Five poems by Michael Lee Johnson

South Chicago Night

Night is drifters,
sugar rats, streetwalkers,
pickpockets, pimps,
insects, Lake Michigan perch,
sounds of Herring gulls.
Neon tubes are blinking.
Half the local streetlights
bulbs burned out.

Dove Bar Poem

Ex-lover told me Dove dark
chocolate bars were good for lovers.
She ate dark Dove bars,
I ate light Dove chocolate.
She was healthy, I was sad.
We often got into fights over this.
She was manic and I was depressed.
Sex was a bouncing basketball affair.
She was healthy not knowing her disease.
I was sad, stealing apples
out of farmer John’s orchard.
Sleeping wherever
a pillow was found.

Jesus Was

Jesus was a poetry man.
Words were in his eyeballs,
His retina.
20-20 sight but a universal default.
Tears wept down on an old Olive tree
Or was it a dogwood tree cross?
Mystery waits out the years.
Resurrection and returns—
a slow retail business.

Reincarnation

In the next life, I will be a little higher up the pecking order.
No longer a dishwasher at the House of Pancakes
or Ricky’s All-Day Grill, or Sunday night small dog thief.
I will evolve into the Prince of Bullfrogs. Crickets don’t bother me,
Swamp flies don’t bother me—I eat them. Alligators I avoid.
I urinate on lily pads, mate across continents at will.
And for my dishes, let the river clean them this time.
If there are complaints, toss them to the wind—they won’t find me.
Someone else from India can wash my dishes locally for me.
Forward all complaints to that religious office of Indian affairs.

Injured Shadow

In nakedness of life moves
this male shadow worn out dark clothes,
ill fitted in distress, holes in his socks, stretches,
shows up in your small neighborhood,
embarrassed,
walks pastime naked with a limb
in open landscape space—
damn those worn-out black stockings.
He bends down prays for dawn, bright sun.

Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he lives in Illinois. He has a popular YouTube poetry channel and is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, with several collections and over 668 published poems. Michael has edited three poetry anthologies, and is a Member of the Illinois State Poetry Society. His poems have been translated into several foreign languages, and he is also a song-writer.

[Words by Michael Lee Johnson. Image from Pexels Free Photos.]