark, to no longer be afraid? Turn off your mystic night lite and walk boldly into the shadows. There is more than one world. We are all worlds unto ourselves. I am the only world I know. There is only one world. There is only one truth I can accept. There is no truth. There are only extensions of myself. See what I am getting at? Force yourself to try to understand. Put down that comic book. There is no law of the universe. We are all reflections of the universe.

            The universe is flawed and the flaw is beautiful. I look into her eyes and chant hymns to the beauty mark on her thigh. Beauty marks are flaws. Understand? My god challenges your god to a duel. Loaded theologies at dawn. Their seconds are shrouded in black cheesecloth. In the cemetery they mark their steps and turn to fire. The bullets pass right through them, killing a small lamb, scarring a proud tree. I take her hand in mine, she guides it to her breast. My other hand stabs deep within the fountain of her life. The knife blade finds no milk. I stifle her moans with a holy candle and try to crawl into her womb. The earth opens and in her primeval cave I find solitude at last as the laughing astrologer falls from his pyramid of air.

            All that matters is that love is the key to understanding. I love you. All of you. But I have failed. I can’t love those I don’t know. I hate them for their distance. I see the blood on their hands. I smell the pestilence that feeds on their souls. I love the boulder in the woods where I go to think. I love the stream that soothes my mind. They are real, always here for me. I am not confused, you know. Just worried. There has to be someone who can help me unravel these thoughts, help me find meaning in this madness. Someone who can ease my mind and explain this terrible longing. Why do I have to wrestle alone with these tireless demons?

            Ever so gently I wrapped her body in a long silk sheet, carefully pinning the ends. She looked so pure until the blood soaked through.

             Changes, we all go through them. Right now I am pissed that my “Pearls Before Swine” album is scratched. It seems to mock my life. Changes, we are always changing. You think you know something, then find it’s a lie. She is really not dead. Not that way. My only murder is in my head. At times I am so pure I am invisible. My only sins are in my mind. Don't believe me, it’s still true. Ask those who did not see me. I was there. I’ll point them out to you. “God is seeing.” Kenneth Patchen said that and I believe it. I can clearly see you. Man, am I glad you are there to listen and know how to laugh. Too few people really know how to laugh these days.

            I lifted her gently over my shoulder, careful not to let the blood drip to the ground. She was much heavier than on nights of love. Dead weight. I carried her down to the cemetery where the gods were feasting on barbecued lamb over a wood fire. They could not see me. I was invisible. Their seconds plotted murder behind a rich man’s mausoleum. They wanted to be gods. Her body strained my back and I stopped to rest beside a shady tree. It was a weeping willow and cried huge tears.

            “Why do you cry, friend?” I asked

            “I always cry for the dead,” the tree answered.

            “But that’s wrong,” I said. “Your tears should be for the living.”

            The tree did not answer, but allowed the tears to fall unchecked into a little stream. The water was warm, salty and harbored no life.

            “See what I mean?” I asked. “If you cried for the living, I’d have a cool stream in which to wash off this blood.”

            “But how can I cry for the living, when the living have not learned how to cry?” the tree wondered.

            “I don’t have all the answers,” I said, fording the stream and climbing to the top of a nearby hill.

            I dug her grave. She who refused me life had died by my hand. It was my duty, my penance. She who had been my mother, sister, lover, friend, enemy and just another face in the crowd. The grave was as shallow as her life. She never did understand her murder, or why I am so influenced by authors and poets of questionable literary talents.

            Before I lowered her into the grave, I unwrapped her head and held her shattered face in my hands.

            I wiped the blood from her lips and chin with the torn tail of my shirt. I undid her bun and allowed her hair to fall straight down her back and over her pale shoulders and breasts. I kissed her and felt my tongue bitten by the broken remains of expensive teeth. Blood trickled from my mouth as she sucked the life from me. There was no struggle as I undressed us both and joined our bodies. As one we were always strong. As the air was sucked from my lungs, she possessed enough life to talk.

            “Why did you kill me?” she rasped.

            “Don’t you like being dead?” I asked.

            “It’s not fair to answer a question with a question,” she said.

            “It’s not fair to question my motives. Besides, I gave you no answer.”

            “But, I loved you.”

            “I loved you, too. That’s why you are dead.”

            “Why?”

            “So you would learn to enjoy life.”

            There was no more breath to talk. She slept and I, who could not die, wrapped her again and gently nudged her body into the grave with the toe of my boot. A dog did the honors of covering her bones.

            On my way back through the cemetery, I noticed that the gods had finished their feast and had fallen asleep. Their seconds had stolen their clothing, leaving them naked upon the grass. Not a pretty sight. I guess the seconds preferred freedom to the enslaving weight of godhood.

            I am secure in the insecurity of my beliefs. Don’t think for a moment I write just because I like the sound of my words, even though I do like to hear myself think. I am not trying to be cute.

            Don’t worry, she will not bother you. She is my own ghost. Personal ghosts are strange people. She never forgave me for not going to her wake. I never forgave her for going to sleep. She really doesn’t bother me much. The only thing that annoys me is she takes great delight in making me whimper her name when I hold some strange woman in my arms.

            I walked back to the top of the hill to dig on a Walt Disney sunset. They drive me to wilder and wilder thoughts. It’s getting more difficult to haul one down. They run into each other, bleeding into incoherency. What do they mean. What do we mean?

            This is long enough for anyone. I mean, there has to be a time when we can embrace nothingness as our own private truth and admit that mankind was some kind of fluke. He is the one that doesn’t make any sense.

Peace and love, brother,

david

“Well your roads in life are many

So be careful how you choose

Be sure that what you’re gaining

Will be worth what you will lose

“Cause you’ll only come to find

That every man must stand alone

And that every hand will have to reap

Exactly what he’s sown.” 

          Rabbit McKay

Table of Contents, February 2017

David Allen

David Allen is a freelance writer and poet now living in Central Indiana. He is the poetry editor of the online Indiana Voice Journal and vicer president of the Poetry Society of Indiana . A native of Long Island, he is retired journalist, reporting for papers in Virginia, Indiana and the Far East, where he was a bureau chief for Stars and Stripes for 19 years on Guam and Okinawa, Japan. He was part of the “Eat Write Café and Traveling Poets Society” on Okinawa, doing open mic readings and publishing an E-zine. His poems and short stories have been published in several journals and he has two books of poetry, 'The Story So Far' and '(more)' both available from Amazon.com and by e-mailing him at david@davidallen.nu. He has a blog, “Type Dancing,” at https://davidallenpoet.net, and is an active member of the Last Stanza Poetry Association in Elwood, Indiana.

Authors A-Z
Table of Contents, February2017