Notice: looking for legitimate chapbook publisher. Need info. On formatting, what is required. Or collaboration with an editor for poetry book or chapbook. Here are 2 personal website, slightly outdated, for samples. Inquires welcome. www.PoetryPoem.com/poetryman5 http://www.writesight.com/writers/advmktg

Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago, IL after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Viet Nam era. He is a freelance writer and poet. He is heavy influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, and Leonard Cohen. 200 plus poems published. He is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc; Directory of American Poets & Fictions Writers: pw.org/directory. Recent publications: The Orange Room Review, Bolts of Silk, Chantarelle's Notebook, The Foliate Oak Online Literary Magazine, Poetry Cemetery, Official Site of Laura Hird, The Centrifugal Eye, Adagio Verse Quarterly, Scorched Earth Publishing, and many others. Published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Nigeria Africa, India, United Kingdom.

Many additional poem, too many to mention here.

Michael Lee Johnson
60143-1542 PO Box 486 Itasca, IL 60143 Ph/Fax (630) 467-1332/30 E-mail: promomanusa@gmail.com Or: poetryman@walla.com

Editorial comment & corrections welcome.

Bread Crumbs for Starving Birds

Smiling across the ravine, snow cloaked footbridge. Prickly ropes slick with ice, snow clad boards pepper sprinkled with raccoon tracks, virgin markers, a fresh first trail.

Across and safe, I toss yellow bread crumbs onto white snow, for starving birds.

Now That I Desire

Now that I desire to be close to you like two occupants sharing a twin bed sensing the warmth of sweating shoulders, hungering for your flesh like wild wolf leaning over empty carcass, you're off searching unexplored cliffs & climbing dangerous mountain tops, capturing bumblebees in broken beer bottles for biology class, pleasing plants & parachuting from clouds for fun. In clouds you're closer to life & nonsense, a princess of absurdity, collector of dreams & silent sounds. In clouds you build your own fantasy, share it with select celebrities. But till this captive discovers a cure for caring, a way of rescuing insatiable insanity, or lives long enough to be patient in longing for you- you must be vigilant, for with time snow will surely blanket over this warm desire.

Catch On The Fly

Full barrel up 53 north, heading to Lake Zurich, IL, Christian talk radio 1660 on the radio dial, crisp winter day sunbeams dancing down on the pavement like midgets. 85 mph in a 65 mph zone, just to aggravate the police, black Chevy S10 pick up, shows what a deviant I am in dark colors. Running late for a client appointment, creating poems on a small hand held recorder knowing there is not payment for this madness in this little captured taped area of words. Headlights down the highway for a legacy into the future, day dreaming like a fool obsessed. Working out the layout of this poem or getting my ego in place, I will catch up with the imagery when I get back home. This is my life, a poem in the middle of the highway. Scampering, no one catches me when I'm speeding like this.

Coffee Time, Fuller's Restaurant (Edmonton Alberta Canada)

June 29th, 1980 3 a.m. & I'm getting older by the minute. Thinking about it makes me tired. Outside traffic crawls slowly over slippery pavement like inebriated turtles. Inside, at the coffee counter, I flirt with a waitress- fresh young fruit from Montreal. She insists on calling me Vincent Price & speaking French in Alberta. I'm trying to read Periods Of The Moon, By Irving Layton, selecting the human Condition, repetition, & insomnia as My main themes. Next to me, a street gypsy drooping over the counter beside me, pulling scraps of dog-eared aged newsprint From a doggie bag. She stares squint eyed at a picture of John F Kennedy for 2 hours, manages to laugh an incredible 29 times, Sorry, 30 times, 31. Counting makes me tired, makes me take notice of the gypsy & disapprove.

Silent Moonlight

Love lost in silent moonlight tortures heart with rising sun. Silence snores. Sunlight scatters shadows in spotty rain.

Cicada Bugs & Carol

I walk this pain & joy like a deity with you 4 life it seems inhabits us like a run on sentence 4 no assumed reason. 17 years together since the last calling of the cicadas- nothingness but for their noise, loud buzzing wings, no reason to stay no reason to part. We smell Lilacs bushes together briefly- take down an apple or 2- ride rusty old bicycles together to a destination neither of us have been to before. Nymphs drop to the ground & burrow the wood, again. Will I see you in 2024?

Dove Poem

I hear scratch of little dove feet I hear peck of little dove bill in bird seed basket on my balcony- in near silence on rain filled afternoon- thunderstorm, lightening overhead dark, cramped up with rage, holds off a minute so I may hear these sounds.

My Lady, Maria

Like a good Rembrandt, or a unique bar of soap carefully handcrafted, shaped into a delicious figure with hot butter knife, you are natural, beautiful, proficient, honest as opposed to fake.

Pickle Juiced

My skeleton is in a large glass jar- x-rayed for dental remains, half dead, detained & vibrating in nerves endings. I walk through this night pickled juiced, caged in. I know who I am by the words I type, the fonts I chose, the poems that didn't nurture in my brain, aborted. Behind my shack a trailer park playground of juvenile tormentors shove basketballs through netted rims. A skinny redhead named Randy urinates then hammers his basketball against the side of my bathroom wall for practice- shatters glass, the scent of ice blue Aqua Velva permeates shaky shadows on the wall. But these pesky human insects are gone my midnight. The displeasure of the laundry mat doors slamming relentless against my living room wall lock down at 1 am. Cordless, powered by inebriation I toss this fried skeleton box into a cheap twin bed, wrestle with the quiet for 3 hours. April 15th, taxes are due. Poverty is a pair of scissors cutting dull across the foreskin.

Gotham, Oil On Canvas

Chatty women at the dining table in 19th century garb- red hats & hair pins caked with rubies, ghostly faces acutely obscured, hue blue matted hair stretching down like dripping wax. Menus open out white as bleached sheets with no black typeface. Wine glasses filled with white Clouds, no red juice- begging in silence to be lifted up, to be touched by the missing lips of strangers.. 3 mirrors hanging from frozen air behind the bar away from the dining area- circular globs of white reflecting nothing but moon shapes. At the dining table ladies pointing fingers at each other, ears filled with gobs of paint. Dull lights in the corners depicting form, faint in near darkness. Their pictured world, frozen in time, is slapped on canvas. As the evening wears toward midnight the painting disappears, emerging silent characters into madness.

Blind Man In Café Blind man fingertips dancing across table tops crooked smile on his face, searching for a seat in a crowded corner.

Wind Chimes

The wind chimes on the balcony today, different sounds in all different directions- my thoughts follow them.

Bipolar

Awake night light jungle twisted branches of thought. One character linked to the insane personality of the other. Bipolar in a universe of singles. The fear of aloneness hearing cracks in your walls; the joy jumbling into the municipal pool in Hillside, Illinois at 3 am. Bipolar, bewitched, and alone. Late to work staring at your employer dart split eyes. Tattered with memories dancing on the tablecloth with glee slapped on the face with a teaspoon just to feel the sadness leave. Bipolar, bewitched, and alone. Seldom ever hear happiness that doesn't sound like a fire siren camping in your eardrums. Meds crank up & crank down; moods follow the meds or do meds follow the moods? Personal wars echo words in my ears. Even during silent times the night roars like street jungles. Bipolar, bewitched, and alone.