Poetry

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If possible please mention this in your magazines, journals, links, online publications and bookstores, etc (please notify me if you can):

Michael Lee Johnson’s 1st chapbook of poems and his first paperback of poems
both available for purchase or download at:
“The Lost American: A Tender Touch & A Shade Of Blue” (Chapbook with 57 pages)
http://www.lulu.com/content/936633
“The Lost American II: From Exile to Freedom (Full paperback with 98 pages)
http://www.lulu.com/content/972649

In approximately 45 days a new paperback book, by Michael Lee Johnson, will be available for purchase and download at iUniverse Publishers: http://www.iuniverse.com/


Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago, IL after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Viet Nam era. He is a freelance writer and poet. He is heavy influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, and Leonard Cohen. 250 plus poems published. He is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc; Directory of American Poets & Fictions Writers: pw.org/directory. Recent publications: The Orange Room Review, Bolts of Silk, Chantarelle’s Notebook, The Foliate Oak Online Literary Magazine, Poetry Cemetery, Official Site of Laura Hird, The Centrifugal Eye, Adagio Verse Quarterly, Scorched Earth Publishing, and many others. Published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Nigeria Africa, India, United Kingdom. Mr. Johnson has a paper book pending publication with iUniverse Publishers.



Michael Lee Johnson
60143-1542
PO Box 486
Itasca, IL 60143
Ph/Fax (630) 467-1332/30
E-mail: [email protected]
Or: [email protected]



Bathroom Visitor

A horsefly
travels the world
of my bathroom.
Stops at the kitty litter box
on occasion for refueling.
One thousand round trips
including the bathtub area,
and buzzes past the toilet bowl.
Steady pilot, good mileage.
Frequent flier miles.
I swat his journey to an
abrupt end.

-2007-


Lost in a Distant Harbor

Love,
once beside me

now

lost in a
distant harbor

calls out into the night
crawls back into the fog.

-1975-


Jesus Knelt in Grief
Over the Death of Children

Breaking out of silence,
Jesus knelt to his knees
in moist desert sand,
wrote messages
with his fingertips
to children-
“water is water, toys are toys,
but by my fingers burn with life,
though I toil over tombs with grief and tears-
I’m the living and I am the dead.
I was born to life to bring
new hope into the death of children.
I’m the messenger of the morning sun
the prayer book between the morning dew,
the play fields of your daily adventures.
When I kneel here again,
the end will be the end.
Fire will be willed into my words.
Driftwood and sand will turn to stone.
I drag my fingers across hot sand once more;
morning will come without a daybreak.
Birds will no longer sing, and crickets
lose their songs.”

-1999-


In This Place,
Poverty Falls

In this place night falls with Linda.
Wrinkled life, wrinkled wishes
race across her face.
Torment bristles with each morning;
nailed to a cross within her house,
Linda lives.
Everything is a cycle,
a charity or gifts.
Poverty is an odor,
it is a smell her
nose itches with.
In the yard, poverty grass,
near the old car, poverty grass.
Poverty tastes like copper
metal on her tongue.
On her this journey with no applause,
no gas, Nicor shut that off.
No money honey, laziness shut that off.
Her house is full of bills & debris.
With no relief a few dollars
shrink in her hand harmlessly.
Rest, wait in welfare lines,
manipulate the coin machines
and the local pharmacy drug store.
Electric heaters keep the old house
warm and the multiple pets alive.
The microwave heats the plastic
salad bowl filled with water
for sponge baths.
The left over water mixes with hydrogen
peroxide that brushes her teeth.
Her body pale and spirits bail out with pills.
Groceries are checks
Nourished by food stamps.
Walls come closer in at night.
The wind outside roars
with stolen property inside.
Dreary days, step
into depression’s chamber;
a slice of her mourning
pronounces her dead.

-2007-



Rain

In the rain
He rebelled.
He drove off the road edge.
He was drunk.
It never rains in a dry casket.

-2007-



Darlene

Friendship is continuous,
it evolves, it revolves
around the sight of each other
the feelings of one another,
the small kisses in the doorway.
Friendship is a love circle,
it trips around, rotates tough
angles when the one mate
feels the other is in trouble.
Often I feel like touching you intimately-
exchanging my kitty, Nikki,
for your warm breast, thighs, the touch
of your behind, or just hours of endless talk,
child babble; but tonight I’m heavy wondering
beneath your word shadows-are you all right?
Has the day, the night, been good to you?
Friendship is continuous,
it evolves, it revolves
around the sight of each other
the feelings of one another,
the small kisses in the doorway.
friendship is a love circle.

-1998-



Cell Phone Mania


Hollow people,
small people with big ear openings,
aisle walkers of endless babble-
big heads, small heads, big thoughts,
no thoughts at all, mounds of
words piling up on each other.
Free time is cell phone time.
Jaw bone structures jumbling up and down
like pairs of disjointed loose lips;
skeletons of moving gestures
fingers, and hands dancing in the air
pointing to here, pointing to there;
scare those who walk beside them
scare those who sit beside them
in moving cars.
Peapods cell phones jammed in and around
earlobes like miniature rubber mallets.
Speaker phone gadget grinding against white teeth
Conversations, at the grocery store, dripping out
of dried mouths about brand cans of peas or pears,
which softness of diapers preferred for the babies ass.
Free time is cell phone time.
They roam and talk everywhere seriously about nothing.
Weekends are free times for ignoring the rest of the universe.
Babies carry deactivated phones with 911options
in grocery push carts designed like miniature cars.
The world is a plastic phone shaped and held
like a household fixture communicating
with no one, no one of consequence
or importance.
Free time is cell phone time.

-2007-



Fog Lady, Fog Horns, near the Harbor

Fog horns desperate in the night, near the harbor screaming into the mist
with a near silent echo--where are other voices, ears to listen to these sounds?

I am roaring in my larynx, screeching in my eardrums near
the edge of my brain where memories hang on like wet sand.

She was a solo Californian lady met on the internet,
not worthy to torment me like smashing shells beneath her feet.

But I am not near the fog lady, not near her rolling at all.
Not near the place where the fog is, not near the horn where the real sounds are.

The red sand beneath my feet is rubbing me wrong. Hammer the sea
Timber out of my brain; let me rest away from this fog, these eerie sounds.

The fog horns are desperate in this night.

-2000-


Neck Traction

Hanging from a rope
cradled in a cloth basket
harness, I feel like a western
horse rustler, getting last rites,
while being forced
to stare into my
mirror hanging
from my door as punishment;
just before they kick the door open
and smack the horse on the ass.

My chin is shoved into my cranium.
My eyes are wrinkled up and nearly
Sealed like a raisin closing shop
in sizzling sun.

A punishment fit for the decrepit,
elderly, lamenting, crippled,-
vertebras with out cushion or support,
bone spurs pinching nerves for fun.

Punishment for past activities, sins
and lies told to the scared one?

I’m trying to read collected poems
by Stanley Kunitz; hold “The
Purpose Driven Life” up high enough
to see my own self-esteem straight eyed.

Squinting between the lines I sort the pluses of Christianity,
damn the curses of Islam, firm up my convictions with suffering.

Thirty minutes of torture,
sweat drawn into my eyes
by a ninety degree room temperature-
savior and redeemer, the electrical fan.
Traction is tearing the chin out of my TMJ.

-2005-

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