Kim

 

[Editor's note: Unfortunately, the formatting system for this blog is not suited for poetry. It inserts a line for a hard return.]

[Author’s note: The poem was written about and to my cousin, who was a great comfort to me after my mother died, although she probably did not know it at the time.]

Kim

Thomas Allen

My dear sweet Kim,

You are the last bright spot

In a life that has grown dim.

You are the rising sun

That drives away the darkness.

The flames of your compassion overrun

My fears, stripping them bare,

As your warmth radiates into my life

Burning away my despair.

You are a beacon of hope

In a melancholy world.

You have not left me to grope

When I have placed myself in your hands, 

But you have always delivered me out of the realm of desolation.

You have answered my demands

By giving me more than I have asked for.

You bring an occasional peace to my poor soul,

Which is continuously torn by internal war,

By giving me your love freely

And asking for little in return.

You must be a heavenly gift to me.

Often, I have cried out to you

And you have never turned me away.

But my anxieties, you have sought to subdue.

You are a wonderful, beautiful girl.

Surely you are one of God’s greatest gifts to the universe.

A gift given to mankind, you are a priceless pearl.

Copyright © 1976 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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To the Front

To the Front

Thomas Allen

To the front I must go,
In the realm of death, I must live;
To the outer rim of time’s most lethal battle, I must cling;
In Flanders, I must fight and die.
To the front I go,
To be lacerated and punctured,
To bleed and die,
To hear shells roaring up into the sky,
And the agonizing crying of the dying.
I become one of the countless human moles;
I become one of the living dead with corpse-white face.
In the fields of Flanders, I am bathed with slime and mud,
With the stench of dead and dying.
Here pass I my last days in a crazy-quilt of thunder and blood,
Waiting with indifference for death of deliverance.
And when in the mud I lie dying,
My comrades, good and true,
Pass me by, saying,
“I can’t give you a hand,
You’re for the Promise Land.”
After the rats have glutted themselves with my flesh and blood,
And my remains are absorbed in the blood and mud of Flanders,
Another nameless being shall take my place,
As before him did I take another’s,
But that’s all that ever changes.
In the fields of Flanders shall I push up poppies forevermore.


From the Glory of War by Thomas Coley Allen (Franklinton, NC: TC Allen Co., 2006)
Copyright © 2006 by Thomas Coley Allen

good luck, boy

GOOD LUCK, BOY
By J. O. Allen

I remember — for it was only yesterday —
I saw you sprawled upon the bed at play
With toy soldiers. Your cardboard men
Marched bravely on the counterpane.

I saw you — it was only yestermorn —
In your toy soldier suit and tooting horn
Charge gaily — yet with grim intent —
To crush the foeman in his tent.

And I remember — it was not so long ago —
I saw you lead your men against the foe;
Your army was but three small boys,
Your arms — assorted Christmas toys.

*************************************

And yet — it seems so far away —
But still I know it was today —
I saw you standing, khaki clad —
And, oh! — I loved you, lad!

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