www.facebook.com/AuthorDonaldEAllen/
Donald E. Allen The Storyteller
I am a writer becoming known for my poetry as well as my fictional short works. I have chosen Blogger as a means of sharing some samples of these very different forms of written entertainment with you. So relax, come back often, and enjoy; the poetry, the memoir, the fiction, that I share with you here. All works displayed on this blog are copyright to the author. © 2010-2015 by Donald E. Allen. All rights reserved
Friday, December 4, 2015
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Neither the Lady nor the Tiger
“Eureka! I’ve found it!,” exclaimed professor Gowski.
“Found what Professor?”
“Look at the video, look at the video and tell me what you
see.”
“OK, Nothing. I don’t see anything…. Wait, Oh my god … it’s
a….a… Professor, it was a UFO.”
“Keep watching the video, son.”
“Nothing on the video. How long do you want me to keep
looking? Oh wait, here it comes again on
the far left of the screen. IT’S GONE!
Professor it disappeared into thin air.”
“No young man, into a worm hole! It came out of one worm hole
on the right, and then departed our corner of the universe via a worm hole on
the left. And best of all, I have captured the exact location of both the entry
and exit worm holes on our observatory’s radio telescope.”
“But Professor, our radio telescope is an old model, It
isn’t capable of deep space observation.”
“Exactly! These worm holes are not light-years away. They
are just a few hundred thousand miles above the Arctic Circle of our beloved
Earth.”
“They’re that close to Earth, Professor?”
“Yes, isn’t it fantastic? We can reach them with existing
technology!”
At this point, the head of the United Nations Space Agency, pressed
something in his hand to stop the video playback on a super-sized overhead
display, and he began to speak. “Now Astronauts of Earth, you know why you have
been gathered here. You, the best of the best,
have been selected to represent our planet as we explore the universe,
and bring a message of peace to all the inhabitants there of.”
I looked around the room as all assembled started to
applaud. Counting myself, there were only two Americans among the
astronauts. There were three Chinese, four Russians, an Australian, an Italian,
and two women from “This” or “That”-astan. Every one of them was applauding as
if the louder and longer you were able to slap your palms together and smile
for the camera, the better your chances of making the final cut for a spot on
the flight team. I was hardly clapping more than that which would be called “polite.”
Because the whole, “Hey let’s all jump in a low orbit supply-shuttle and chase
a UFO through a worm hole to who-knows-where idea-- fell flat with me. Sorry my
fellow Super Hero’s, but the idea of the Great Unknown doesn’t exactly thrill
me.”
That’s why I decided to stay home. I opted out. I became a
Space Agency outcast. They retired me early, they tried to screw with me by
sending my pension checks to the wrong address, they have even been repeatedly
screwing with my medical coverage, but after seventeen years… at least I know
one thing. I am still alive. I still go to bed at night next to my wife.
Seventeen years and still counting.
As for those dozen Astronauts from around the world, who marched
into a recycled, museum-display-space-shuttle, blasting up, up, and away, no
one knows what happened to them seventeen years ago when they reached that
blank spot in the night sky, that worm hole, and disappeared before you could
blink… NEVER to be heard from again?
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Channel Surfing
I
have not yet written today;
a
trip to the dentist, then the drug store,
followed
by the supermarket, the card store,
finally
back to the drug store.
Now
it’s getting late,
almost
time for another painkiller.
Maybe
I’ll wash it down with some Scotch.
Good
scotch.
Can’t
stand the cheap stuff.
Love
the good stuff, one shot, maybe two.
Painkillers
in different forms, pills and liquid.
Then
maybe I can get something written.
I
put on the TV
and
look for some inspiration.
I
see cops busting bad-guys,
Hawaiian
cops and robbers.
I
hit Channel-up and some old man is choking to death
on
his own phlegm.
Don’t smoke.
Quickly
I press Channel-up, again, and again.
Trying
to Channel-up far enough—fast enough
to
get away from my 30 years of smoking.
I
Channel-up so far that I find myself Channel-down…
Channel-down
and back in time.
I
see Little Joe and Pa and Hoss;
an
entire cast of dead people from long ago.
I
thank God I’m alive
and
I start to write.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
The Disappointment of Raymond Bradley
“Mr. Charwoski, I think that if you listen to me for just a
few minutes, you will understand why I am the most qualified person for the job
of Sr. Accounting Clerk. You see Sir, I started here five and a half years ago
as a Junior Associate Accountant. I worked the first four years of my career
under the tutelage of Mr. O’Brien, and he taught me everything I know about the
company. I was sad when he retired, but he is quite happy in Florida, and he has
three cats to keep him company. He is also very active in his Senior Club and
has served as the clubs Treasurer for the past three years. And—
Mrs. Johnston, stop looking at me like that, stop it, STOP
IT RIGHT NOW!
You see, Mr. Charwoski, she hates me. She has hated
me ever since I showed her expense report to the Independent Auditor’s Review
Team. DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT. I’M WARNING YOU, MRS. JOHNSTON.
So, like I was saying, Mr. Charwoski, um, I have the most
experience, and so when smarty pants Ms. Jones here, got the job instead of me
it was very disappointing, and I think that if you could see the promotion
review teams paperwork you would agree that I am much more qualified than her.
But Mr. Brownell couldn’t find the paperwork in HR, could you Mr. Brownell,
COULD YOU!”
“We have a phone wired directly into the conference room,
Lieutenant.”
Ring, Ring, “Pick up the phone Ray, come on, be a good boy,
pick it up.”
“Hello?”
“Ray, is this Ray?”
“It’s RAYMOND, who are you?”
“My name is John. Raymond, can you tell me what is going on
up there? There seems to be some kind of a big misunderstanding going on, and,
well I think I can help. Will you let me try to fix things for you Raymond? But
first you have to promise me not to hurt anybody, OK, Raymond?”
How can YOU fix things? You have no idea of how they treat
me. They hurt me, THEY HURT ME ALL THE TIME.”
“SWAT team is still 5 minutes away, Lieutenant.”
“Raymond? Raymond. Stay on the line with me, Raymond. Pick
up the phone. Raymond?”
BANG ! … BANG !
… BANG ! … BANG !
“You can’t fix anything. You’re a bad person just like they
were. You’re all bad people. The world is filled with all bad people. I hate
everybody. Everybody always hurts me. Everybody. Everybody.”
BANG !
Monday, February 2, 2015
Review of April 1861 on Amazon...
I just finished reading April 1861. It is an excellent example of historical fiction through poetic verse. I was never a big fan of poetry, But this book reads like a short story.it is very much a dedication to the bloodshed in this most terrible period of American history. Mr. Allen writes about all the things that brought on the American Civil War,such as the secession of the Southern States, and the attack on Ft. Sumter including Historical figures like Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln.
So if you like Historical fiction and the human spirit you will love April 1861.
I just finished reading April 1861. It is an excellent example of historical fiction through poetic verse. I was never a big fan of poetry, But this book reads like a short story.it is very much a dedication to the bloodshed in this most terrible period of American history. Mr. Allen writes about all the things that brought on the American Civil War,such as the secession of the Southern States, and the attack on Ft. Sumter including Historical figures like Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln.
So if you like Historical fiction and the human spirit you will love April 1861.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
My Memories of Troy
The Greeks had battled long and hard, but they could not
penetrate the walls of Troy. Each side’s heroes eventually fought in individual
combat at the foot of Troy’s mighty walls, but there was no final result to come
of that bloodshed either. Then one day the Greeks sailed away, leaving behind a
tall wooden horse. Was it a symbol of Greek acquiescence to the mighty walls of
Troy? —Nay, it was to become an eternal symbol of treachery. I remember it
well.
It was the summer of 1962, and my father was extremely mad
at something I had done, or not done. So infuriated that he picked up my wooden
toy chest and carried it out to the garage. I was banished to my room, alone,
all my toy soldiers were in that toy chest now locked away in the garage on the
far side of the house. My father really knew how to punish me, or so he
thought.
While locked in my solitary confinement, I sought the refuge
of reading. I took out a volume from my Golden Book Encyclopedia set, and it
fell open to the story of Troy. How wondrous, if I only had my toy soldiers,
surely I could find among them two different sets of Hellenistic toy soldiers
to do battle, but they were all locked away, and out of reach.
I slowly surveyed my room, my mind empty except for the
singularity of purpose, that purpose, my thoughts of recreating in my bedroom,
the siege of Troy.
The result of my raw materials survey: The Golden Book
Encyclopedia, twenty-four volumes. A box filled with pennies, and two,
six-sided dice, one red, one gray. I smiled broadly as my fertile imagination
bore fruit.
Let the battle begin!
I laid my encyclopedia volumes on their sides, piled three
high and staggered back about an inch—bound edge from bound edge, leaving
enough room for two pennies to occupy the depth of the steps that the short
staggered piles of books had created. When construction was completed, there on
my bedroom floor stood, “The Mighty Walls of Troy.”
I then set about the task of separating my pennies into
Lincoln memorials and wheat backs. The
Lincoln memorial is a building, so those pennies will represent the Trojans,
the wheat backs will be the Greeks. The
dates on my wheat back pennies ran across decades, but my memorial backs were
fewer in number and most of them were 1959, with some 1960 and 1961 pennies in
the mix. This disparity in dates will work well in my game plan. I set my few
dozen defending Trojan pennies on the walls of Troy, and arrayed before them
two or three hundred, wheat back Greeks.
CHARGE! The clash
was calamitous. As opposing pennies came into contact they were flipped to
their dated side, the dice were rolled, gray for the Trojans, red for the
Greeks. The last digits of the penny’s dates were compared, and the difference,
if any, was added to the higher numbered penny’s dice roll. Then the penny
rolling the lower combined total, stayed on its flipped-over side; the losing
penny was now a DEAD soldier.
At the end of that afternoon’s battle, hundreds of pennies,
most of them low dated Greeks, lay dead before the walls of Troy, upon my
bedroom floor. The carnage lay heavy on
my mind, and the smell of copper was thick upon my tarnish-tainted fingertips.
Then my bedroom door creaked and opened slightly. It was my
Father poking his heads in to see what was up. He quickly closed the door and
walked down the hall to where my Mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner.
Then I heard him say in a loud and exasperated voice, “Son of a bitch, it’s
impossible to punish that damn kid!”
You were right Father. I have always possessed the unique
ability to adjust to, and overcome adversities in my environment. It is a
talent that has served me well for all of my years.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)