Archive for August, 2019

Birthday Battle

Posted: August 27, 2019 in Poetry
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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

Posted: August 26, 2019 in Poetry
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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.

………………………………………………………………..

 

Sand Face

Posted: August 24, 2019 in Poetry
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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.”

The Light’s Gone Out

Posted: August 9, 2019 in Poetry
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Panic in Times Square CBS News
 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

					
						Posted: August 4, 2019 in Poetry						

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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.














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