 | David Allen on Clothespins |
 | Aditi Das on Clothespins |
| Aditi Das on Royalty |
| David Allen on Royalty |
 | DON GALLUS on Royalty |
SAND FACE
By David Allen
The hand of God
pushed his head
into the sands of time.
He grimaced and groaned,
“Don’t think this will silence me!”
He glanced up at his Maker
With the one eye left open.
“I’m onto you, Old Man.
You’ll let go in another moment.
You must, for you only exist
if I still breathe.”
CLOTHESPINS
By David Allen
They are lonely now
Attached to the line
In the back yard.
Some machine
Inside the house
Now acts like the sun,
Drying the wash
And giving it a perfumed
Scent with no wrinkles.
The wooden pegs
Now point to the blue sky
Wondering why
They were abandoned.
If you like this poem, you’ll love my latest book, “Type Dancing,” now available from Amazon. Or, for a signed copy, send $15 to David Allen, 803 Avalon Lane, Chesterfield, IN 46017.
THIS TIME
By David Allen
There’s a lot of time before him,
but he hesitates and is unsure
when to begin.
Why wasn’t his clock set?
Time has been stretched
in all directions and,
as seconds, minutes,
and hours tick by,
he stands limply, head down
wondering if his time
has already passed.
BIRTHDAY BATTLE
By David Allen
Sand falls,
Watch hands beckon,
A shadow creeps.
Time is skewering us all
To the wall
To the wall, scribes!
Man the ramparts!
Sound the alarm!
Pelt time with your poems!
Punish time with your puns!
Rout time with your rhymes!
Push back the years!
Stop time!
Aaiiiiiieeeee!!!!
It’s no use!
Fall back! Fall back!
Time has become an Ivy Leaguer
A longhaired Master of the Art
Of ruining good poems.
Hair grays.
Eyes, myopic, bag.
Arches fall,
Posture slouches.
Oh, the horror, the horror!
The …
(Ah, forget about it,
It’s just another year.
Where’s the cake?)
NOTE: This was aritten for Jenny Kalahar, a great poet novelist, writer, rare bookseller, and leader of the Last Stanza Poetry Association. She’s a wonder.
Shadow
By David Allen
She’ll be skipping
that rope forever.
The young girl
left her impression
on the brick wall
outside her Hiroshima home.
The atomic bomb’s blast
caught her in mid-air,
capturing her shadow
for the curious
as long as the wall stands.
I wonder,
does anyone know who she was?
A child caught up in the conflict
between nations, wanting
only to finish her jump rope chant
before the school bell rang;
one of the thousands thrown
onto what comes after,
at 8:16 on a Monday morning.
………………………………………………………………..
The Light's Gone Out
By David Allen
It’s getting darker in America
We have somehow lost the dawn
We move slowly as the light dims
And wonder what went wrong
Lady Liberty’s torch is out
It no longer lights the way
We choke on the wisps of smoke
As we face darker days.
Fear and hate now rule the land
It’s the opposite of our dawn
When we welcomed the huddled mass
Escaping foreign wrongs.
But now a motorcycle backfire
Scares hundreds in Times Square
Afraid the next mass shooting
Could very well be there.
And we train children in our schools
How to hide or run or duck
When some shooter comes calling
Some crazed soul run amok.
It’s the opposite of dawn
This nightmare land of fear
And when we’ll see the sun again
Isn’t very clear.
SHOE PILE
By David Allen
I saw a pile of shoes tonight
On the TV news,
And cried the tears
I thought had dried
From crying in the early morn.
At 3 a.m. I awoke to pee
And glanced at the tv
I keep on to drown
My ear’s tinnitus roar.
I wished I had stayed
On that inner ear shore
Instead of discovering
Another mass shooting
Tore up an American town.
The bodies were blurred
And I finally slept,
My body aching,
Feeling the pain
Of the survivors.
But 13 hours later
The news did not censor
The pile of shoes left
By the dead and the fleeing.
BRAIN MALWARE
By David Allen
The past caught up
to my second son
on a warm June day.
It lay in wait
in his old home town
until he returned
from an island life
that soured with divorce
and drunken days
that turned into weeks.
Months.
Matt had come to visit
and clean himself up,
pledging he was done
with booze and drugs;
and would start to climb
the 12 steps to sobriety.
But an old friend visited,
bringing a gift.
“Something to take the edge off,”
to ease the alkie shakes.
His past edged the present aside
and he took a hit.
It sent his blood pressure soaring.
Blood rushed into his brain,
squeezing the frontal lobes,
clotting into a cranial pool.
It knocked him out.
Fate had come a-calling.
His brother and I followed
our dog’s freaked out barking
to the backyard where
Matt lay unconscious
under the hammock,
his eyes cloudy white,
pupils rolled up in retreat.
He was in a coma
for over a week.
The seizure was caused
by what the cops called
a junkie’s “hot shot” —
a dose of drugs offered
as a friendly high
that knocks the mark out
and easy to rob.
Matt’s was a combo of meth,
opioids, and stimulants.
“It finally happened,”
was my first thought.
The horror he evaded five years ago,
when he flew back to his island
and his ex-girlfriend killed her new beau
with a heroin overdose,
had come to settle a score.
The damage done to my son
will take years to heal.
The brain is fragile.
A traumatic brain injury
is like a malware program
that scrambles a computer’s
memory; a virus that destroys
the settings that directed a life.
To fix it, sometimes,
you just have to turn it off,
wait a few seconds or weeks,
then turn it back on and
download new settings.
But you have to be patient,
it may take a while
for the new programs to sync
and life starts anew.
My new book “Type Dancing”
Is now available at:
https://www.amazon.com/David-Allen/e/B00DT6TM7Y?ref_=pe_1724030_132998060
My wife and our three Okinawan grandkids in the ICU Waiting Room hoping for good news about their Dad.
ICU WAITING ROOM
By David Allen
It’s the waiting
that gets to me.
Watching the unresponsive
body on the intensive care bed,
multiple tubes inserted
into veins, nose, mouth, and brain.
Hoping for a raised thumb
or hand clutching mine.
But he sleeps a drugged rest
and I shuffle to the waiting room.
Sitting with family and friends.
We’re running out of caring talk.
Some check smart phones
for word from the outside world.
I listen to the prayer circle
in the next family space.
A minister prays for Jesus
to intercede.
In another space, a tv plays
a hospital show. The sound is muted,
but blood clearly drenches victims of a car crash.
It makes me scratch my head.
Watch a hospital fiction while
the real drama plays out
in a dozen rooms down the hall?
There’s a lot going on
in the waiting room.
A young girl combs
her Barbie’s hair,
while her brothers
play with plastic Xmen.
Their mother is curled up
asleep in a recliner.
Behind me, a bottle of soda
is dispensed with a bang
from a drink machine.
Three middle aged men
in black biker vests
look for a seat, find none,
and walk away.
It’s the waiting that gets to you.
How long should you stay
until you feel like you paid
your respects, prayed
and delivered words of caring?
Even though you’re not sure
if they are heard?
Only to drive home to wait again
in more familiar surroundings,
until it’s time to drive back
and wait some more.
I CAN’T SLEEP
By David Allen
I can’t sleep
while my son sleeps
this troubled sleep.
A seizure slapped his skull
with a wash of blood
that squeezed his brain
and forced the sleep
with eyes rolled up white
and shaking limbs,
a tube plunged down his throat
to help him breathe,
while one in his skull
drains the invading blood.
And we caress him
and hold his hands
and give assurances
of undying love
as he sleeps
the drug induced sleep
from which we were told
might never end.
I can’t sleep
while my son sleeps
what well might be
the final dream
about what may or
may not come next.
NOTE: My 34 year-old son, Matthew, suffered a massive seizure which flooded his brain with blood. He’s been in a coma-like state in an Intensive Care Unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Indianaoplis. His condition remains critical.
| David Allen on Clothespins |
| Aditi Das on Clothespins |
| Aditi Das on Royalty |
| David Allen on Royalty |
| DON GALLUS on Royalty |
