Jeffrey started writing poetry over 30 years ago while living in South Africa. He is a former Chicago stage poet and workshop junkie. Also a photographer, Jeff is the publisher and editor of The Poetry Victims. He currently lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. USA.

Jeffrey's poems have appeared regularly in the following publications and other small presses; Hammers, Strong Coffee, Erie, Scenezines, The San Fernando Poetry Journal, Newsletter Inago, The Dallas Review, The Poetry Victims, Poetry Super Highway, Abalone Moon, Black Medina, Unlikely Stories, The Coffee Press Journal, Lily Literary Journal (along with an interview), Poems For You. He has poems in 3 anthologies; Chicago Saloon Poets, Step Into The Light and Voices Israel 2005. He maintains various websites and has read his poems on radio at the University of Chicago, at the annual Peace and Music festival and Earth Day celebrations in Chicago. Jeff has published one book Fear of Heights (1984).

He is currently working on various other book projects. see his link- http://spahr-summers.spaces.live.com

grasshoppers


1.vivid red yellow and green
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like a perfect plastic toy
i made it a place in the freezer
thinking to tease my sisters
but returned to find it frozen
color faded
legs brittle and broken

2.in zululand

the natives favor them fried
and lightly seasoned for flavor
they are offered to tourists as such

paramount to my problem

is the them/her/you of it all i
know no other way to say it
i am burned by the passion
of such fire over and over it
means i become a prisoner
of love willingly i search my
soul for solutions reasons i
cannot bring myself to love
myself realizing this curses
me/you/them/all i hold dear

winter solstice

not a cloud in sight the sky
sweeps up from the ground
a navy blue roll of paper a
crisp studio backdrop with
tungston moon just above
the horizon a flaming super
nova hurtling towards me
and i cant find my camera

for the love of the whale

such presence
this massive creature commands
in my ocean where she is everything
dipping and swelling and floating
so well between water and air
barely of this world at all
and she swallows me whole

child of afrika

the child doesn't want money or
Jesus to come save his soul or
toys or candy or clothes or
promises even or food
the child wants hope

angst before sunrise

my bed becomes a battlefield
smoke and dust and terror
in my head like
running through the onion fields
where i must take my stand fight back and forth
boots squishing across
the bloody red sheets
slicing and yielding
ducking cutting and stabbing
what business do i have
with such business as this?

isis of ta-at-nehepet (the divine one,
              the only one, the greatest of the gods and goddesses)

restores me to life with a flourish of her hand she
hold me to her breasts and she dances
flickering shadows alive across
my lips my light-giver
of loveliest
sun

chameleon

one day she's red
one day she's green
eyes constantly roving
changing color between
moments she's sweet
or sluggish and mean

coming moon

it begins
tugging
and pulling
a coy woman
behind the clouds
brilliantly teasing
like you
a master potter

with crackling
wet fingers
spinning
molding
and shaping
a vessel
from
my red clay
heart