|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
Sestina for a Forgotten Cousin Midget
Kids are midgets
Like gnats, infested around the water
Melons buried in ice
Moms mixing up grape and lime Kool-Aid
Smoke smolders from reddened charcoal
Hot dog buns muffle family reunion noise
From the bath house comes a noise
Like some frozen midget
Who is lost, not smelling the reunion-warm charcoal
Small eyes water
Cousins curl their necks swallowing Kool-Aid
That slips down their throats like ice
The bath house midget shivers, turning to ice
Blue, making a whining noise
He doesn’t beg for Kool-Aid
He was with the other midgets
But didn’t leave the water
Until he thought of barbeque charcoal
Eyes wide, black and warm like charcoal
He doesn’t see the watermelon on ice
Or the purple and green water
Cousin midgets’ fingers play in Kool-Aid with slurping noise
Frightened wet midget
Doesn’t see the hotdogs and Kool-Aid
A parent drops her glass of grape Kool-Aid
Another slips his fork into the charcoal
Runs to the soaked, crying midget
A small cousin sucks on ice
His is the only noise
The sound of slurping tongue and water
The crying one looks at the swimming water
And at the grape and lime Kool-Aid
Picking his nose, a sniffling noise
Hungry for hot dogs over charcoal
And watermelon over ice
Feeling like a forgotten midget
He was in the water when he smelled the picnic charcoal
The others ran for Kool-Aid and melon ice
Reunion noise forgot their cousin midget
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2016
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
Truck Stop Time
The frozen wind cracks its whip
And slits my darkened lips
One on top of the other, dry.
The warm blood hardens scabs crusty on my
Four o’clock shadow
Four o’clock a week ago.
Eyes half open
Two thirds shut
Cold air bites my ass
And my nocturnal pupils pinch
As I walk into the Pure Oil Truck Stop
I-75 at state route 309
Two o’clock, snapping my fingers to Conway Twitty
Two o’clock a week ago.
These grizzly-bear beer-bellied, hauling ass
Gnawing on their Texas breakfast, eggs and home fried forks
As I sit down in the faded sexual leather booth number three
The insomniacs and drunken loners tip their noses
Shot by snow outside.
“Give me a coffee.”
Thick as muddy-cat-shit-snow
Marshmallows?
No, ’cause I can feel my big toe thawing out
Below my Levi’s, greased by Jack Daniels, that
Couldn’t stay down to keep me warm
When I was really cold
A week ago.
Coffee arrives
Graveyard attendant with a whore’s body
Tight faded sexual leather
Burnt taste buds as the coffee oozes down
Over the J.D. and the roast-beefed intestine.
Arby’s a week ago.
Razored lips
Wet again as I get up leaving a quarter.
Whores get cheaper, the air gets meaner, I get tired
A week from now late night emissions of Jack Daniels
Coffee will pass back up by my lone tonsil
Trucks will pull out, warm CO2 shit on the blacktop
Whores will look out the windows, warm
I’ll walk down Leonard Avenue
The bird will be nipping
Nipping at 2:23 a.m. a week ago.
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2016
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
Don’t blue eyed people have more fun?
When others walk, don’t they run?
Don’t they live life full until life is done?
Don’t tow-haired people have more zest?
Aren’t they dancing still, when others rest?
In everything, don’t they do their best?
Aren’t taller people always cool?
Didn’t they get good grades attending school?
Don’t they never seem to play like the fool?
Don’t brown skinned people have more soul?
Don’t they always get picked for the leading role?
When a leak appears, don’t they fill the hole?
Aren’t red headed people really more jolly?
In trying times, don’t they look for folly?
When trouble’s served, don’t they just volley?
Aren’t green eyed people full of love?
Don’t they have a power sent from above?
Don’t they give a caress in response to a shove?
Aren’t Caucasian people always right?
When proven wrong, aren’t they contrite?
Don’t they always keep fairness in their sight?
Aren’t the shorter ones full of verve?
When danger comes, don’t they keep they nerve?
On life journey, don’t they handle the curves?
Don’t heavy people have more compassion?
Don’t they always behave in proper fashion?
Aren’t all their decisions based upon ration?
Isn’t the yellow man smarter than most?
And if he is so, does he never boast?
Aren’t they the wisest from coast to coast?
Aren’t brown-eyed people loved by all?
Don’t they long to serve others at beckon call?
When friends are blamed, won’t they take the fall?
Isn’t the thin person who everyone covets?
Don’t they get to wear couture and seem to just love it?
Weren’t they the ones chosen by teachers to be pets?
No
And I’m sorry if your bubble is burst.
You got it all wrong, you won’t be the first.
Rest assured your mistakes aren’t the worst.
But tall and short and in between,
Both white and black, dull and keen,
Brown eyed, blue, black and green,
They are a mixture of people made up of all types.
Don’t give in to the usual stereotypes.
Don’t be fooled by preconceived hype.
Don’t figure a person is something they’re not.
Don’t make assumptions based on something you thought.
Don’t attempt to stick a circle in a square slot.
Give each person you meet the chance to reveal
Whether preconceived notions are false or are real.
Get to know all about them from their head to their heel.
Remember that to same species we all belong
So before you prejudge remember this song
It’s better to be broad-minded than it is to be wrong
It’s oh so much better to be open than it is to be wrong.
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2016
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
Prayer to the Stone of Sobriety
Under a purple flannel-like sheet, but not as soft;
As warm as flannel-but hotter,
I am sweating.
The flannel shroud soaks up my sweat like my liver soaks up venom
I see angry tigers approaching from the ceiling above where I lay;
Tigers coming to rip the walls of my mortal gut.
Oh, Bacchus, send your vengeful tigers away
What did I ever do to you?
The sheet protects me from sunlight, but not from myself;
Nor am I shielded from Bacchus’ tigers; and not from my sweat.
Beads of toxic perspiration roll across swollen eyelids.
I press my cracked lips firmly together as if to scream silently to scare the tigers.
A poison tiger in my body torments my heart,
Pressing its scabbed paw firmly against my veins
Each pulse of the baneful blood pushes against my forehead as the tiger roars
And Bacchus begins to laugh.
Oh, wine, Oh drink, Oh smoke and pill
Who put you in my shriveled stomach?
Who breathed you into my cancerous lung?
What did I ever do to you?
A heave of tepid vomit snaps like a leather whip through my throat!
Tigers hate the taste of vomit.
Bacchus’ hatred is repulsed by its smell.
The tigers stop with one last press upon my forehead.
The sweat-soaked purple cloth is flung back from my shaking body by an unknown woman.
The wet pile of purple sheet crystallizes on the corner of my pyre.
It solidifies, as does my resolve, to keep Bacchus and the tigers at bay.
The mound of purple quartz is tethered to my body by a cord of desperation.
Oh wine, Oh drink. You too, smoke and pill,
The blue of hope and red of blood join forces to guard me from your tiger claws.
My sobriety hangs in the balance.
It hangs around my neck like a stone
That has the weight of three large hogs.
It hangs around my neck like a young woman, not yet a noose.
Like the woman who was commissioned by ancient Greeks to keep me sober.
Oh, sober Amethyst
Like ancient Bacchus, I cry
Tears of sweat over my drunkenness
Ashamed enough to die; but I cannot
Your generous gift of recovery is free.
What did I ever do to deserve your sober generosity?
Be my stone of sobriety;
You are my receptacle of thought and habit.
Heal me, oh purple goddess.
Protect this mortal from my internal tigress
Guard me with the weight of purple stone.
Oh, stone of sobriety, heal this mortal fool.
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2015
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
Winter began with a fall of snow;
The length of my days were shortened by darkness.
Darkness, like snow, never ends.
Pupils accustomed to the light of autumn
Dilate, then constrict.
I fell helpless into a pile of snow;
Helpless because I didn’t ask for help.
Dry powder, warmer than snow should be.
The edge of crystals cut through my nostrils as I breathed.
Constrict, then bleed.
Captured by a silent and deceptive siren call of snow
That stole my thoughts, my pulse, my breath.
The colors around me faded to gray, then back to red and blue.
Spinning, my heart palpitated as snow blew into my sinuses
Bleed, then throb.
My brain fell, within its skull, unto cold snow.
Was it pleasure or was it pain?
The difference was unrecognizable.
The veins in my limbs were like underground rodents needing air.
Throb, then frozen.
My cold body was shrouded with winter’s snow
I saw them trying to revive me; pushing and squeezing.
I spoke through the icy air around me, but no one heard.
My body was motionless like a metal pole
Frozen, then breathless.
Winter ended, as did life, with the final snow.
My organs gave up; no strength; no reason
A small drift of snow below my nostril was melted by warm blood
My Eyelids tucked their pupils to bed
Breathless, then dead.
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2015
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
O Captain! Shift Captain!
Apology to Walt Whitman
O Captain! Shift Captain! Our dreadful shift is done,
The bar has survived the night, the clock has ticked to one,
Let’s have a beer, that’s silence I hear, the drunkards all exiting
While follow steps on unsteady knees, the vagrants soused and high;
But O stomach! Stomach! Stomach!
O the putrid drips of vomit
Where on the floor my Captain lies
Passed out, drunk as dead.
O Captain! Shift Captain! Get up and pay our wages
Get up-for you the party’s over-for us our anger rages,
For you a tepid pool of urine-for you the door’s a-closing
For you we call, your disgruntled staff, our eager palms extended;
Now Captain! Dumb manager!
Your arms beneath your head!
It is your routine that on the floor,
You pass out every night.
My Captain does not respond, his eyes are glassy and bloodful,
Our Manager does not feel our pain, he has no heart nor soul,
The bar is closed safe and secure, its neon sign turned off,
From a wild night the popular bar closes with profit won;
Complain O staff, and wring O hands!
’Cause I with no one else’s aid,
Nudge the butt of Captain who lies,
Fallen and we don’t get paid.
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2015
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
December Rain Dance
A drop of cold rain sneaks through the atmosphere,
Suavely mingling to the earth,
Lightly tapping the shoulder of the road;
Almost startling the road, causing a lonely spec of road dust to stir and turn its head
To meet the rain,
The drop asks the dust to dance,
And a powdery puff of water and dust leap into the air;
A soft, clean, wet waltz.
You can smell the rain and dust as they whirl across the dance floor.
It is the smell of fresh happiness—of love.
The dance starts slowly as the lovers are suspended in animation for a moment,
Wondering why it took so long, until December, for them to meet.
And then, everyone joins the dance--
A trillion dancers of rain and dust.
So many that the December lovers are nearly unrecognizable in the crowd of splashes.
When the dance is over the dancers lay down to rest,
Because the energy of their December rain dance is expended.
They melt into the berm and with them dissolves their affair.
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2015
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
The Librarian
She polished her soft curved buttocks on my suede overcoat
And the smell of her ginseng breath made me stop
And raise my head
Losing my place in the card catalogue.
I shifted my eyes to her reaching arm concealed in an ox-hair sweater
She lifted an encyclopedia from an abandoned desk
And pressed it in folded arms to her whip-cream breast
I followed her to her reference table
And studied her as she sat unaware of melting eyes
I met her in a bar one night two weeks later
The yellow down now curled around her face and neck
She sat next to me
I talked about books I’d never read
Whispering Sex, The Dictionary of Love, and Lucia’s Feast
I thought of strapless bras and cool wet lips and smooth knees
I leaned on her, almost
As if I were some dusty bookshelf
I touched her tightened backbone
A smile snuck past her ox-hair sweater
She made my beer blended head feel like it was surrounded
White skin that was soft
And if I touched it with my tongue
Stroh’s would turn to sweetened warm milk
I handed her my library card
Watching as she folded it close to her waist
My purple eyes now undressing her
She turned and pressed her thigh to mine
A quite whisper
“Have you ever read Lucia’s Feast?”
I finished my beer and she returned the card
Her thin, bare shoulders nudge mine fluidly
We left the table,
the leftover books unchecked.
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2016
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
Two Men Forsaken
(Apology to Robert Frost)
Two men quarreled on a lonely street,
To see them argue mad me sad.
It wasn’t by accident that they should meet
And glare at each other from head to feet.
It was obvious that both were mad;
One hit the other in center face,
And blood trickled from the wounded nose
The victim wiped the blood upon his clothes;
And both hearts fluttered at tremendous pace.
In defiance, the assailant froze.
And suddenly, the injured one had a gun,
And pointed it at his attacker’s head.
The latter stood ground and did not run;
Because the former was the latter’s son.
The trigger was pulled—the father was dead
I am telling this with much dismay
Because I witnessed this and have regret.
Somewhere years and years from today,
I’ll sit quietly and try to pray;
And that will hopefully make me forget.
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2015
|
Details |
Jeff Reed Poem
Bar Stool Bed Sore Ode to the Record Machine
Smoking Winstons
At the Seaway Lounge
At 2:00 a.m.
The juke-box sighs out
Buck Stovell, Roy Crestline and an occasional Darla Parsell,
Whoever she is
Buxom barmaids who are 53 years old
Wear nineteen year-old gold stretch pants
Bleached blond earlobes
Wrinkled double chins
Kissing
Genuine Cherokee Indian jewelry
An old gray side-burned man asleep
In the corner
Beside the cigarette machine
Middle aged women looking very divorced
At the bar, two stools away
From the pretzel can
I sip on warm Blue Ribbon
That looses it color in the dirty glass
“Oh … lonesome me”
Juke-box oozing out tunes
As my jaw oozes out of socket and
Into my callus factory hands
Dirty finger-nailed
Sex-starved wrists
Palms ready to …
Put another quarter in the box
Nashville’s monument to love
In a shaggy bar, in Lawrence, Indiana
Copyright © Jeff Reed | Year Posted 2016
|
|