ChristopherAllen Poetry (9)

I can hear it like
a gental swerve
of cold wind
sweeping along the side of the house
I like the shadows
cast on the books leaning
by the nightstand.
There isn't a voice
from the authors;
just a scratching sound
of interests uninitiated-
Mine.
And to me, the novel stays closed
in my hands. Bookmarks lost
in the binding of life
not imitating art.
On a single piece of paper
the world can lie flat,
and from one corner to the other
someone could be listening,
and someone
could be storytelling,
Its all in invisible ink
written in the womb.
Literature is never reborn
but is consantly reinventing itself
in audiable sounds-
like the scratching
and medaling clamor
of a qiuet evening
pushing against
the side of a house.

Twenty minutes ago;
together we were watching the video
of our eight month old son
playing and laughing and engorged with fun.
What I dread, what I fear
my emotions steir clear.
From the top of my head
the drizzle in my eye
didn't portray the tear
welling up inside.
Twenty mintues ago
I found again
something that came in,
and almost left without a sound.
Destine to be my memory;
and up until right now
I almost forgot somehow,
that you and I havent agrued
in a while.
And why, because you've been gone.
Twenty minutes ago
we were together,
we were our potential.
And I'm not sure what went wrong
But I cant comprehend the unexpected chaos
that carries on and on.
There's a diffence between a throw
and a toss.
But of all the things I was born
to dodge-
Twenty minutes ago;
I didnt know I'd feel such a great loss.

George Washington
has never lied to me.
Not so sure 'bout
that cherry tree,
but when it comes to flippin a coin
he always gets to the point.
Toss-up
and-
catch the wisdom bestowed.
Simply call heads
"Yes" or tails
"no".

George Washington never
flipped a coin
with me in mind though.
Why does't he ever ask me
"Should we go to the bar later?"
Expresso or gas,
paper no-
Don't worry George,
no plastic on me.
Just infinite change in my
pocket.

-And you said,
"What if he's deceased?
At least you'll know."
Rushing off to work.

My mind
flashed a full scene
of southern sunlight
on my face.
You shut the front door,

and

I sat in front of a tombstone.
Maybe in Kentucky.
Not reading a name,
or anything ingraved.
Just thinking of what I might say
to my father.

Neutral thoughts
shake bitterness
from an unshaken hand;
and I peer into a tombstone,
same as I might peer
into the void of someone's eyes.

"All my life I've seen you in the mirror.
Never, have I seen your face.
do you know what one picture
could have done,
for one man-
Your son!"

New unfamiliar coats of human interaction puts the world off.
Convinces tinkering peers that smiles are as real as the moment itself.
There's nothing like a good laugh; hunger goes away,
and liquor fills the heart like
a sedated rotten apple,
with a coiled warm curtling in it's core.
But no one ever finds the worm
unless it at the end of the bottle.
Later,
lit under a blazed conscience, a dim book light-
laughter ceases, concentration is abound
in the silenced sounds of shut windows.
The moving of the grasses,
snivling trees through wind,
the driving hum of a conductor pulling
his trains south....
...are just a few of the sounds creeping in
that penitrate the mental album.
of stories and has beens.
the wall of fame and laughter
that guards against the long faces of the disturbing night.
sounds in which the world inteperates as her own
Insomnia is a kind of hunger-
always squreshaped never round.
Sharp with a very dull tip
nothing exciting is happening now
nothing tomorrow.
and the earth sits laughing in her sleep
two states away ...
holding her son like she never fell
out of love 7 years ago..
The phone doesn't ring,
and the father doesn't call.
There aren't enough pictures to fill the heart,
it is a full spectrum...
bowing in silence
in hope to be served.
Cowering in divine chance
with no real proof it is insured.
a tug boat out at see,
in an ocean of choices.
A wind blown leaf
circling around corners and allys
of tall grey stoned bulidings.
The heart comes to know itself
when it is truelly alone,
it forgets itself to find itself.
Hanging out down town
in a dirty tar,
low down buttered lung.
making bets with "Mr. ego and company"
on whether "cherry blueyes"
is wearing; nothing, a thong, or panties
(each guessing color and flair
and bonus points for foral patterns).
because noone can tell by just looking - from behind.
The heartless always show thier underwear.
just ask,
even if they are not wearing any.
It's not uncommon to want to know.
but the stage is only lit staring the unconscience.
"hello", you more that you might know.
Character Type #1 probably sees an unfamiliar face
then picks out who that person is
in the mirror.
Identity excels at procrastination
it compromises the person
Like Cement Shoes.........

Love is niether true,
nor is it fake.

It is simply natural
for it to be
or not to be.

What it becomes
after trying
and or not trying,

Is the question of what Love
truely is
or isn't.

I bow in silence
in hope to heard.

I cower in divine
chance with no real proof I'm insured.

What late night should my sturdiness get,
then to burn under the sheets
like desert spit.

I'm trying to convince a sturn confidence
that I've learned more than I've burned
and sanity is around the next turn.

No matter wich plain of my mind that I'm on
life surrounds this emotional intelligence.

What I remember is what I know,
and what I've forgot
will soon come to pass.

What makes me worry when trying to figure myself out;
is that I might have given up,
I might have said "no",
or that I could have.

Taxidermy-
Not quite photography.

It’s just a little more visual than a framed image,
Some else takes the shot.
But the buck
Might not smile
before the bullet whizzes across the mist
in the early mornings open field.

Just a thought in a barber shop
with the relevant theme mounted around the walls.
Why not leave the animals faces the way
they were when they died?

The point is to make them look more ALIVE
and at peace with being
DECAPATATED.
Antlers crown symmetrically out and up,
the way an old tree looks bare in winter;
even in the comforts of indoor heating
and ergonomically seats-
There is a VERY cold shiver running up my spine.
As if I were staring that buck
right in his painless eyes
and black mussel
in the middle of his open field.

I wonder if the man that shot that dear
thought to himself,

" GEE, that looks like it really hurts!
I hope we can make'em look the way he was
a second ago- before I shot 'em,
so I don't feel so bad when I eat 'em."

I know he talks like that.
And that shiver has moved up to the thought of;
I hope that’s not the guy cutting my hair,
with the bear trap behind him
clean enough to have never been used.
the metaphor would be as big as a cargo ship's anchor.
And horns curled thicker than thumbnails
center a glaring vague acceptance
from a ram that could have just slipped off the mountain.
A whole family of pheasants,
horse tack, spurs (the pointy ones),
and a string of bullets for a revolver
I don't see anywhere
hang over the barber’s stall wall.

Ghosts don't even haunt
like a raccoon’s pelt streched flat over the waiting chairs,
and I'm in line to get my ears lowerd.
But I forgot what for,
because its my turn next
to sit in that leathery chair, rolling around to my reflection
with my head cocked to the side
and say with straight face....

" Yeah um,
can we take alittle more off the top this time?"

I remember from somewhere the phraze
"Make it new".
Even I can't retell the same story twice
to the same person
whose alreadry heard the same story once.

Your never to old to hang out at the library
Especially if you've wrapped your car
around an electric pole a week earlier.

Feeling as giddy as I could feel,
walking the ilses while waitting for a ride home.
Swiftly to the one place in the library
I know as my retreat from all things mature.
Rounding corners with a pace
and purpose of meeting dead authors
that i know so well.
hidden in a social setting
My neglected treasure
of printed influences.
the poetry section

i turned the last corner
and dropped my jaw in awe.
two teenagers are doing the tounge tango
between edna stvincent millay
and tennesse willaims.
The three of us all gasped to attention
not imediatly comprehending the complexity
of the impeding moment
we stood there in ackwardness
looking at each other
and briefly comtemplating if
one of the three of us was
was going to leave.

then before i could blink their giggles
erupted into a wurl wind cyclone
of backpacks and braclets
undarkend hickies and an exiting
frollic of theatrical proportions
swuned to the back of the isle
like i was some kind of freakish ghoul
mildly making them uncomfortable
i'm not sure wich one was
the girl or the boy at that point

lieing on the floor
my jaw unhindged
my eye browes still anchored
by some perplexity unforeseen.
stillness past over me like
the stoppping of the wind.
conjeston and my senses
raised my attention back to focus.
a final thought grumbled from
under my lips;

what do these kids think,
no one reads this stuff.
that they can just hide out
back here in paradise
playing the hickie suffle
all afternoon?