Choose

Seeing you

in your prime,

when you had

a chance:

I want to tell you

that this is no accident.

Every crossroads

is as simple

as Madison vs. Milwaukee;

You can hate until it kills you,

or love until you die.

There is a difference.

                                                                 -Brent Allard

Just For One Day

*


We can be Heroes/ Just for one day/ We can be us/Just for one day


                                                        -David Bowie



Of course we both know how this story begins

with dust on our tongues and the sting of old dreams,

while they want to know if we’ll lose or if we’ll win.



The invincible world, it just spins and it spins

until my Sunday clothes are wearing out their seams.

Of course, how else could this story begin?



What we know is what we’ve done over again

Haven’t we both been beaten enough to believe?

Let them figure out what we lose or we win.



If we don’t leave now, the doors will close in

And everything return to how it seems

And that can’t be how, how this begins.



There’s room for you here, between me and my sins

if we drive through the night, we could disappear clean

They’ll make their own stories, we lose or we win



Tonight, your voice is speaking to my skin,

assuring me that we can finally be redeemed.

We’ll never go back to where this begins.

We’ll burn so bright in losing that we’ll win.



                                                   
                                                       -Brent Allard

At the River

*





We parked at the railing, my eyes

closed for that cup of coffee,

too perfect to have come from

the Texaco station.

The edges of the afternoon

were as sweet and dark and bitter.

You leaned into me then

and I found you like the water

found the stones.

 
 
 
                                                       -Brent Allard

Wish for a Sunday Afternoon

Sunday by Edward Hopper

Hang on buddy,

there’s a new dream coming

although Sunday is heavy

as a rooted stone.

I know that your strength

is tired of being strength,

but try to hold

on through the thick hours.

I know how much you’ve lost

and not complained,

beaten by what should have

pulled you through. You're

not defeated yet. How could

you be? The world can’t

match the colors of your

beautifully disastered heart.

 
 
                      
                          -Brent Allard

To a Lost Child

*




When you're born already lost,

St. Christopher passes you by,

afraid that like the Christ

you'll be too heavy for his shoulders.



Those who lost their own ways, later

won't even turn their heads,

reminded of the choice they had.



Those who've never left their path,

may love you once they claim you,

because we own and then we love.



But you won't forget, when their whispers stop

around you, as if your hearing had a switch;

you, who have scanned every secret,

whose eyes have swept the open world

for the path never offered, the question

that should have come before the answer.

 
 
                                         
                                              -Brent Allard

Table by the Pier

*



Let's not go just yet.

We can catch a boat

in the afternoon,

later, when it’s dark.

Just sit with me here

in the glow a while and

tell me your terrible secrets.

I'll carve them in the wood

with my jackknife

for strangers to read

when we're gone.




                                                           -Brent Allard

Clyde, to Bonnie

*






Your smile makes me whole,

my dark and featherless angel.

Let's blow a hole through

their house-pet love. Snarl,

because we can't be tamed.

When they ask for mercy,

give them the shotgun, darling.

Bring out the final judgment.

Show them the sword in your teeth.

 
 
                                     
 
                                                   -Brent Allard