My Life
My life began with a skeleton
with a smile
and bubbling eyes
in my garden of
dandelions.
Everything else
fell off the edge,
a jigsaw puzzle
piece cut in half.
When young, I
pressed
against my
mother’s breast,
but youthful
memories fell short.
I tried at 8 to
kiss my father,
but he was a
welder, fox hunter,
coon hunter,
and voyeuristic man.
My young life
was a mixture
of black,
white, dark dreams,
and mellow
yellow sun bright hopes.
Rewind,
sunshine was a stranger
in dandelion
fields,
shadows in my
eyes.
I grabbed my
injured legs
leap forward
into the future.
I’m now a
vitamin C boy
it keeps me
immured
from catching
colds or Covid-19.
Everything now
still leaks, in parts,
but I press
forward.
Jesus and How He Must Have Felt
Staggering
out Wee-Willy's
dumpy dive bar, drooped eyes,
my feelings desensitizing,
confusing my avocado fart,
at 3:20 a.m., with last night
splash on of Brut aftershave.
Whispering to my outcast
self-sounding more like pending death.
My body detaching from myself,
numbed by winter's fingers.
I creak up these outside stairs
to my apartment after an all-night drunk,
cheap Tesco's Windsor Castle
London Dry Gin—on the rocks.
I thought of Jesus
how He must have felt
during His resurrection
dragging His holy body
up that endless stairwell
spiralling toward heaven.
Most
Poems
Most poems are
pounded out
in
emotional flesh, sometimes
physical
skin scalped feelings.
It’s
a Jesus hanging on a cross
a
Mary kneeling at the bottom
not
knotted in love but roped,
a
blade of a bowie knife
heavenward.
I
look for the kicker line
the
close at the bottom
seek
a public poetry forum
to
cheer my aspirations on.
I
hear those far away voices
carrying
my life away-
a
retreat into insanity.
Poets in the Rain
All
poets are crazy. Listen to them soak
sponge in early rain medley notes sounding off.
Crazy, suicidal, we know who they are:
Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas
the drunk, Anne Sexton, Teasdale
this group grows a Pinocchio nose.
At times I capture you here under control.
I want to inspect you.
All can be found in faith once
now gone in time.
With all your concerns, I see
your eyes layered in shades of green
confused within you about me.
Forgive me; I’m just a touch
of wild pepper, dry Screaming Eagle
Cabernet Sauvignon, and dying selfishly.
We don’t know if it is all worth it.
I have refined my image, and my taste
continues to thrust inside your crevices.
Templates of hell break loose thunder, belches, and anomie.
Asteroid Ceres looks like you passing gas,
exposes her buttocks, and moves on just like ice
on a balmy rock just like yours.
I will wait centuries, like critics, to review
this fecund body of yours-
soiled, then poppies,
poetry in the rain.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada, the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 262 YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, several published poetry books, nominated for 4 Pushcart Prize awards and 5 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 443 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/
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