California Summer by Michael Lee Johnson

Coastal warm breeze
off Santa Monica, California
the sun turns salt
shaker upside down
and it rains white smog, humid mist.
No thunder, no lightening,
nothing else to do
except sashay
forward into liquid
and swim
into eternal days
like this.

(previously published on Talon Mag)

Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

I Am Old Frustrated Thought by Michael Lee Johnson

I am old frustrated thought
I look into my once eagle eyes
and find them dim before my dead mother,
I see through clouded egg whites with days
passing by like fog feathers.
I trip over old experiences and expressions,
try hard to suppress them or revisit them;
I'm a fool in my damn recollections,
not knowing what to keep and what to toss out--
but the dreams flow like white flour and deceive
me till they capture the nightmare of the past images
in a black blanket wrapped up and wake me before my psychiatrist.
I only see this nut once every three months.
It is at times like these I know not where I walk
or venture. I trip over my piety and spill my coffee cup.
I seek sanctuary in the common place of my nowhere life.
It is here the days pass and the years slip like ice cubes--
solid footing is a struggle in the socks of depression.
I am old frustrated thought; passing by like fog feathers.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, IL, USA

Nikki by Michael Lee Johnson

Watching doves
peck away,
all day long at
a full bowl
of mixed seeds,
out on the balcony
of my condo-
the cat curls
up on the sofa,
after a meager
meal of house flies-
and dreams of
sparrows with
wide soaring
wings.




Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, IL, USA

Dove Poem by Michael Lee Johnson

I hear
scratch of
little dove feet.
I hear peck
of little dove bills
in bird seed basket
on my balcony-
in near silence
on rain-filled
afternoon-
lightning,
thunderstorm
overhead darkness,
cramped up with rage,
holds off a minute
so I may
hear these sounds.



Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, IL, USA

Twist My Words by Michael Lee Johnson

I see the spring dance all over your face in green
you were arrogant before you viewed my willow tree
outside my balcony.
Now you wave at me
with green fingers
and lime smiles.
You twist my words,
Harvard collegiate style,
right where you want them to be-
-lime green, willow tree, and
dark skinned branches.

Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, IL, USA

Caricature Of An Early Planter by Michael Lee Johnson

(Edmonton, Alberta Canada)

He is a gardener
with a spyglass.
With an ice pick
cavities are chopped
out of the earths torpid
mouth, dry seeds are packed
in with frostbitten fingertips.
He rakes his yard clear
of all snow in winter
so green blades of grass
will pop through frozen
earth.
He will weed, thin his garden early.
He is a realist; he writes poetry also.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Manic is the Dark Night by Michael Lee Johnson

Deep into the forest
the trees have turned
black, and the sun
has disappeared in
the distance beneath
the earth line, leaving
the sky a palette of grays
sheltering the pine trees
with pitch-tar shadows.
It is here in this black
and sky gray the mind
turns psycho
tosses norms and pathos
into a ground cellar of hell,
tosses words out through the teeth.
"Don't smile or act funny,try to be cute
with me;how can I help you today
out of your depression?"
I fell jubilant, I feel over the moon
with euphoric gaiety.
Damn I just feel happy!
Back into the wood of somberness
back into the twigs,
sedated the psychiatrist
Scribbles, notes, nonsense on a pad of yellow paper
:"mania, oh yes, mania, I prescribe
lithium, do I need to call the police?"
No sir, back into the dark woods I go.
Controlled, to get my meds.
Twist and rearrange my smile,
crooked, to fit the immediate need.
Deep in my forest
the trees have turned black again.
To satisfy the conveyer.
The Lord of the dark wood.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

A Poem of the Night by Michael Lee Johnson

a poem
is a thought
of flowers
near frost,
dangling stiff
bitten by
the vampire of
late fall,
hanging desolate
near dusk
from a pot
on a patio porch-
with a yellow bulb
light beaming
conspicuously outward
over chilled
yellow green
glazed grass.
While my cat Nikki
hunches over a coffee
table, toasty & warm,
nose pressed
super glue
to the window
on guard for
passing birds,
cars-
utility vans
with large bubble eyes.

Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Jesus Walks by Michael Lee Johnson

Jesus lives
in a tent
not a temple
coated with blue
velvet sugar
He dances in freedom
of His salvation
with the night and all
days bearing down with sun.
He has billions of ears
hanging from His head
dangling by seashores
listening to incoming prayers.
Sometimes busy hours drive Him
near crazy with buzzing sounds.
He walks near desert bushes
and hears wind tunnels
pushed by pine stinging nettles.
Here in His sacred voice
a whisper and
Pentecostal mind-
confused by hints of
Catholicism and prayers to Mary-
He heals himself in sacred
ponds tossing holy water
over himself--
touching nothing but
humanity He recoils
and finishes his desert
walk somewhat alone.
Contemplative.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Forked in Itasca by Michael Lee Johnson

I am so frustrated
I want to chew
the dandruff
out of the internet hair implant
and dislodge it,
for a lost love affair I never cared
about and hardly knew.
Don't tell me about my sentence structure,
I am human in these simple words.
I swear to you I curse.
Then the ram of my affair falls short
frustrating my approach to the world
at my fingertips.
No Yellow Pages here my love.
The dial up of my local connection
is wretched, stuck unincorporated
in the land I approved to live in,
monopolized by Comcast the
robbers of the poor and the humbled.
All I hear is the rambling of the railroad tracks.
I grow numb in my deafness faint with my hearing.
Did I ask for your opinion?
I am a frustrated foreign camper
in my own community.
Of a village I don't live in,
but I love this local village I lie about.
I am estranged.
I tie knots in contradictions
when I travel light and far,
visit home I long for a journey
past where I have never been.
Is this the reason I am lost
forked in between
the poet I think I am
and the working man
my bills dictate?



Michael Lee Johnson, USA

If I Were Young Again by Michael Lee Johnson

Piecemeal summer dies.
The spread of long winter blanket again.
For ten years I have lived in exile,
Locked in this rickety cabin, shoulder
Pushed up against the open Alberta sky.
If I were young again I’d sing of the coolness of high
Mountain snow flowers, the sprinkle of night glow-blue
Meadows;
I would dream & stretch slim fingers into the distant nowhere,
Yawn slowly over the endless prairie miles.
Prairie & grassland where in summer silence grows
& spreads eagle wings out like warm honey.
If I were young again I’d eat pine cones, food of birds,
Share meals with wild animals; I’d have as much dessert as wanted,
Reach out into blue sky & lick the clouds off my fingers.
But I’m not young anymore & my thoughts torment,
Are raw & overworked, sharpened misery from torture
Of war & childhood.
For ten years now I have lived locked in this unstable cabin,
Inside the rush of summer winds,
Outside the air beaten dim with snow.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Cell Phone Mania by Michael Lee Johnson

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.

Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Battered Behind Dark Glasses by Michael Lee Johnson

An otherwise beautiful lady
with eyes matted & closed
is not exactly sleeping.
The trouble goes deeper,
the doctor has a laser
light drill penetrating her eyes
That have turned thunderstorm
Black with smudges of red & pink.
She tells herself this will never
happen again, there will be no
rebirth with him.
In idle hours she self-nurses
a cave of hurts. The lights are off;
her eyes are bruised & burning.
In the morning, still in bed she looks in a mirror,
Her face thickened with puff & irony-
she weeps splinters sounds.
Above her head on the lamp desk the alarm clock keep ticking,
across the room, around the corner, the refrigerator keeps humming.
The man who had his way is dark in her, like distant echoes
embedded in a memory or shadow.
She owes him nothing. He hears none of her sounds.

Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

While the Seashells Listen, I Think I Love You by Michael Lee Johnson

Lost love letters
lost to the rolling blue sea
of early morning seashells
of late evening driftwood
whenever waves roll high upon sand dunes
or bring forth new sand at low tides recession,

whenever the sea rolls...
I think I love you.

Your memories echo in the seashells-
your love splashes back at me
on the rolling whitecaps
all day long
while at sea
and disappear each night
as the white foam washes
back out to sea.

Or just at home, on a shelf,
one seashell echoes-
I love you
a thousand echoes roll
I love you.

I'm a long way from the sea now,
will you listen for me­-
while they wash in
and wash back out again?

The seashells roll.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Lost in a Distant Harbor by Michael Lee Johnson

Love,
once beside me

now

lost in a
distant harbor

calls out into the night
crawls back into the fog.



Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

A Gift Of Desert Sand by Michael Lee Johnson

I wish to offer you
a possession, but all
precious things have
been given to you-
diamond rings from weary strangers,
fine linen weaved by foreign hands;
but a nomad owns little,
scavenges much.
For this reason, I write
warm words in dry wilderness,
hijack a private plane,
parachute down to you
this short poem, a gift
of desert sand, a gift
from desert sky.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Casket of Love by Michael Lee Johnson

This moon, clinging to a cloudless sky,
offers the light by which we love.
This park, grass knee high tickling bare feet,
offers the place we pass pleasant smiles.
Sir Winston Churchill would have
saluted the stately manner this fog
lifts, marching in time across this pond
layering its ghostly body over us
cuddled by the water’s edge,
as if we are burdened by this sealed
casket called love.
Frogs in the marsh, crickets beneath the crocuses
trumpet the last farewell.
A flock of Canadian geese fly overhead
in military V formation.
Yet how lively your lips tremble
against my skin, in a manner no
sane soldier dare deny.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Eclipse of Thought by Michael Johnson

Wing tipped
by the sun-
I see a different
version of the moon.
A movie not yet seen in darkness.
A story not yet told by prophets.
No movie mongrel
has siphoned the
joy from the wing,
the eclipse.
Clever this fore night
how the transition
of sun and moon
cloud my thinking-
create this poem.
Somewhere in between.

Michael Johnson, Chicago, USA

Leroy and His Love Affair by Michael Lee Johnson

Girlie magazines dating back to 1972 are scattered across the floor.
The skeletons of two pet canaries lie dormant inside a wire cage.
Bessie Mae died 8 months ago.
From her lips, and from her eyes comes nothing like before.
Leroy, her lover and her only friend, the man she lived with for
over 30 years locked her body in their bedroom because he
didn’t want to part from her.
Leroy has no friends to detect anything that might be suspect.
He wants nothing between the two of them at all, and no one
comes near to interfere.
Their bedroom is padlocked, stale, stagnant with mildew, looking
the way it did before she died.
Foul odors ooze up through their bedroom ventilation ducts,
Leroy contends that a dead rat in the basement is causing the odors.
Leroy loves to lie about his sacred love affair.
Layers of dust blanket over the mahogany floors, and the maid doesn’t come
here anymore.
Bessie Mae’s remains are wrapped in a scarlet housecoat,
Dried blood sleeps in a small pool beneath her bed.
In time they both will sleep, sole witnesses to the fiasco
their lives will catch them in; enduring it, holding
their tongues till time matters no more.
Nothing appears changed, lovers unwilling to depart.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

From Toronto To Ottawa by Michael Lee Johnson

She comes,
and she goes,
unnoticed.
She walks,
and she talks,
to no one.
Her night is
the long city street
sheltered & protected by neon.
She amuses
& she entertains,
swaying her slender body,
…but no one offers,
& she shouts out
for no reward.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA