{"id":15184,"date":"2024-03-15T03:24:34","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T01:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15184"},"modified":"2024-03-15T13:30:20","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T11:30:20","slug":"poems-by-michael-lee-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15184","title":{"rendered":"poems by Michael Lee Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ghost I Am (V2)<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here is a private hut<\/p>\n

staring at me,<\/p>\n

twigs & branches<\/p>\n

over the top\u2014<\/p>\n

naked & alone.<\/p>\n

I respond to an old 60s doo-wop<\/p>\n

song:\u00a0 In the Still of the Night<\/p>\n

Fred Parris and The Satins.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Storms are written in narratives,<\/p>\n

old ears closed to a full hearing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m but a shelter cringing.<\/p>\n

In age, nightmare pre-warned redemption.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s call it the Jesus factor,<\/p>\n

not LGBT symbols in Biden\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

I lost my way close to the end.<\/p>\n

Here is this shelter in heaven<\/p>\n

poetry imagined spaces<\/p>\n

prematurely still not all the words fit,<\/p>\n

in childhood in abuse<\/p>\n

lack of reason for bruises<\/p>\n

rough hills, carp that didn\u2019t bite,<\/p>\n

and Schwinn bike rides<\/p>\n

flat tires, chains fall off, spokes collapse\u2014<\/p>\n

this thunder, those storms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Find me a thumbnail<\/p>\n

image of myself in centuries of dust.<\/p>\n

Stand weakened by nature<\/p>\n

of change glossed over, sealed.<\/p>\n

Archives.<\/p>\n

Old men, like a luxurious battery,<\/p>\n

die hard, but with years, they<\/p>\n

too, fade away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

California Summer (V2)<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Coastal warm breeze<\/p>\n

off Santa Monica, California<\/p>\n

the sun turns salt<\/p>\n

shaker upside down<\/p>\n

and it rains white smog, a humid mist.<\/p>\n

No thunder, no lightening,<\/p>\n

nothing else to do<\/p>\n

except for sashay<\/p>\n

forward into liquid<\/p>\n

and swim<\/p>\n

into eternal days<\/p>\n

like this.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Four Leaf Clover (V5)<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I found your life smiling<\/p>\n

inside a four-leaf clover.<\/p>\n

Here you hibernate in sin.<\/p>\n

You were dancing in the orange fields of the sun.<\/p>\n

You lock into your history, your past, withdrawal,<\/p>\n

taste honeycomb, then cow salt lick.<\/p>\n

All your life, you have danced in your soft shoes.<\/p>\n

Find free lottery tickets in the pockets of poor men and strangers.<\/p>\n

Numbers rhyme like winners, but they are just losers.<\/p>\n

Positive numbers tug like gray blankets, poor horses coming in 1st.<\/p>\n

Private angry walls; desperate is the night.<\/p>\n

You control intellect, josser men.<\/p>\n

You take them in, push them out,<\/p>\n

circle them with silliness.<\/p>\n

Everything turns indigo blue in grief.<\/p>\n

I hear your voice, fragmented words in thunder.<\/p>\n

An actress buried in degrees of lousy weather and blindness.<\/p>\n

I leave you alone, wander the prairie path by myself.<\/p>\n

Pray for wildflowers, the simple types. No one cares.<\/p>\n

Purple colors, false colors, hibiscus on guard,<\/p>\n

lilacs are freedom seekers, now no howls in death.<\/p>\n

You are the cookie crumble of my dreams.<\/p>\n

Three marriages in the past.<\/p>\n

I hear you knocking my walls down, heaven stars creating dreams.<\/p>\n

Once beautiful in the rainbow sun, my face, even snow<\/p>\n

now cast in banners, blank, fire, and flames.<\/p>\n

I cycle a self-absorbed nest of words.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Casket of Love (V3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This moon, clinging to a cloudless sky,<\/p>\n

offers the light by which we love.<\/p>\n

In this park, grass knees high, tickling bare feet,<\/p>\n

offers the place we pass pleasant smiles.<\/p>\n

Sir Winston Churchill would have<\/p>\n

saluted the stately manner this fog lifts,<\/p>\n

marching in time across this pond<\/p>\n

layering its ghostly body over us<\/p>\n

cuddled by the water\u2019s edge,<\/p>\n

as if we are burdened by this sealed<\/p>\n

casket called love.<\/p>\n

Frogs in the marsh, crickets beneath the crocuses<\/p>\n

trumpet the last farewell.<\/p>\n

A flock of Canadian geese flies overhead<\/p>\n

in military V formation.<\/p>\n

Yet how lively your lips tremble<\/p>\n

against my skin in a manner no<\/p>\n

sane soldier dare deny.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ghost I Am (V2)   Here is a private hut staring at me,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1681,77],"tags":[1682,1123,1699],"class_list":["post-15184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-79-80","category-english","tag-egophobia-79-80","tag-english","tag-michael-lee-johnson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3WU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15185,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15184\/revisions\/15185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}