Archive for August, 2015

WHEN I SEE YOU

Posted: August 25, 2015 in Poetry
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WHEN I SEE YOU
By David Allen

When I See You
my heart soars high,
I can float, I can fly,
I can do the things
I’ve always dreamed.

For, you’re my inspiration,
you’re my muse,
you are all the lovers I have known.
You’re my inspiration,
you’re my muse,
you are the flower of the wild seeds I’ve sown 

I saw you first
in a teenager’s dream.
You quenched my thirst
on a desert drive.
You were with me
when I was all alone,
you helped me see
when I was blind.
And when I wrote of love
I was writing just for you,
‘though I had no idea
we would ever ever be.
And when I wrote of pain,
I was crying just for you
and the missing love I thought
would never be.

Now that I’ve found you,
I wonder what you are.
Are you my soulmate
or just a passing star?
Are we meant forever?
Or is it just for now?
I swear, I’d seek the answer,
but I don’t know how. 

So, I stay content with us
as two souls intertwined,
alive within this space
with room for just our hearts.

And if it means foralways
I accept it with a smile,
and put out of mind the time
when we will have to part. 

For, you’re my inspiration,
you’re my muse,
you are the reward for all
the times I almost went insane.
Your’e my inspiration
you’re my muse,
you are the test I finally aced
when the cards were down
and I had to end the game.

You’re my inspiration,
you’re my muse,
you are all the lovers that I’ve known,
you are the flower of the wild seeds I’ve sown.
 

My second book of poetry, “(more)’ is now available on Amazon Kindle. The paperback edition is also available. If you want a signed copy, email me at david@davidallen.nu. Order your copy today! I am like most poets — poor.

(more) Cover

http://www.amazon.com/more-David-Allen-ebook/dp/B00N6W3DP8/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=1-2&keywords=%28more%29+by+David+Allen

Here’s a review:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wanting (more), September 2, 2014
By Jenny A. Kalahar “the_story_shop” (Elwood, IN USA)
Here are wonderful, literate poems of longing, wit, wisdom and resistance; justice, injustice, the absurdities of life and of growing older. There are lines full of sensuality at every stage of our existence, and of the waste and usefulness around us. Tinged with the atmosphere of the Orient, they are as luxurious as legs that go all the way up. Mr. Allen’s years as a newspaper man stain his poems with a rougher ink that sticks to your fingers long after you’ve turned his pages. There are losses – parents, loved ones, friends – but there are poems of finding and creating. Children, grandchildren, lovers, partners in crime and art all swirl throughout this collection, humming like a secret humming song. But unlike most hummed songs, these words do matter. They do. So read them now and sing along.

DAYS OF INSANITY

Posted: August 18, 2015 in Poetry
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SPINAL SCARS

DAYS OF INSANITY
By David Allen

Something’s wrong.
Why am I lying in this hospital bed
when I was transferred to a different hospital
just two days ago?
You see, I have a rare disease
commonly called
Vitamin d resistant rickets
and I was flown from this hospital
to a university hospital in Indianapolis
for a new study on this rare disease,
which shortened and bent me
bowlegged and soft boned.
It affects maybe 1 out of 20,000 people.
The doctors were excited about the study;
other patients were being flown
in from around the country.
So, why was I back in Anderson?
Sure, the operation didn’t go as expected.
There was a lot more cutting
to free the nerves being squished
by the growth of the soft spinal bones.
but now I was back in the bed where I had to lay still for two days
and then starved without food and water for three days
when my stomach swelled as
the meds fought each other instead of
healing me.

“Why am I back here?”
I asked the nurse who came in to take
my vital sighs.
My voice was weak, raspy.
“Back?” she asked. “Honey you never left.”
“No, I was transferred.”
“What day is it?” she asked.
“Thursday,” I said.
“No, it’s Tuesday,” she said. “How do you feel?”
“Confused, I croaked.
“You’ve been hallucinating,” she said.
“There was a bad reaction to post-op drugs.
But at least you sound a bit better today.
and you can start eating again.
Just then my wife walked in,
“How are you, my love?”
“Confused. The nurse said I’ve kinda been out of it.”
“I’m so glad that’s over,” my wife said.
“You were acting crazy.
Sometimes you lost words,
Replacing them with
sounds that made no sense.”

In the following days
I spoke with friends who said
I was “out of it”
when they called or visited.
I thought about those days
and realized I had drifted back decades
to a time I purposefully
lost my mind with mescaline
to examine the me behind this all.
And I didn’t find an answer.
Just like the last two days.

Hello Tuesday,
How’d you like being
Thursday for a while?

 

 

RUTH ELLEN (27 YEARS)

Posted: August 16, 2015 in Poetry
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 Me and my Muse, Okinawa 2005 (or so)

RUTH ELLEN (27 YEARS)
By David Allen
 

Ruth Ellen, I’m tellin’
You don’t look your age
Your beauty’s compelling
And worth every page
Of the dozens of poems
I wrote of you and our love
 

You remain my muse
As you were before we met
I just didn’t know back then
If I would ever get
To be with the woman
Who haunted my dreams
Faceless, she beckoned
Her outstretched arms seemed
To invite the poet in.

 In the traditional wedding vow
The couple agrees to remain together
“In sickness and health”
Well, we’ve lived that line
And we’re coming out fine
We’ve remain unbeaten, if weathered.

 

Chesterfield, IN
16 Aug, 2015

 

THE BOMB and CHILDREN OF THE 50s

Posted: August 14, 2015 in Poetry, survivors, war
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THE BOMB and CHILDREN OF THE 50s
By David Allen

When I was a reporter in Japan
I journeyed to Hiroshima
with my Japanese interpreter
to cover the 50th anniversary
of the atomic bombing
of Hiroshima.

I was stunned by what I saw.
It was a thriving city of more than a million
with only a now hallowed building
that partially survived
the day the city was turned to ashes.
This is where Chiyomi, my translator,
 grew up in the early 50s.

A half world away,
16 years after Hiroshima was leveled,
I was a tow-headed Long Island kid
hiding under my school desk,
hands over my head,
pretending I could survive
a nuclear attack on nearby New York.

Surprisingly, the children of Hiroshima
never experienced that trauma.
“We hardly ever talked about the bomb,”
Chiyomi told me.
“I think the adults — our parents, our teachers — 
tried to prevent the tragedy from touching us.”
Although there are still shadows
of people burned into sidewalks and walls
at the time bomb the Americans called “Little Man”
exploded, Chiyomi said it did not
cast a  shadow on her life.

“With the exception
of the annual memorial,
the bombing was hardly
ever on our minds,” Chiyomi said.
No one talked about it much.
The schools scrubbed
Japan’s Asian aggression clean.
So much time was spent
on ancient Japanese history —
about Shoguns and the
the Kamikazes, intense storms
that smashed two Mongol invasion fleets,
there was little time left for the most recent war.

“No one felt threatened, she said.”

We did on Long Island.
Dozens of low-budget horror movies
depicted rampaging nuclear monsters
mostly giant mutated insects,
terrorizing the countryside.

But in Hiroshima, the worst was long over.
One afternoon Chiyomi and I
interviewed a couple who survived
the devastating blast and seriously injured,
somehow  found each other
and never left each other’s side since.
Surrounding us were a dozen
family members, dazed
in  rapt attention.
They had never heard the story before.

People just didn’t talk
about the bomb that scared
and scarred the young me.
But not Chiyomi.

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AUTOMATICALLY

Posted: August 4, 2015 in Poetry
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AUTOMATICALLY
By David Allen

And now
I write
the words
my subconscious
demands
and worry
they will
say something
I do not
want anybody
to know.