Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer. He is self-employed in advertising, and selling custom promotional products. He is the author of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom. He was nominated for the James B. Baker Award in poetry, Sam's Dot Publishing. He is a contributor in the Silver Boomers poetry anthology about aging baby boomers, by Silver Boomer Books. Michael Lee Johnson presently resides in Itasca, Illinois, United States. He lived in Canada during the Vietnam era and is published as a contributor poet in the anthology Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam War Era published in May 2008. He has been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Turkey, Fuji, Nigeria, Algeria, Africa, India, United Kingdom, Republic of Sierra Leone, Nepal, Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Finland, and Poland on internet radio. Michael Lee Johnson has been published in more than 240 different publications worldwide. Audio MP3 of poems are available on request. He is also publisher and editor of four poetry flash fiction sites--all presently open for submission: Birds By Window, Poetric Legacy, A Tender Touch and Wizard of the Wind. Michael Lee Johnson, United States, and Phillip Ellis, an Australian poet, are looking for a chapbook publisher for a joint venture merging free verse with more traditional verse. Mr. Johnson has two chapbooks ready for publishing review. Manuscripts are available on request.
MICHAEL'S INFLUENCES:
CARL SANDBURG
Click image to visit Sandburg's official website; for a profile of Sandburg on the Modern American Poetry website, click here or for related books on Amazon, click hereROBERT FROST
Click image to visit The Poetry of Robert Frost website; for a profile of Frost on the Modern American Poetry website, click here or for related books on Amazon, click hereWILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Click image for a wide selection of links relating to Williams on the Modern American Poetry website; to visit the William Carlos Williams page, click here or for related books on Amazon, click here
TOP THINGS MICHAEL LIKES IN HIS LIFE:
1) HIS FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST
***
2) NIKKI, HIS BELOVED KITTEN
***
3) HIS FIRE DEEP IN HIS BELLY FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IN THE UNITED STATES SO EVERYONE HAS ACCESS TO CARE, NOT JUST THE RICH OR EXTREME POOR
***
4) HIS DRIVE TO FIND A WAY TO SURVIVE OLD AGE IN POVERTY
***
5) HIS NEED TO LEAVE A LEGACY BEHIND FOR OTHERS, NO MATTER HOW HUMBLE OR SMALL THE CONTRIBUTION
Ginger bread lady,
no sugar or cinnamon spice,
years ago arthritis and senility took their toll.
Crippled mind movies in then out, like an old sexual adventure,
blurred in an imagination of finger tip thoughts--
who in hell remembers the characters?
Their was George her lover near the bridge at the Chicago River
she missed his funeral, her friends were there.
She always made feather light of people dwelling ton death.
But black and white she remembers well.
The past is the present; the present is forgotten.
or is it hell?
Ginger bread lady.
Sometimes lazy time tea with a twist of lime.
Sometimes drunken time screwdriver twist with clarity.
She walks in sandals sometimes she walks in soft night shoes.
Her live-in maid smirks as Ginger bread lady gums her food,
false teeth forgotten in a custom imprinted cup
with water, vinegar, and ginger.
The maid died. Ginger bread lady looks for a new maid.
Years ago arthritis and senility took their toll.
Yesterday, a new maid walked into the nursing home.
Ginger forgot to rise out of bed,
no sugar, or cinnamon toast.
Crippled with arthritis
and Alzheimer's,
in a dark rented room
Charley, plays
melancholic melodies
on a dust filled
harmonica he
found abandoned
on a playground of sand
years ago by a handful of children
playing on monkey bars.
He now goes to the bathroom on occasion,
peeing takes forever; he feeds the cat when
he doesn't forget where the food is stashed at.
He hears bedlam when he buys fish at the local market
and the skeleton bones of the fish show through.
He lies on his back riddled with pain,
pine cones fill his pillows and mattress;
praying to Jesus and rubbing his rosary beads
Charley blows tunes out his
celestial instrument
notes float through the open window
touch the nose of summer clouds.
Charley overtakes himself with grief
and is ecstatically alone.
Charley plays a solo tune.
Soft nursing
5 solid minutes
of purr
paw peddling
like a kayak competitor
against ripples of my
60 year old river rib cage--
I feel like a nursing mother
but I'm male and I have no nipples.
Sometimes I feel afloat.
Nikki is a little black skunk,
kitten, suckles me for milk,
or affection?
But she is 8 years old a cat.
I'm her substitute mother,
afloat in a flower bed of love,
and I give back affection
freely unlike a money exchange.
Done, I go to the kitchen, get out
Fancy Feast, gourmet salmon, shrimp,
a new work day begins.
A Métis Indian lady
hands blanketed over as in pray,
spirit gods inside her empty purse,
hang over a large brown fruit basket
naked of fruit, no vine,
approaches the Edmonton, Alberta
adoption agency.
Inside, refrained from life
with a wine sap apple wedged fruity
like a teaspoon of autumn sun
inside the infants mouth,
a shallow pool of tears form--
swell like melons in infant
native blue eyes.
Edith, in this nursing home
blinded with macular degeneration,
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace--
as yesterday's winds
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.
"Oh, where did Jesus disappear
to?” she murmured,
over and over again,
in a low voice
dripping words
like a leaking faucet:
"Oh, there He is my my
Angel of the coming."
Leaves, a few stragglers in
December, just before Christmas,
some nailed down crabby to ground frost
some crackled by the bite of nasty wind tones.
Some saved from the matchstick that failed to light.
Some saved from the rake by a forgetful gardener.
For these few freedom dancers
left to struggle with the bitterness:
wind dancers
wind dancers
move your frigid
bodies shaking like icicles
hovering but a jiffy in sky,
kind of sympathetic to the seasons,
reluctant to go, rustic,
not much time more to play.
I work from my mind
inward into a corner of knots.
Depressed beneath brain bone
I work my words, they overwork me.
Fear is the spirit alone, away from God.
Hospital warriors shake pink
pills, rattle bottles of empty dreams.
I walk my ward down the daily highway, depressed.
I work the roadmap of spirit, weed out false religions.
One God for so many twelve step programs.
I wrap myself around support groups,
look for dependency within their problems.
I publish my poems, life works, concerns on floor 5.
I edit my redemption, escape from the laundry room;
run around in circles like planet earth
looking for my therapist to seal my comfort.
April again,
the wind
falls in love with itself
skipping across asphalt
and concrete bare
with the breaking weather.
A rainbow
Is half arched,
broken off deep
into the aorta
of the sky.
It hangs
from elastic
rubber bands
of mixed colours
tipped in God's
inkwell,
airbrushed
by the fingertips
of Michelangelo.
April again,
the wind steps high.
Sometimes I feel
like a sad sack
a worn out old man
with clown facial wrinkles
I know when I reflect
stare out my window
at the snow falling
from my bed
my back to yours
reflecting on my pain
ignoring yours
I isolate your love
lose your touch
to another
forgetting
it is our bed,
not mine,
that I lie in.
CARL SANDBURG
ROBERT FROST
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
