Michael Lee Johnson is a poet from Itasca, Illinois, published in 23 countries.
Website: http://poetryman.mysite.com. His published poetry books available: through his site, Amazon.Com, Borders Books, and Lulu.com. Now on You-Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
If You Find No Poem
If you find
no poem on
your doorstep
in the morning,
no paper, no knock on your door,
and your life is poorly edited
but no broken dashes
or injured meter
and you don’t wear white
dresses late in life
embroidered with violet
flowers on the collar;
nor do you have
burials daily
across main street,
and no one whispers
in your ear, Emily Dickinson-
you feel alone-
but not reclusive-
the sand lady
still sleeping in your eyes-
wiping your tears away-
if you find
no poem on
your doorstep-
you know your not
from New England.
I Am Old Frustrated Thought
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.
Solid footing is a struggle in the sock of depression
it is here the days pass and the years slip like ice cubes.
Rose Petals in a Dark Room
I walk in a mastery of the night and light
my money changers walk behind me
they are fools like clowns in a shadow of sin,
they’re busy as bees as drunken lovers,
Sodom and Gomorrah before the salt pillar falls.
In a shadow of red rose pedals
drunken lovers walk changing Greek and Roman
currency to Jewish or Tyrian money-
they are fools, all fools, at what they do.
Everyone’s life is a conflict.
They are my lovers and my sinners
I can’t sleep at night without them
by my bed or the sea of Galilee.
Fish in cloth nets are my friends and my converts.
I pray in my garden alone; while all the rest
who love beside me sleep behind their innocence.
The rose is a tender thorn compared to my arrest.
and soon crucifixion.
It is here the morning and the night come together,
where the sea and the land part;
where the building crumbles
and I trust not myself to them.
I am but a poet of the ministry,
rose petals in a dark room fall.
Everyone’s life is a conflict.
But mine is mastery of light and night
and I walk behind the footsteps of no one.
