The Author Reflects on His 35th Birthday

35? I have been looking forward To you for many years now So much that I feel you and I are old Friends and so on this day, 35 I propose a toast to Me and You 35? From this day on I swear before the bountiful Osiris that If I ever If I EVER Try to bring out the Best in folks again I Want somebody to take me Outside and kick me up and Down the sidewalk or Sit me in a corner with a Funnel on my head Make me as hard as a rock 35, like the fellow in The story about the Big one that got away Let me laugh my head off With Moby-Dick as we reminisce About them suckers who went Down with the Pequod 35? I ain’t been mean enough Make me real real mean Mean as old Marie rolling her eyes Mean as the town Bessie sings about “Where all the birds sing bass” 35? Make me Tennessee mean Cobra mean Cuckoo mean Injun mean Dracula mean Beethovenian-brows mean Miles Davis mean Don’t-offer-assistance-when Quicksand-is-tugging-some-poor Dope-under-mean Pawnbroker mean Pharaoh mean That’s it, 35 Make me Pharaoh mean Mean as can be Mean as the dickens Meaner than mean When I walk down the street I want them to whisper There goes Mr. Mean “He’s double mean He even turned the skeletons In his closet out into The cold” And 35? Don’t let me trust anybody Over Reed but Just in case Put a tail on that Negro too From “New and Collected Poems” (Atheneum: $21.95; 212 pp.). Reed, who lives in Oakland, is, among many other things, a songwriter; and Bobby Womack has recorded the poem above as part of the album, “Conjure: Cab Calloway Stands In for the Moon,” a surprise hit in Germany, due for release in the United States this month on the Pangaea label. 1988, Ishmael Reed. Reprinted by permission of the author.