An Elegy for One Living and Dead (by John Thomas Allen)

 

 

An Elegy for One Living and Dead

(Dedicated to Prisoner Number : : : 🙂  

 

“And Cain rose up and slew his brother”

 

      — Genesis  4:8

 

 
“Go to your room and cry you little bitch.”

 

I unzip today’s breakfast.

Brine boils in a bowl’s

 

glass cranium

 

penciled kitsch rose.

 

 
Steam raisin,

 

brown sugar

 

slime my palette.

 

 
Hot mush sizzles all the wrong areas.

 

 
I think of you

 

 
and all ways a woman’s womb

 

squirms, milks, kicks

 

 
nursing a shadow.

 

 
Swallowing I wonder

 

 
does

 

 
a neuron steroid,

 

an angry ganglia spool

 

down my throat?

 

 
Rolling my eyes back

 

 
I slide inward looking for

 

pieces.

 

 
Eye sea with my little I.

 

 
Standard issue,

 

for the most parts:

 

your capillaries snap

 

bloody knuckles

 

 
a Fifth of Jack Daniels’ Parade.

 

 
(No month was ever necessary.)

 

 
The heart was its sad slab beating

 

a manic urge to stop

 

to still

 

 
beneath a dove’s green breast

 

 
Mary?

 

 
or some other calm virgin.

 

 
To lie quiet with truisms

 

surrounded by a few

 

modest headstones.

 

 
It passed inspection as it always will

 

till I carve you one all my own.

 

* * *

 

“An Elegy for One Living and Dead” comes from John Thomas Allen’s chapbook

The Other Guy, published in August 2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press.

 

 The Other Guy is 16 pages, lovingly hand assembled, with a saddle stitch white and black card stock binding and cover art by Steven B. Smith. It is available for only $6 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th St. #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111.

John Thomas Allen is a 29 year old poet who lives in New York, for the moment. His work has appeared over 40 journals and he has been known to say that his chief ambition is “to write a real poem one of these days!”

Smokebreak (by John Thomas Allen)

 

 

Smokebreak

(for Jose C.)

Sagging coats
picked limply from
the chipped cubby.

slipped on like bruised
banana peels

or commercial straight-
jackets threaded
with stitched wrists
the zippers open onto

Dachau’s rib
indelible slashes
carved masterfully
in animal randomness.

A Spanish girl
flaked skin falling
covers her mouth
with a napkin
she’s drawn on,
muttering about germs.

filing along like
miscalculated index numbers,

wait.

“You, with the bruises
that have
a good memory and
a bandaged
wrist.      Go

sit by the telephone
where ‘FEAR TOMORROW’
is carved in the wall
by an earnest unfortunate.
Tonight is still CO:
constant observation
for short

I will
watch you when my coffee
is strong

When I am weak think
of how you got here,
and avoid anything sharp.”

* * *

“Smokebreak” comes from John Thomas Allen’s chapbook The Other Guy, published in August 2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press. The Other Guy is 16 pages, lovingly hand assembled, with a saddle stitch white and black card stock binding and cover art by Steven B. Smith. It is available for only $6 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th St. #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111. 

John Thomas Allen is a 29 year old poet who lives in New York, for the moment. His work has appeared over 40 journals and he has been known to say that his chief ambition is “to write a real poem one of these days!”