FISHING FOR ANSWERS
By David Allen
There’s a man I always see
standing at the end of the pier
when I take my lunch walk.
He holds a long pole
and occasionally casts
the line into the bay.
There's no bait on the hook.
The creel at his feet is empty.
Almost as empty as the look on his face.
His eyes are fixed on the horizon.
One day I asked him what
he hoped to catch.
Without a glance at me,
he pulled his line out of the water
and cast it back with a slight groan.
“I’m fishing for answers,” he said.
“I tried books, schools, the streets,
and even turned to poetry.
Nothing.”
I felt bad for interrupting his search.
But I had one more question.
“Answers to what?” I asked.
“Everything…nothing,” he said.
I walked on as he recast his line.
His search tormented me.
Was there really something there
in the cold, blue waters of life?
The answer to everything
and nothing?
The answer hit me
like a slap to the face.
The search is the answer.
I bought a fishing rod yesterday.
There’s plenty of room on the pier.
Care to join us?
Not my operation. Photo is a U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Michael Feddersen/ RELEASED)
Smooth Operation
By David Allen
Nurses sometimes make all the difference
between worry and confidence you'll be all right.
Despite a weird recovery after my fourth spinal operation,
when I tripped on a cocktail of meds that threw me
into a disjointed world, where dead friends visited
my hospital room and doctors sought to study my rare condition,
I began the fifth assault on my spine somehow sure
operation, where the surgeon would make
a four-inch slit in my back and scrape the bony growth
exerting pressure on my nerves, and strengthening
my spine with rods and pins, couldn’t be any worse.
Any qualms I might have harbored were
allayed by my recovery room nurse.
She was young and perky and had a smile
that destroyed any concern I might have.
“My name is Tara,” she said. “And I’ll be
with you before and after the procedure.“
(“Procedure” seems less threatening than surgery.)
I relaxed and smiled when I read the card
that she wore on her blouse.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Better than a minute ago,” I answered.
“Tara, You’re gonna make my pain Gone With the Wind.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” she said,
My wife, laughed and told the nurse I was a punster and a poet
and often made such strange observations.
“A poet?” the nice nurse asked. “I wrote some in high school.”
She shared what she learned to the sleep doc
when I was wheeled into the operating room.
“Oh yeah?” he asked, placing a rubber mask over my face.
“Who’s your favorite poet?”
“Today? Bukowski,” I said. “But don’t ask me why.”
“I like the classics, Whitman and Frost,“ he said.
“Now breathe in deeply.”
I awoke several hours later with a new four-inch slit
stitched over a decades-old scar.
I smiled at a nurse hovering over me.
I read her name name card on chest and laughed.
“Destiny? “ I repeated her name. “Really?”
She asked if there was anything she could for me.
“Can you tell me what’s my destiny?”I quiped.
She laughed. “Honey, I don’t even know my own destiny.”
“Whew,” one of the voices in my head muttered.
“This is going to a cakewalk.”
And the voices argued throughout the night,
over the meaning of a cakewalk.
UKRAINE
By David Allen
A man stands alone
in front of a tank,
delaying its deadly mission
for a few minutes
as bombs rain down
on his Ukrainian town.
A rabid dictator
ordered this war
to rebuild Imperial Russia
and make him its newest Czar.
Democracies pass resolutions
to pick Russia’s pockets,
each president lining up
to wear Chamberlain’s old hat.
It’s a repeat of when Hitler
sought to take over land
lost in the first world war.
Now a 40-mile parade of tanks
rumbled toward Kyiv, as the people
ironically make Molotov cocktails
to stubbornly resist.
I wonder what former
Soviet Bloc country
Czar Putin will invade next.
Living Forever
By David Allen
I'm going to live forever.
All I have to do is never
take out the trash.
Sound Weird?
Well, I have it on good authority.
One drunken night in New Orleans,
lost and staggering through
forgotten alleyways,
my friend and I came upon
a palm reader who charged
two bucks to tell my future.
“Well, here’s two bucks for you and…”
“Five for the room?” she asked, smirking.
I was stunned. “How did you know that
was a line in one of my poems?”
“I’m a seer,” she said. “Give me a hand.”
She slowly traced the lines in my palm.
“You’ll live to the ripe old age of 91,” she said.
Really? Wow, I thought. I had seven more decades
of rollicking, wild fun ahead of me.
She released my hand and I gave her a tip.
As I turned to leave and find a bar to celebrate,
I heard her wildly cackling behind me.
“It's then you’ll trip and hit your head
on concrete stairs while taking out the trash!”
Well, the Grim Reaper will have to wait.
I swore right then to never take out the trash.
That was decades ago.
Now, excuse me, a film crew
from a television show
about hoarding is coming over.
HAPPY HOLIDAZE
By David Allen
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,
Kwanza, Hanukah, too,
This is my holiday poem
For you, you and you!
Let’s remember this December
Other reasons exist
To wish a Festivus for the rest of us,
No matter your bliss.
And, speaking of bliss,
This season marks when
Buddha found his.
Now, isn’t that Zen?
And should we add Saturnalia
To this season’s list?
You see, that old Roman holiday
Was the start of all this.
For, one week in December
The Romans gave a big bash
Where everything was permitted,
Like “The Purge,” thousands cast
To get drunk, damage property,
Injure strangers and friends
One day history will tell us
That’s where “Black Friday” begain.
The holiday was so popular
Early Catholics stole the date
To lure pagans to their churches
So they could seal their fate.
“But War on Christmas is upon us,”
The Faux News anchors scream,
But look not only to Humanists
For raising their spleen.
Hardcore Christians, the Puritans
Once took up the torch
To ban Christmas hokum
No day for their church.
The reason for the season
To me is just this –
Another year’s over
And we are still here
That’s a reason to party
To throw off our fears
To look to the future
With smiles, without tears
To count all our blessings,
Whatever that’s worth,
Because we haven’t yet
Killed our Mother Earth.
Pumpkin Prize
By David Allen
I’m a bumpkin for pumpkins
pies, bread, and pudding,
and spice in my coffee
on cool Autumn morns.
As I drive around town
I see them on stoops,
stairs, and porches;
gutted and carved
in Halloween screams.
I wonder if any of the gourd artists
know the legend of Jack O’Lantern,
the Irish drunkard and fast-talking conman
who scammed Satan during a drinking game
into freeing him from Hades.
The centuries-old myth
claims Jack didn’t realize
the Pearly Gates were also
locked for him and, forlorn,
he begged Satan to take him back.
Satan refused.
But, admiring Jack’s evil,
presented him an ember
to place inside a hollowed-out pumpkin.
A pumpkin prize
to light Jack’s endless trek
through the netherworld.
The First Leaf
By David Allen
I am the first leaf to fall,
marking the way for my family
to follow when the days cool
and the trees evict them.
Some drop straight down
in a suicidal plunge,
others find a breeze
and swirl away in a last dance.
Eventually we blanket the lawn.
creating a colorful carpet
until we shrivel and surrender
to winter's woes.
TOBY TYLER
By David Allen
“See the elephants,
see the clowns,
see the county police
shut the circus down”
An editor once said
my story ledes
were pure poetry.
And I was on a roll
in Fort Wayne in 1986.
I was responsible for kicking
the Toby Tyler Circus out of town.
and had tons of fun doing it.
The small-time circus
was slated to set
up its tents in the city’s
Coliseum parking lot..
But the penny-pinching
pachyderm show had left
a path of collapsing bleachers
and broken bones in its wake..
“If the circus is coming to town
it better stop by an insurance office first,”
I chuckled as I wrote..
Citing lack of adequate insurance,
the city balked and the one-ring
sorry excuse for a great show
searched for a new local venue.
t finally found a farm lot
just north of the city.
“There was a bunch of midgets
putting up a tent in my backyard,”
a bewildered man who rented
a house on the property said.
The lot owner neglected to
tell him the circus was coming.
About 150 spectators saw
the opening act before police
closed the circus down.
It left town that night
So, yeah, I killed the circus,
And all the clowns, elephants,
lions, tigers, and bears.
Oh my!
NOTE: This one of three of my poems included in The Last Stanza Poetry Journal (6). It's a great quarterly anthology. Get your copy from Amazon.
REMEMBERING
By David Allen
For decades I was
the elephant in the room,
jotting down what I saw and heard
when I attended trials and responded
to wrecks, fires, murders and mayhem..
I typed up what I saw and heard
and editors splashed the stories
across newspaper pages.
We were the community’s memory.
I spent 20 years
reporting in the Far East.
On the fiftieth anniversary
of the War in the Pacific
I interviewed scores of veterans,
sharing their memories of those
harrowing, island-hopping days.
A decade ago I retired
from newspapers and
threw myself into poetry,
remembering in verse
all I experienced
in a life full of words.
NOTE: This is one of three poems of mine featured In the new issue of The Last Stanza Poetry Journal (Issue six). It's an excellent magazine. Get it at Amazon.com.
Thailand’s Sin City glowed at night, neon signs lit Pattaya’s streets packed with American sailors and Marines who jostled European tourists seeking drugs, booze and unbridled sex.
I was there to report on joint military maneuvers, but was struck silly by the maneuvers of the "Buy-Me-Drinky”' gals dressed in schoolgirl uniforms, plaid skirts and light blue blouses. They performed bumps and grinds in club doorways, promising wild sex.
Scantily clad waitresses in the hotel lobby knelt next to my chair, gingerly holding cups to my lips as I sipped my drinks. Outside, the streets sported cocktail bus-pubs, and older prostitutes called from darkened doorways, that hid their age-warped bodies, selling themselves for a few Thai bahts or Yankee bucks.
I spent most of my time in my hotel room writing about how the day’s exercise went, sending the story to my editors in Tokyo, calling my wife a half ocean away, and fending off a hallway hostess who wanted to give me an hour of "the best ever sexual deep massage."
In the hotel restaurant I saw a family with two children and asked my interpreter where they would go for fun. Besides a few religious shrines, where would a tourist in Sin City take a child? Even the beautiful beaches swarmed with sex.
He laughed and drove me to a zoo where children perched on baby elephants that were led around a small circular track. He was taken aback when I asked if I could scramble atop one and go for a ride. I didn’t care about seeming silly and laughed as I climbed up on Dumbo for what was the highpoint of my trip to Thailand’s version of Sodom and Gomorrah
NOTE: This is one of three poems of mine in the new Last Stanza Poetry Journal (Vol 6). Be sure to order from Amazon.
Type Dancing 