Cold meat covered in thin white cotton.
One foot protrudes.
Mouth agape, drools silently.
Teeth removed, stored neatly on the roll-away table.
As if you might get warm,
or wake up and need to chew.
Sourness—a look or a feeling? I’m
not sure. Mislabeled television controls.
I’ll see what I can do to fix this
error.
Published in little bang, Volume 1, Number 1, 2008
I love you, I told him
Meals on wheels didn’t come ’til three o’clock
He’s pissed
I love you too, he said, trying to swallow it back down
*
Rewind, thirty years:
Leisure suit and perm aside,
Dad’s never changed
Trouble with women, he says, they just want to be happy
He never remarried
Thanksgiving with my Mom—Christmas with Dad
I came home after college
He was an old man
*
He reads glossy magazines
Schools me on pop culture
On his 78th birthday he asked for Moby
Though lately he prefers punk
When I was young, I had this dream my dad was shot
in the chest with a cannonball
He came home in this dream; I could see right through
the big round hole
The wound was clean, as if he were made of cookie dough
I couldn’t bring myself to touch him
*
Gave my dad a hug the other day
We repaired his iTunes
Picked over cold lunchmeat
Snapped a few pictures, said goodbye
Three days later—snail-mail from Dad
Scrawled across the back of a carefully folded article
About Balinese Hip Hop:
I love you, too
Published in little bang, Volume 1, Number 1, 2008
The rogue state is diseased
United in fear
and delusion of grandeur
An identity of artificial construct
Borders drawn in blood and hate
Symbols and assertions confuse nation with individual,
desire with right,
loyalty with heroism
Obsolete and unaware
the patriot is the enemy of mankind
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.
Nothing
more playful
than a gray
moth dancing
– skeleton wings-
and a green-eyed
cat prancing
-paws swatting-
around a
lit kerosene
lamp
-shadow boxing-
and we all
had fun
in the
moonlight
A red rocking chair
abandoned in a field
of freshly cut clover,
rocks back and forth-
squeaks each time
the wind pushes
at its back,
then,
retreats.
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 colors
dipped in God’s
inkwell,
airbrushed
by the fingertips
of Michelangelo.
April again,
the wind steps high.
The wind chimes
on the balcony
today,
different
sounds in all
different directions-
my thoughts chase
after them.
I blink, the electricity is off.
The day has brought
night to an end on top of me.
Lamp oil and flashlights save me
from myself.
I walk in darkness.
In this darkness I don’t
see my shadow.
When the wind goes still
cold chills down my spine
don’t feel anymore.
I walk in darkness like this
but I’ve been fooled myself before
at Halloween, fears of April thunderstorms.
April thunderstorms have knocked
the lighting out of me;
pulled the electricity out of my sockets, pulled plugs from my condo.
I lie in bed with only this conversation to keep me company.
I feel like an ice cube insulated
around in my words, looking for images
in shadows, quiet corners.
I creep myself out alone.
Here I lie on my back in bed, think, then try sleep-with ghosts, witches, spiders, devils,
all kinds of nasty things.
Nothing brings Christ out of closed wilderness faster than darkness being alone.
I blink, and electricity is back on.
April, I’ve been fooled like this before.
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.
Wind dancers
dancing to the
willow wind,
leaves swaying
right to left
all day long.
I’m depressed.
Birds hanging on-
bleaching feathers
out into
the sun.
Bio: Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, and freelance writer, Itasca, Illinois, author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom, http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7. He has also published two chapbooks of poetry. 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 and Poland, internet radio. He is also publisher and editor of four poetry, flash fiction sites–all presently open for submission:
http://birdsbywindow.blogspot.com/
http://www.poetriclegacy.mysite.com/
http://atendertouch.blogspot.com/
http://wizardsofthewind.blogspot.com/
Author website: http://poetryman.mysite.com/
You in this sepia-toned photograph,
with your arms wide open in greeting,
with your hands held up in surrender.
Edge of highway, corner of house,
hint of something better. A body of water,
maybe, or the back of someone else’s
head.
A gun pulled from inside the
killer’s heart, and he says Mr. Lennon,
then smiles, then pulls the trigger.
No.
I’ve gotten ahead of myself here.
I’m ten years old and in a boat with
my father and two of his friends, and the
engine has died. The tide is going out,
and the only sound is the pull of the
ocean.
The only heat is the
mindless glare of the sun.
I don’t know you yet,
haven’t fallen in love with you,
haven’t let my tongue flicker lightly
across your nipples in a
curtained room.
The story is over,
or is possibly just beginning.
I have the picture, but can never
make out the expression on your face.
by John Sweet
it happens this way sometimes,
where the children die from the poison that
seeps up from underground
you vote for one person or the other,
and the children die, and it’s not war but
business, and both words are actually just
different ways of saying profit
listen
new computers will be given to
the schools as gifts
the sharpened teeth of priests will snap
the bones of young boys in two
what you need to believe in are
rabid dogs
speaking w/ the voices of humans
what we do is use the word political
to describe what we don’t want to
talk about and then, of course,
the children die
the war becomes nothing more than
one more mundane fact of life,
and the men who make money off of
the corpses of every dead soldier,
and that there are others out there
filming your daughters fucking
faceless strangers
that the poem is just a message
handed down from the
throne of god
you will ignore it like all of
the lies you’ve been forced to swallow
in the past, and then it will come
to define you
by John Sweet
