JOHN ("JAKE") COSMOS ALLER - POEMS

John (“Jake” ) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet, and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department in ten countries - Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada,  Korea, India, St Kitts, St Lucia,  St Vincent, Spain and Thailand. and traveled to 45 countries during his career.  Jake has been an aspiring novelist for several years and has completed two novels, (Giant Nazi Spiders, and the Great Divorce) and is pursuing publication.  He has been writing poetry all his life and has published his poetry in electronic poetry forums, including All Poetry, Moon Café and Duane’s Poetree. (under the name Jake Lee).  He is looking forward to transitioning to his third career – full-time novelist and poet after completing his second career as a Foreign Service officer, and his first career as an educator overseas for six years upon completion of his Peace Corps service in South Korea.

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                                END TIMES APPROACHING


Early in the morning light
While I was getting ready
For the dawning day
 
I looked in the mirror
And saw
Staring back at me
A stranger
 
An old man
Weary of life
And weary of game of life
 
The old man stared at me
And I realized
That is who I had become
 
The aches and pain of old age
Have begun to creep up on me
Unannounced, unwanted
 
I have been desperate
Like many middle aged Men
To relive the glory days
Of their youth
 
And I find myself
Wanting more and more
And liking it less and less
 
And I weary of the chase
Weary of the game of life
Wondering to myself
 
Is this it
Is this all that there is
Will my life end this way?
Nothing but fading memories
Regrets at what might have been
Sorrows for all the disappointment
And hurts I have caused in my life
 
And so I stare at this old man
In the mirror on the wall
 
And I wonder
What is left in life for me?
What more can I achieve
 
Will I finish all the stories?
In my heart and soul
Will I write the Great American Novel?
Or will that remain a mere pipe dream
 
Will I publish my 10 thousand poems?
Or will that too become nothing
But delusions
 
Will I end my career?
Disappointed
Having been passed up
By my peers
 
Not having measured up
To the competition of life
 
Always doomed
To be second rate
 
And I fear
I fear
The approaching end
I know it is coming
Death is waiting for me
As it waits for all of us
 
And I know I do not have much time
Left in this world of ours
 
Perhaps a few decades
Perhaps a few years
God forbid a few months or so
 
And in that time
I have only a little time
To set things right
In life
 
To cast off my foolish ways
To become the man, I should have been
To finish the stories in my soul
 
To tell the world the novels and stories
To write down all my dreams
To publish my 10 thousand poems
 
To try to make a difference
With every day
In every way
 
God has given me a second
Chance
 
I have cheated old man death
15 times
 
And what have I done with that second chance
Not much
 
Wasted so much of my time
And my life
 
And so I stare at the old man
In the mirror
And all I want to do
Is cry away
The hurt the pain
And wonder
 
Where did it all go
And when I die
Will my life
Have had any meaning at all
 
Or will people remember me at all
As my dust flies off into space
 
Will my Life
Have made any difference whatsoever
 
Or will I be just another
Foolish mortal
With big dreams
That turned out to be nothing
But delusions
 
The answer is out there
But do I have the courage
To seek the truth
 
Do I have the courage?
To keep up the fight
 
Or will I become old
Resigned, living in the past
 
Waiting for Mr. death too come
Knocking on my door
 
And when I see the judgement day
Will I be found wanting


Will I be judged defective?
Will I be condemned
For all that I failed to accomplish
 
And with these somber thoughts
I end my morning ritual
Ready to go face
Another dismal day
 
Another day of disappointment
And day waiting for the end game
To begin
 
Enough no more
I scream
It is not fair
 
My youth is gone
And I fear the approaching
Sounds of the end game

 
                                      OCTOBER BLUES
 

Sitting in a bar
In a pensive state
Watching the sun set
And the nightly madness begins
 
As I drink
My dismal, damned draft
Dram of drunken dream desire
 
I am drawn to memories
Perhaps best left dead
And buried deep inside
My head
 
Try as I might
The memories come back
To burden and haunt me
And drive me to drink
To seek forgiveness
And solace for a moment
 
The memories
Of all the women
I have lusted for
And all the women
I have loved in vain
 
And the memories
Flood my soul
And I can’t let go
No I cannot do so
 
So I won’t forget
And I can’t forgive myself
Either
 
For having feelings
For other women
And so it goes
And I sit and drink
And dream of what might
Have been
 
Nothing satisfies me
And I am not satisfied
With what I have
 
Only wanting what I want
And so I sit
And cry in my beer
 
Yet another
Alcoholic pathetic
Middle age loser man
 
Bemoaning his lost youth
As her surveys the room
Checking out the young ladies
Young enough to be his daughter
Or his granddaughter
 
And the beer does not lie
It does not lie
It sits there
 
And stares back at him
Giving no answers
To his probing questions
 
And so I drink
To forget
But I can’t forget
 
And the beer does not console
Anymore
And grows cold
As the night wears on
 
So I sit
Think and wonder
And I have another
And watch my thoughts
Dance across the evening sky

 
                        TRUTH DOES NOT MAKE SENSE

One morning
I got up
Hungry
For something
I knew not what
 
I made breakfast
Drank some snarling coffee
And turned on the news
 
And what did I see
Talking heads
Sprouting lies
Nonsense words
Gibberish
 
Nightmarish phrases
Nothing makes sense
 
Politicians
Sporting forth
Spinners spinning spin
Huskers hustling their hustle
Selling me a bunch of goods
 
And I did not want to buy it
I scream
My soul was not for sale
And I listened hard
Looking for the truth
 
Noting but lies
Coming out of hideous beasts
Barking words
Noise some noises and lies
 
Snarling disgusting lies
I sit there
Transfigured
Hypnotized by the overwhelming
Stench of the bull shit
Coming out of the TV set
 
I stood up
Smashed the TV set
With my boot
 
Trying to set myself free
From its hold on me
 
Men in black suits
Surround me
Put me on black helicopters
Taking me somewhere
 
I scream to no avail
No one listens to me
Just more noise
Coming out of the TV set
 
And I go out
Into the dark night
 
I was told
I was suffering
From a disease
 
I was insane
I could not longer
Understand
 
What was being said
To me
 
I asked my tormentors
What is the truth
 
They laugh
Smiled with evil grins
On their bloated faces
 
They begin to torture me
Because they could
 
Forcing me to watch
The President speak
Over and over again
Again and again
 
The same words
Black is white
White is black
The President is always right
Freedom is an illusion
Lies make you free
And it dawned on me
 
And I laughed
As I escaped the programming
Of the universe
 
And I was free
 
Truth and lies
Are the same
Everything are nothing
But dangerous delusions
 
As I jump out of the window
Into the night
I vowed I would
See the President
In hell
 
As I die
I am free
 
Good God almighty
Free of their lies
At last
 
 
 
                                      Kill the 20th Century
 

CNN Proclaims itself the Millennium network.
ABCNBCCBSFOXPACCNBCMSNBMS.COMAOLYAHOOEXCITEGOOGLEKTIMESBLOOMBERG
All blend together in my mind
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
Nonstop Millennium madness
Coming at me a million thoughts a second
The future is coming,
It is coming
It is here
It is now history
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
And so I woke up screaming
Too much hype
As I turn to the greatest philosophers
The 20th century ever produced
 
The Three Stooges come to the rescue
Certainty! Come the answer
None of us get out alive says
Bugs Bunny the first Y2K bug
And Charlie Brown,
Poor old Charlie brown is retired
From the baseball mound of life
Replaced by DOGBERT/CATBERT AND RATBERT
And Dilbert himself
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
And again I say to myself
How to remember
The last 100 years
The late, great 20th Century
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
I loved the 20th Century
Let me count the ways
 
The beginning of the century
While the war to end all wars occurred,
The quiet slaughter of the Armenians took place
Unnoticed by anyone
Who cared about them anyway?
 
Where is Armenia?
Somewhere near Fresno?
Why would anyone want to live in Fresno?
 
 
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
Lenin returned to Russia
Financed they say by the evil capitalists
 
Conspiracy
To destroy capitalism
In order to save it
 
Lenin destroyed the old Russia
Ancient, terrible, conservative
Brutal, yet capable of sublime beauty
 
And replaced it
With an inefficient, gray soulless
Bureaucracy of death, statistics and lies
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
Russia remains a broken down drunk
Dreaming of great dreams
One day one day soon!
 
China, Great China
Raped, beaten, divided up into dueling
Spheres of influence
 
 
Warlords emerged
Communism trumped
Outlawed the old
Replaced it with the new
Ended up becoming the old
The Red Empire rose in the East
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
Hitler unites the Germans
Starts the 1000 year Third Reich
It lasts a few years
 
Before Stalin starts the next round
Of the endless great game
Of global chess
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
Tokyo took over the east
Defeated in war
Reemerging decades later
To challenge
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
The Great Satan
Does not know he is the great Satan
Thinks he is the Great Pumpkin
Thinks the world loves him
For his money
 
The world does not care
All they want is to be shown
The money
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
The evil dance
Continues and continues
Money, Money
Rules the world
 
Art, beauty, love
All of sale to the highest bidder
 
The poor suffer
Some get bought
Others get sold
 
Some blow things up
Just for fun
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
 
And the world turns
Does not care
The world turns and turns
And turns
 
While these foolish creatures
Rant and rave and kill and live
And die
 
God acts as if he has run away
From the horrid hell that he has wrought
 
Perhaps he has
Perhaps the End times have come and gone
But we don't know it.
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
Each day another 100 million people
Are born to someday die
 
Meanwhile
Their shit accumulates
And pollutes and kills
 
And the world spins on and on
Around the Sun
 
And so the 20th century ends
As it began
 
Great illusions abound
The new economy
 
Endless prosperity
Endless happiness
End of history
 
And other nonsense
Fills the airwaves
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
And somewhere
Another HITLERSTALINEMAO stands
Ready to overthrow the world
To create a new paradise on earth
And hell for everyone who has to live in it
 
Big Brother watches us all
For profit
Governments merely tools
 
Of the Big Corporate Giants
Who rule the world now
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
And like the Giant dinosaurs
One day will be overthrown
 
And to that end I finally say
Good riddance to the 20th Century
 
Quick shoot it put it out of its misery.
Destroy the beast
Before it wakes up and destroys us
 
The 21st Century emerges
 
From the dust of the destruction of the old older
Perhaps wiser
 
Perhaps better
More like more of the same old stench of hell
 
As the world turns
And turns and turns
 
Spinning around the Sun
In the darkest deep despair
Of Hell on earth
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
With that thought
I turn off CNN
 
And turn to the Three Stooges and ask
Again
 
What does it mean?
Curly says Certainty
 
And with that I wake up
Face the sun
 
And say
21st Century
 
I am glad you are here
Please shoot the last century
And start a new
 
And only laugher
Comes across the Internet
 
The laughter of the insane
The world spins and spins and spins
It's crazy way through hell
 
 
And we live and die and hope and dream
And pray to our gods for deliverance
From evil
 
The gods laugh and laugh and play on
Who cares what happens to the little people?
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!
 
Someday
Someone will show the gods
 
What happens when the little people
Wake up
 
And destroy the world
In order to save it!
 
The world shrugs and spins and spins and spins
And CNN ABCNBCCBSFOXPACCNBCMSNBMS.COMAOLYAHOOEXCITEKTTIMESBLOOMBERGCNBCGOOGLE
Blather on and on and on and on
 
Shoot the bastard! Kill it!  Keep the 20th century dead!

   
                               MORNING THOUGHTS
 
​
One morning
While I sat drinking my coffee
And bemoaning my fate
 
My brain decided to fly away to the land of bliss
As I sat
Writing away my memoirs and dreams of love
 
I noticed that my brain's tissue
Had decided to take a vacation
 
And was crawling down my nose
And out of my ears
Like some sort of cosmic mucus
 
Down my slime encrusted back
And out the windows of my soul
 
I was of course
Disturbed, I was perturbed,
 
And until I realized
That I had no right
 
To tell my mind what to do
So I sat down
 
And played a game of checkers with my mind
Till the entreaty of time passed me by
 
Nothing but a piece of flotsam
On the winds of the universe
The walls fell down, the sky melted apart
 
And I woke up and sat down
And had an orgy with my mind.