Daily Archives: December 7, 2007

Willow Tree Night and Snowy Visitors
(photo to go with this poem on request)

By Michael Lee Johnson

Winter is tapping
on the hollow willow tree's trunk--
a four month visitor is about to move in
and unload his messy clothing
and be windy about it--
bark is grayish white as coming night with snow
fragments the seasons.
The chill of frost lies a deceitful blanket
over the courtyard greens and coats a
ghostly white mist over yellowed willow
leave's widely spaced teeth-
you can hear them clicking
like false teeth
or chattering like chipmunks
threatened in a distant burrow.
The willow tree knows the old man
approaching has showed up again,
in early November with
ice packed cheeks and brutal
puffy wind whistling with a sting.

A small part of my heart died today,
after years of special caring, something inside just went away.
An adopted little girl made me a star in my barren role
She was given to me, making my life completely whole.
However something has happened that I need to convey
A small part of my heart died today.
A beautiful young lady who is truly adored,
but even as a child always felt she was ignored
Different from others, artful by birth,
But never could or would accept her true worth.
As the years passed on as they so quickly go by,
she grew up and we just couldn't see eye-to-eye.
However something has happened that I need to convey
A small part of my heart died today.
I've been blamed for many of her difficulties,
even as an adult in all various categories.
I've lived my entire life, feeling remorseful,
Wishing I could have helped by being more resourceful.
I've made many mistakes as we all do,
But I know that I've tried to retrieve and undo.
However something has happened that I need to convey
A small part of my heart died today.
Recent years have certainly proven my point,
we are born to do whatever is planned, even if it means to disappoint.
Falsehoods and deceit I have lived with for so long
I'm partially responsible and have enabled many the wrong.
I was trying desperately to help during her times of need,
well, the time has come that I need to concede.
I still love this child with all my life,
but I can no longer deal with all her strife.
Blessings to us both, it's been a rough, rocky path,
and we will one day forgive one another without any wrath.
Take care of yourself, my lovely baby,
Let go of your old life and just MAYBE!!!
We'll meet again on some future date,
and we'll make up for lost time, it's never too late.
I wish to regain that part of my heart
that somehow the years have torn apart.

     1.
A waste in a wasteland
Of deep red batteries
Of passion and vanity.
As soon as I accept illness,
That's when I will be healed.

The glory of a year.
The story of amazement's teary ears,
Listening to my blood dissipate and vaporize.
The sound of stone-faced lies.
It's a shield, after all, the way men stretch their bodies.
It is to feel the sound of softness and loosened sinew.
You see them behind sunglasses,
The robotic leering from heart to heart,
Hardened ghost matter, spoiling flattered art.

He is sanity.
He is real.
I have joined the jester in his swampy lot.
Abortions of crooked rays of darkness,
Shadows that sear the seer,
Shadows that placate the lame.
Shoe divining tennis court copulations,
Spectatorship recoil when the shit hits the fan
Of the mouth, and the man is marred
By stink and stain, scarred
By soulsinking shame.

Craziness is a spirit,
The spirit of insanity, like the spirit of grace,
Or the spirit of evil.
I let it run through me like a sword
To conquer my organs, reinvent in me umbilical cord,
Born again to the steel of harsh magnetic eyes,
Green like magenta,
Red like azure pain.
Floating past myself, the shivers shake me.
My body shudders with all the world's blame aimed
Right at my underhanded story upon this gory whorish shore.

Sheer measurement is sufficient to confound the man half-square,
But three-quarters round.
I insist upon bliss and break my balls in the deadfall
From the snow-doused singing of spring
To the stop-drop role of summer swimming pool gossipfool.

It is around.
It is the needle's plump poisoned love chamber.
It is the frill of frost from fried chicken and chill.
It is the stain-glassy eye watching fireworks in the mirror-
Up close.

It is the no one man looking mealy upon class and wealth
And perfume and better bowel health.
Don't force it, it has been said.
I'm not.
I have to live to die.
I have to crash to fly.
Have to choke to sigh.
Must run to lie.
Must soak to dry,
Dry as the electricity humming in my veins,
When all along, earth is still the same.
A river is nobody's fault.
No one's to blame.
Blame for a blessing?
That is insane.
Blame the turkey for its flaky stuffing?
That is insane.

     2.
Why would anyone care about the man screaming in seven spectrums
At a world deaf to light and blind to sound?
Why must they rile the crocodile, Leviathan of perfect pompous swamp?
In the lost paradise, he's skulking past the woeful waves rolling in tumult
To the caucus of evil ages.
That violent horn blasts throughout the disdainful wasteland,
And it sounds unheard upon the surface
Where the twittering of birds doesn't seem to hurt us,
Yet the strings of our heartharp are slung halfway over the darkened shoulder,
Plucking, just plucking a tone at a time, a recess, then a refrain of misery sublime.

Innocent are we, innocent as we are lame.
Battlefield brain aches under drastic acid rain.
You, me, claimed to have sang the fertile birthday hymn,
Celebrating who and who and him who knows the musical
Instruments of pain, strumming prostrate, nerves a radiance,
A song to maximize the wiseness of the masses,
Mixing molasses with taxes to the realm-
The laxatives of Abraxas lined up on street drugstore shelves.

Our sores open up like eyes.
The brilliance of dimness and dissonance filters in like ice
And an invisible, tardy destiny darts through our best attempt at density,
High mass, a labyrinth loosened, sponged out like coffeecake,
Burning the worms that crawl wriggleful croaking and all.

The hostess is greeting the faithful at the door,
Jag-toothed, ruthless, halitosis, razor-clawed,
A jiggling jaw that roars- Welcome all!

I'm running
screaming for someone.
sticks like needles
scrape my dusty face.

I keep looking back
for that shadowy figure;
the reason why
I'm running.

Shadows of nude trees
enclose around me
as my feet pound
the leafy, decaying ground.

an owl hoots
at me like a clock
warning me of the time.
I scramble towards

an abandon cabin looking
for him,
but he's never there.
The door creaks open.

Darkness floods me.
I reach for a light switch
and turn on the moon light.
The flame illuminates the sky

as I walk into a garden
leaving the land
of the dead.
Bright flowers are blossoming

before me with luscious grass
covering the carpeted ground.
A little pond glitters
hot pink juices near the flowers

reflecting beautiful life.

The evening smells
like ivory soap
and orange VO5
in the bathroom.
A waterfall runs in the tub
crashing against the enclosed
façade as I turn to gather my garments.

A splash from the keg
makes me turn to see
my cat drenched as a wet rag
shaking the raindrops
out of her. She gazes
back at the murky liquid.
I cackle at the spectacle
while she trots off.

I miss her now
with each breaking dawn
reflecting as I wander
pass the lavatory.
A glimmer of soaked fur
shriveling in the sombered
room evaporates in a blink
of an eye.

Sculpt me
into blonde grains
with dimples on my cheeks
in the nude position of David.

Change me
into lavish castles
of Dukes and Stewards that shatters
when Kings come home.

Topple me
over with shovels and hands
making my existence
a flat oval.

Mix me
with transparent liquid
and mold sea turtles
on my chest.

When you're done,
knock me down, wash away my blood, and close my casket
until the next time
you play with me.

His fantasies of auburn
places near cracked mirrors
turn him on like cackling ice,
popping silence among flaming
people, consoling blue fleas
from strays biting the air mockingly.

He sighs at mocking-
birds moaning to auburn
lovers, flexing, then fleeing
from lakes mirroring
a sun surrendering to a flame
of clouds and a sky of ice.

He could smash the ice
between the giggling, whose sex mocks
his satisfaction. Passionate flames
engulf undesirable smirks at auburn
women smacking their lips at mirrors
while popping his pickup lines like a flea.

He can no longer flee
from uptown women with icy
words to match their revolving mirrors.
Strong fragrances mock
his weak cologne while auburn
eyes spit at his extinguished flame.

There is no old flame
who can soothe his flea-
bitten heart. An auburn
kiss could melt away the icy
bridge of past mocking-
birds pecking at flashy mirrors.

He gazes at the round mirror,
mimicking feminine tones with icy
eyes while reliving past mocks
against miniature, invisible fleas
He looks back in an ice
stance, brooding over auburn.

He cringes at auburn images in mirrors,
leaving icy flames
in his fleeing heart as they mock him.

The days go on, the rain keeps pouring.
Hoping something will brighten my depression, maybe the sun in the morning.
The clouds fill the sky, as tears fill my eyes.
I'm screaming I'm crying, my life is full of thunder and lightning of lies.
If rain can make things healthy and grow, as I stand out side in the rain.
My sorrows won't go.
The rain falls harder and harder as the minutes pass,
my heart feels so broken; my happiness,
shattered glass.
Usually I'm the sun yet bewildered by the clouds,
as if I'm some rain drop blending with the crowd.
I'm the sun that never shines, I'm the never ending cloud,
I'm a never ending tear drop,
even when I hit the ground.

I am awake. Someone
closed a door somewhere.
I hear cascading water
so I become a fish
and ride down with it.
My liquid mind swims
through the couliors
down the spiral staircase

past all the chambres.
I hear moaning; some lie awake
like me, in the wrong time zone
or like me overdosed on Paris.

The cascade again; half
the hotel is awake. Three AM
troisieme etage. Someone coughs.
I hear silent weeping down below.
There is every sort of feeling
in this hotel: pleasure,
pain, of course, too much of that,
mental barriers being broken down.

I swim back to my room,
vingt et un, deuxieme etage
and try to reset myself again;
overhead the dog star watches.
Hotel Sully St. Germaine.