J. Lester Allen

 

 

meat vehicles

for Lex Fridman

Astronomers estimate that 3.75 billion years from now the
galaxies of Andromeda &
The Milky Way will collide,
maybe destroying the world
but probably not.

as I contemplate this my pit bull Carl rests his head on my chest and sleeps.
I wonder if he’s dreaming
and about what.

the world is on fire but he
does not know this,
he does not care about anything
aside from the consistency of
my attention
and timeliness of his next meal.
20 some dead in an elementary
school, another 9
slain in a grocery,
millions dying every day in
the glow of their phone screens
not even acknowledging
the existence of most anything
around them, even their own
death.

I look out the window at the night sky-
stars everywhere
Venus is visible tonight.
somewhere out there there is
an alien being looking out his alien
window at the sky and asking
the same question that we ask..
if there’s something intelligent going
on elsewhere in the universe

looking around
it’s a hard question
to answer.

The Sidewalk Girls by J. Lester Allen

 

not too good with eyes
I must admit
to getting along much better
with the backs and behinds
of arch and sway,
the truthful tone of calves
and beautiful ankles of
a better world.

the eyes want too much,
I can’t bring myself to tell them
that they’ve been beaten
to the haul
and that what remains
might not be worth the
price of admission.

so these blue eyes of
many things find themselves behind
sunglasses and
beneath ball caps,
submerged in cheap
liquor,

running from no
job, a wife in another
state of a life
just gone.

sometimes it takes a man
10 years to be
sure of what he knew
all along:

that the worm will always
get its apple, no matter
the season
and that a summer
dress and stiff shot
of breeze, in all its
perennial beauty,
will never last any of us
quite long enough.

non-perishable by j. lester allen

 

 

non-perishable

It’s Sunday
there have been two deaths
in my house so far today
both carpenter ants
that my girlfriend stepped on.
one died instantly
the other,
just mangled enough
for us to be pressed into making
a decision.

there’s a virus
running around the world
right now
that doesn’t seem like much
but it has managed to
kill the stock
market so, that’s something.
2% death rate is what they’re
saying 2
percent.
if you told me that I had a
two percent chance
of just about anything
I’d probably immediately lose interest
in whatever was to
follow but here
we are,
huddled together like
two helpless voles and
the fox is closing in,
we should probably
eat the last of
our fancy food and
drink the good beer
before the speculators
come to feast on our
bones.