JEFFREY PENN MAY - POEMS

Jeffrey Penn May has won several short fiction awards, including one from Writer’s Digest. His work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his novel Where the River Splits received an excellent review in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jeff has published numerous short stories, poems, and articles; he wrote and performed a short story for Washington University Radio and was a consultant to a St. Louis theatre company. He has been a waiter, hotel security officer, principal, credit manager, deck hand, technical data engineer, and fly fishing instructor, and he currently teaches English composition and creative writing. Please visit Jeff’s website www.askwritefish.com.

Advice to the Abnormal
​

​If I were a younger man
I would join a group,
non-existent then,
I wouldn’t be alone
 
bleeding from my forehead
Nor would I have chosen
a path, up the middle.
No, I’d dive right in –
 
the pool of the inevitable
because I’ve gotten there anyway.
Insanity arrives no matter
what and now I’ve no money
 
nor glory nor book on a shelf
nothing but normalcy
staring back at my other self.

 

Alone Is
​

​Alone is
now and always will be,
as we
turn to dust
the window
 
 

At What Age
​

​At what age do you prefer sleep
to wakefulness, prefer the dream--
climbing the clouds
atop a faraway mountain--
 
To the step-by-step slog
legs too heavy to move
air too thin to breathe
the dream a painful reality.


At what age does the body
prefer the mind asleep?
 

​Middle Class Mortality

  ​ 
Young man full of it,
            at night
After a few,
            that was me.
 
Did I drink...
            too much?
Could I see...
            what was coming?
 
I cycle the highway,
          Salvation Army clothes
Tattering in the wind,
          bent wheels clacking
Loose spokes, rusted fender,
          what happened to my Lycra shorts?
 
I work at Wal-Mart
            my Phd in Philosophy
I shoeshine on Wall Street
            loose teeth still crooked,
my middle class smile.
 
“Hey,” I say, to the pinstriped
         billionaire,
“Your diamond is bigger
         than my tumor!”
 
He shifts in his seat.
        (Not my shoe-stand anyway.)
Next time, I bring ropes,
       tie ‘em in.
 
Poor bastards with their slick suits and glitzy cars
        can’t see what I see.
I calculate equations!
         Simple math that I do not understand.
Oh, I wish I were a financier!
 
I clatter to my tent
          pitched at the bottom
of the embankment
          beneath the broken sign:
Citizen’s Bank.

​Eat

​Eat until eating time
Drink until drinking time
 
Cook your favorite dish
And never forget to dine
 
Speak strawberries and rhyme
But never admit your gluttonous crime