One of my favorite unpublished poems--The Korea Years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. 

The Ken Gardzinski Months

Ken Gardzinski Months  May-July 2000

For at least 5 or 6 days in a row I wore the Ken Gardzinski coat to work every day with my vintage cotton dresses and rainboot collection-- a ratty, torn, dirty navy blue zippered sweatshirt jacket. I was in the throes of a brand new insta-love. I, being a mentally ill woman, made a huge Life decision and gave up a new AmeriCorps job in Minneapolis to take Ken up on his word that we’d rent the farmhouse together and live there with my daughter ginger and two dogs and fires in the woodstove and fish we’d catch and clean then fry up in the big old kitchen. I wouldn’t trade those euphoric days of promise for anything in the world—except the chance to do them again…

Ginger was six years old when Ken Gardzinski changed our lives. I could never forget the first moment I saw him—at the karaoke night in Tumwater Washington at that bar by the highway --nickleby’s it was, I think…and as I stood there in a long dress with real shoes on, I saw across the room a man with a dirty yellow shirt on, his hair a halo of brown messy curls, his teeth shining like white, a face etched into my heart as if it was waiting to be discovered. I fell instantly in love. The next step, of course, was to meet the guy and talk to him.

Days walking around the empty lake cabins at summit lake…the curving roads, little houses appearing out of nowhere, mist hanging over pines and majestic evergreens, the lake like something in a fairy tale. Ginger and I would walk with our fishing poles, rainboots , hats, a little tin of live worms, and on the path down to the empty-house dock, I’d stop to peer into the slight windows of an old 1950’s camper. I wanted to live in there so much. A fire pit outside, fish frying on the old olive green campstove. I existed in a hemisphere of dreams.  Everyone said I always looked sad.

I was sad. Even though I had taken a huge chance, a huge bet, a gamble like no other, and I knew I wasn’t gonna win, I just couldn’t let go. So even while I was struggling to hope it would turn out okay, I knew it wouldn’t and the sadness pulled on me like a huge fish caught on an unsuspecting hook—bait and fate. That’s what it was. And I just did not care. I needed to live in that.

Those days when Ken Gardzinski put his sweatshirted arms around me were unbelievable and irreplaceable. What would I give to go back in time and row in that fourth of july boat on summit lake with him?  To look up at a huge starlit black nightsky exploding with flowers and screams of color? A stream of blue poofing into red blooms, and there we were under that sky, two lost souls who simply couldn’t find a clear way to each other…he inherited smelly feet and I an inability to say aloud what I wanted, what I felt. The whole idea of everything dissolved away to the fact of a $695 rent due a month—all of my own. And what a path that led me down. Why did I always have to learn things the hard way?

HELLO!!!!!

Greetings in a new day. Another beginning. Perhaps another false start. How many attempts is one granted or allowed in this Life? Who knows? The point must only be to keep trying, keep starting...

To be posted in this new blog are actual works in progress by me--anne tibbitts. Some may be years old, some from just now---but good writing stays good through the years.

Emily Dickinson became a beloved poet in american literature AFTER she was dead. Her sister Lavinia found shoe boxes of unpublished never before seen poems under the bed. And VOILA!!! Emily Dickinson's place in american lit is secured.

I don't have a sister who will find the boxes, trunks, files, computers, notebook full of my unpublished writings. And since I feel so overwhelmed by the prospect of becoming business-like enough to "sell"my works, I have decided to post them on this blog site.

For nowadays, cyberspace is a better place to get discovered than under a bed in an old shoe box.

So, enjoy!!! There is time enough in every day for Good Writing!!!