I'm eating cookies at Anne's...

They are peanut butter, but they're not homemade. I ate them anyway.


The end

So here i sit drinking stron g coffee with my friend and writing collaborator who i shall name lets say Gretchen.

today is a new day

One of my favorite unpublished poems--The Korea Years

 Ironing William’s Shirts (setting—in  memory, an  upstairs apartment in ”Haebongchong”  Seoul, Korea) 1996

Winter wind whipped down from Siberia

While she stood ironing 100% cotton

Shirts for her friend William

To wear to his job as a “field rep”

In an office with too many

Uptights who made him feel

Uncomfortable.

They didn’t like his style. He was a poet,

An artist who could not always fill out

The necessary papers and forms to suit their

Sneering looks. They’d wait for him to mess up

So they could get on the phone to “the Boss”--

A lesser man who believed, in spite of his education,

That poets were dead white men printed

On the whites of thin-leafed anthologies—

Not living breathing walking people

Ironing his clean shirts one winter cold evening

She could smell the washed out old sweat, feel

The longings rise up with each pop of steam

Escaping the iron’s pointed grid

See his warm body inside the empty cloth—

Know how he yearned to escape that clean

Cotton made brighter under the office fluorescents

That pinned him

Always wriggling to get loose of that

Clean pressed cotton shirt kind of life

To go into a poet’s daylight and air--

To just run—

Run face first into the cold Siberian wind

Look for snow flurries

Sniff the heavy thick of kerosene

Fuming out from houses with warm floors—

To end up at the Dunkin Donuts in Itaewon

To read Yeats, drink coffee, write—just to think

Years later, ironing for a Grandma

In a Missouri November,

That recollection arose out of the steam,

Every crease heated straight out

Until the memory of William’s shirts hung

Pressed against her mind’s eyes

This time light and crisp

As the decision she’d heard he made

To leave his office job,

Catapulting him free into

Into wind and daylight

So he could finally breathe—again

Oh Williams of this worn out woe filled world,

Oh how much longer will you all wait?

You who long to tear into the woods,

Feed off of words—

When you set yourselves free

We all of us, all of us,

Are shown your truths—

Your Freedom sown into us.

sunday reflections

A Series of The Jeff Simons Poems--Okinawa

freewriting short short story

Bob picked up his suitcase and turned toward the train station. His pride wasn't the only thing he had left and he would be damned if it weren't for the green suitcase full of papers and drafts. Maybe the reason I can’t type anything worthwhile that’s new is because this old stuff hasn't been taken care of, he thought to himself. What can I do to turn this whole thing around?

He got on the train and went directly to the lavatory to wipe the blood from his white shirt. Why he had killed his wife was still beyond him but he just knew he could get away with murder. Bob had always felt above and beyond the simple laws that man made. He went by his own laws and they were vastly different than what most people thought. The train jerked to a stop. Suddenly, Bob got scared. They’re after me he panicked out loud and yelled I didn't do it I didn't do it Please it was a mistake.

 The conductor thought Bob’s behavior was strange and thus pointed the police in Bob’s direction. It didn't take long for the detective in charge to see the wiped off  blood smears on Bob’s white shirt. He put the cuffs on Bob right away and dragged him off to the station. Bob cried out “Let me take my suitcase, my green suitcase” but no one cared. The green suitcase sat alone on the curb by where the train had stopped. Inside lay the inner workings of Bob’s mind, his heart, his whole life story.

Later, a janitor came and tossed the lonely, abandoned suitcase into the nearest trash bin.