My name is J. Kingston Reed and I am submitting the enclosed poems, "Hello Dear Friend" "One Paddle Ping Pong" "From Thoreau to the Children" "Fargo Found" and "It's true that I am ageless" for consideration in (A Brilliant) Record Magazine.

I am a poet and general creative writer. I call Houston home, for now. I've published a few articles on poetry for The Paisano, the newspaper at University of Texas-San Antonio. I also worked for the student television station at University of Arizona, where I cut music and pasted clips of celebrities and athletes into small boxes. I read my poetry at local bookstores on occasion and was recently featured on Kyle Hubbard's Who Do You Believe In? mixtape. I enjoy space for a blog on Juvenation, a place for Type 1 diabetics.

Hello Dear Friend

What lies in simple chaos now? Impossible

sunbeams in dear, wicked, wicked punishments, see?
Blindfold yourself, or that beautiful nude, look now--
Can you see, right now, punishment for consecration?
By some strange mischance, I feigned sight as colors ran
black to confusing pastel and I saw hatred
in twinkling eyes, that divine spark, soleprints from Mankind.
Where are my shoes? Where are my shoes? Please! Please! My shoes.
And her concealed character's sight bled quivering
quills for a drawn on clog, outside-the-lines mukluks or three.
Prostitution of character is a priest's strength.
Holocaust...Holocaust...scream criminal's insane fury.
The Eternal...numberable...numberable
pleasures, the questioned insolence of youth, your prayer?
You! Me! Stars! We shine in all directions behind,
simply chaos, I fear. Sunbeams on you do not shine.
Yes, but, where are my shoes? How will I walk this tread?

One Paddle Ping-Pong


I had heard that dirty windows obstruct our view from a world less frightening,

but I clean with rag and clean smells and tortured cataract,
yet still, the glass reflects, reflects, reflects smudges
etched with crosses, sickles, stars, and hammers.


But nevermind that tolerance I cannot see
flowing through the whitest and rightest in some variation of red, white, and blue.
If the mirror shows that tolerance, I had better clean it too,
for the feeling leaves me clawing at that window, dirt under nails.


So outside sun shines, rains fall, trees throw fruit
at people hiding in shade behind the veil of their religion,
and I cannot see them, I cannot see them, no they are not here.
I am alone.


In this windowless room, trundle bed rolls out that knowing
does not depend on windows, rolls out pins in the mattress.

From Thoreau to the Children


I feel some chance in harsh dissolving step

and try to find a question tied to hands,
since buried time, for time, below deep sands.
My body stiff, my pulse and head at depth,
now pulled aloft by Soul, and find no debt
between its gentle warmth and flesh too tight.
This chance, the chance, behind cruel morning's night
must bend the only bridge, connect those lands.


But quick! Please steal away from chance so dead!
Don't fall-- don't tear-- your Soul, don't let astray
and here: how She made Leaf ring in your head
and wind now flows from Heart to Hand, not away.
So walk with chance and let it go, hold firm
to all you have, be dead within your urn.




Fargo Found

Fargo gets ready for possible evacuation,

threat from the Missouri River.
It's only smart to think about worst-case
scenarios, and
five adults and an infant, rescued by helicopter.
If you have kids, small and so forth,


evacuation would scare the tar out of them.




It's true that I am ageless
Interesting how we are more like Her than Him, flash rather than knell.