Copyright 2016 Joshua C. Allen
Cover Photograph by Derek Carpenter
For more of Joshua C. Allen's poetry and music:
www.facebook.com/theJPower
www.youtube.com/user/joshuacallentown
Also, he would astoundingly appreciate your participation in The Harmony Event, a uniting of humanity to sing at the exact same time everywhere on Earth.
Details here:
www.facebook.com/TheHarmonyEvent
EISBN: 978-1-483576-40-4
To
Anthony Edward McFall
Table of Contents
Introduction
I wrote the first entry in this work in May 2001, just before I graduated high school, and the last was written almost eight years later in the spring of 2009. This book ends right where my first book, Where the Honey Meets the Wildcat, begins.
Singer is a collection I had every intention of printing or publishing a long, long time ago. The original work was much more dense and did not span as great a time. What I present here is the strongest material from the original Singer and what was to be a second work entitled A Fibber, a Scribbler, a Sunshine Nibbler.
There is love, enchantment, danger, altered states of consciousness, unconscious despair, stupendous awe and moments of awakening and blissful insight. This is a big part of my life story thus far expressed in poetry and prose and the recall of dreams.
I owe it to my younger self, the deep but unfocused dreamer, to put this work into the world. I never could quite overcome my distractions, even at my best. At my worst, I welcomed them. I have been in the darkest places but even there I never lost faith in the potential of this existence. I am much older now but the expressions in these pages continue to inspire me. I hope they inspire you. I hope they cause to believe in life as profoundly as I always have and to see the magic that is very real.
My New Year's resolutions from when I was 9 years old. I had a joyful childhood, so for the life of me I cannot recall what the motivation was for numbers 2 and 8, except possibly a flair for the dramatic. It has always served as a point of amusement for my family, friends and I so I thought it a good idea to include it. Keep that fear and misery in check, my friends! Haha.
5/16/01
We are children of time
Untamed spirits
Breathing in a better life
Connected by a warm embrace
We feed off each other
Dancing hand in hand
We bear the fruits of our emotions
Endlessly our souls awaken
We live and laugh forever
6/15/01
Its raining
Its pouring
The old man is snoring
So, I stole his Winstons
6/19/01
I mustnt waste time.
Im going to make new
discoveries of the mind.
And Im going to do it
in my pajamas.
8/9/01
We will smoke and toke
and die ass broke
while we walk into the sun.
But be quicker and thicker
and higher and wiser
than when we first begun.
8/21/01
Its deliciously peaceful outside right now.
Warm sun and cool breeze.
Ive got my pen.
Ive got my tea.
My dog is laying in the grass.
Sniffing the air and not her ass.
Everybody wants to be the Cadbury Bunny.
9/1/01
A beautiful day. Today.
Big puffy clouds in the Big Blue sky.
Today is not a day I wish to die.
Tired of being inside where nothing matters.
On the inside my dog is sleeping.
On the outside shes chasing flies.
On the inside no one lives.
On the outside no one dies.
9/1/01
Full moon tonight.
A beautiful night and the weather is right.
The crickets are singing.
All around us.
9/6/01
I want to be a third-shift janitor.
That way I could think.
9/8/01
Timeless schemes in caffeine dreams.
The late night tunes of coffee spoons.
The playful pets are cigarettes.
For all to see. For all to be. And me.
The silent song of nothing wrong.
The night is best when the night is long.
Beneath the purple sky
the ancient winds will speak.
Magic spirits tear the eye.
The knees grow weak.
You can ignore the still waters.
But never the storm.
You can stay cold forever,
but never stay warm.
9/19/01
I looked up and the trees were saying.
And I felt alive.
It had been awhile.
Buzzing like a bee.
Like a man with his Bible.
9/22/01
The moon has been glorious lately.
Waxing stage. A crescent moon.
I want to climb to the top of my tree
and eat it.
10/11/01
I was having a good day.
So I strolled without pain.
Without fumble in the rain.
And I smiled. And felt wild.
Like a pop-cicle child.
10/15/01
To bed with my body.
Time to slobber and dream dreams
that will have been forgotten by
the time I awake.
4 seconds from now.
11/7/01
Spoon-fed zombies. Ill-tempered on anxiety medication.
Eating Tylenol for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Ineffective OTCs. Chinese takeout. Pepto-Bismol.
Manic-depression is a fad. Alcohol a one night stand.
Marijuana is of the devil. Only losers do it.
Those who hate their lives.
Effective placebos. Plastic faces. Fisher-Price personalities.
Denying age. Slim Fast blood levels.
Nutra Sweet is a healthy alternative.
Safer cars. Leather seats. Time-out kids.
Desiring and denying tabloids.
Quality time. Paid vacations. Lets do lunch.
Never without a cell phone. Two-faced with friends.
Graying hair. Forgetting self. Paranoid.
11/12/01
Anti-dream artists.
Spirit vultures eat me dry.
Pick my bones clean of alternative mentality.
They want my body as a robot.
Clean, undistracted brain functions.
Brainwashed and comatose soul.
Freewill horror drug.
11/24/01
Ladies and Gentlemen, would any of you be interested
in being interested in anything?
1/5/02
Dreams of schemes to make you scream
with delight of what the night will bring.
As King and Queen well dance and sing
and await the color of the dawn.
1/9/02
My father and I once sifted through the attic of his boyhood home looking for ancient baseball cards. We had no luck.
It appeared that my Grandmother must have gotten rid of them without foreseeing their potential in the future. I got over it by the end of the day. But I think my life would have been different if we had found those cards.
I probably would have bragged more growing up.
My friends would have gotten tired of me, which in turn might have caused me to be more skilled at playing guitar.
I could have been a rock star by now. Without social skills.
2/5/02
I drove home from work at sunrise.
And all the world: gold.
Birds lined the power lines.
