DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

This poem has a fairly innocuous beginning. Jessica Wick, co-editor of Goblin Fruit, challenged me to write a poem about her favorite Greek god, Bacchus. Of course I accepted the challenge, and, pain in the ass that I am, since she made the mistake of

Bacchanal   he traded his robe for a lab coat its filthy tail sweeps through oil-sheened mud flaps with back alley lurch spine hunched in huddled conspiracy hooves split bleeding a black bile wine reeled everywhere on the tainted ley lines blind husk heeds the

From time to time I’ve written poems inspired by things domestic. This one is particularly dear to me, inspired by the curtains Anita crafted specially for my home office, made from thick fabric with fanciful celestial patterns. Tim Pratt published this piece in Star*Line in

A Curtain of Stars   The needle repeats with imperfect persistence dotted thread lines, new meridians in cloth, stitches connections between constellations, binds warm lining to a curtain of stars; a seam that would only compliment the cloud-free night should it appear there suddenly crisscrossing

This rough-hewn villanelle is wicked fun of a sort on the surface, but there’s something utterly unfunny underneath. When I worked as a courts reporter, covering crimes, I learned that many terrible things follow utterly predictable patterns. I covered several murders that could be summed

Requited   You killed me to keep me near. Seven days, from then till now. Why won’t you kiss me, dear? Your fingers squeezed my cries of fear to silence as you kept your vow. You killed me to keep me near. You’ve slaked your

I have more to say about this little poem than I thought I would. This was the title poem of my first collection, and I’ve used it in both of my big fat (by poetry standards) retrospectives, and when I give a poetry workshop, this

Through Mordor to the Unreal City: A National Poetry Month Post

Defacing the Moon   Your ship’s sharpened keel slides across airless seas, blown by the breath of your desires. Those sails stretch like skin to catch the winds of your whimsy, and the keelblade carves crags into cheekbones and eyes. Soon your own face will

Tomorrow, in honor of National Poetry Month, I’m running a series of posts containing selected poems from my 2008 poetry collection, The Journey to Kailash. They’ll appear at 9:30 a.m. every morning for the next 13 days, with a very appropriate choice appearing on the