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 Michael
Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca,
Illinois. He lived in political exile in Canada for 10 years
during the Vietnam War. His new poetry chapbook with pictures,
titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo
version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are
available at:
http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa
The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to
Freedom, can be found at:
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7
Michael has been published in over 22 countries. He is also
editor/publisher of four poetry sites, all open for submission,
which can be found at his Web site:
http://poetryman.mysite.com All of his books
are now available on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-
Wing Tipped and Resisting
It made sense to watch him grow;
the foolish things he did to girls,
the endless hours he filled their
bedrooms with delight-I swear
he was an Indiana boy.
He was a whisper of dreams and words.
The pines of Alberta fanned his brain,
intensity increased the blaze of conviction.
The voices of many personalities formed
in his larynx over the early Indiana years.
Names abused, ideas festered, beliefs crippled,
false images gathered in a garden of imagination merged with
sand,
sprouted, bred, and spread northward, outward, like eagle wings.
It was a cancer without a cure or antibiotic.
The wind had stopped prayer when he
was born; he had felt his own creation lift
within his own breath.
More than new desires, old desires,
or World War II memories chatting in
the past, this boy was a proclamation
of potential rejected by his peers, soundly.
But then a war, the Vietnam curse,
a conflict that ripped the internals of a nation,
guts wide open, bleeding ulcers, opinions flourished,
past and future dreams buckled.
Then men died, thousands of men died.
Blue north wind now blows icicles through his hair;
he works against the wings of the red, white & blue eagle;
while blood torn stars blend in his green eyes,
the border of two dissonant countries divide.
Another night passes to sleep in exile.
-1981-
Conformity Owns No Estate
I love adventure to toil with my mind,
the search of self, the bottle-necked life,
rolls violently on the shores.
Conformity rules the lives of men,
a dressed up world of dreams,
refusing to move from salt-soaked sands
to grasslands on higher plains.
People before me tread on the sands
sharing the beaches of numbers,
never forging forth to the front,
remaining content building castles
in sand.
Stagnant conformity rules
their fates, a washed will surely come.
-1969-
Coffee Time, Fuller's Restaurant
(Edmonton, Alberta)
June 29th, 1980, three o'clock A.M.
And I'm getting older by the minute.
Thinking about it makes me tired.
Outside traffic crawls slowly over
slippery pavement like inebriated turtles.
Inside, at the coffee counter, I flirt with a waitress -
fresh young fruit from Montreal.
She insists on calling me Vincent Price
and speaking French in Alberta.
I'm trying to read Periods of the Moon,
by Irving Layton, selecting the human
condition, repetition, and insomnia as
my main themes.
Next to me, a street gypsy drooping
over the counter beside me, pulling
scraps of dog-eared aged newsprint
from a doggie bag. She stares
 squint-eyed
at a picture of John F. Kennedy
for two hours, manages to laugh
an incredible 29 times, sorry, 30 times, 31.
Counting makes me tired,
makes me take notice of this gypsy
and disapprove.
-1980-
Unknown Poet from Rue Montpelier
I warned you dart with advice
strong words tripping over emotions
like an imbecile -
so you think you're Leonard Cohen
loving some naked Nancy in a cluttered
matchbox apartment overlooking
European culture simulated,
above some obscure, narrow
Montreal street?
For your information,
straight poetics from insanities Almanac,
Leonard Cohen died years ago
in a twisted pickled poem he
entitled "Narcissism."
Do you and your welfare lover
desire to be the second generation,
deceased, unnoticed, unheard of,
unwarranted failed artists
residing inside this thin, onion-skinned
dingy wailing wall sequestered
in the living room of fantasy?
I warned you dart with advice,
taper off with your impotence.
-1980-
Harvest Time
(Version 5 Final)
A Métis Indian lady, drunk,
hands blanketed over as in prayer,
over a large brown fruit basket
naked of fruit, no vine, no vineyard
inside-approaches the Edmonton,
Alberta adoption agency.
There are only spirit gods
inside her empty purse.
Inside, an infant,
restrained from life,
with a fruity wine sap apple
wedged like a teaspoon
of autumn sun
i nside
its mouth.
A shallow pool of tears starts
to mount in native blue eyes.
Snuffling, the mother offers
a slim smile, turns away.
She slithers voyeuristically
through near slum streets,
and alleyways,
looking for drinking buddies
to share a hefty pint
of applejack wine.
-2007- |
