THERE IS A SUBMISSION OF POEMS BELOW: Please mention book release in your publication if possible- interviews, photo, book review available on request

Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Itasca, IL. after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Vietnam War era. He is a freelance writer, and poet. He has been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Turkey, Fuji, Nigeria, Algeria, Africa, India, United Kingdom, Republic of Sierra Leone, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Michael Lee Johnson is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc and Directory of American Poets & Fictions Writers: http://www.pw.org/. He is a member of The Illinois Authors Directory. Illinois Center for the Book: http://www.illinoiscenterforthebook.org/directory.html He has published 145 poems in 2007 to date. He is the author of: The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom. http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7. The book is also listed at Amazon.com, & Barnes & Noble. Book review: http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1777 Visit his website at: http://poetryman.mysite.com/. He is now the publisher, editor of Poetic Legacy, http://www.poetriclegacy.mysite.com/ ; and Birds By My Window: Willow Tree Poems at, http://birdsbywindow.blogspot.com/. Both publications are now open for submissions. Mp3 Audio files available on request for any of the poems.

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

Mindful, Mindless, October Date

Mindful of my lover running late, as common as tying your shoestrings; I'm battered as an armadillos shell; I put my bands around my emotional body armor native to myself and walk like a stud in darkness. Everything in October has a shade of orange you know-- a hint of witch and goblin. In the leaves between my naked feet and toes, as I pace my walk in the parking lot, I count them-- I count them color chart fragments and bites: oranges, reds, still mostly greens. Barefooted the time of the tears, the year fragmented.

I am male battered in a relationship tested without my testosterone no sexual rectification or recharging of my batteries needed.

I lie limp. Native to myself-- mindless of my lover running late.

Then she arrives.

-2007

Forked in Itasca

I am so frustrated I want to chew the dandruff out of the internet hair implant and dislodge it, for a lost love affair I never cared about and hardly knew. Don't tell me about my sentence structure, I am human in these simple words. I swear to you I curse. Then the ram of my affair falls short frustrating my approach to the world at my fingertips. No Yellow Pages here my love. The dial up of my local connection is wretched, stuck unincorporated in the land I approved to live in, monopolized by Comcast the robbers of the poor and the humbled. All I hear is the rambling of the railroad tracks. I grow numb in my deafness faint with my hearing. Did I ask for your opinion? I am a frustrated foreign camper in my own community. Of a village I don't live in, but I love this local village I lie about. I am estranged. I tie knots in contradictions when I travel light and far, visit home I long for a journey past where I have never been. Is this the reason I am lost forked in between the poet I think I am and the working man my bills dictate?

-2007-

Jesus Walks (photo graphic available on request)

Jesus lives in a tent not a temple coated with blue velvet sugar He dances in freedom of His salvation with the night and all days bearing down with sun. He has billions of ears hanging from His head dangling by seashores listening to incoming prayers. Sometimes busy hours drive Him near crazy with buzzing sounds. He walks near desert bushes and hears wind tunnels pushed by pine stinging nettles. Here in His sacred voice a whisper and Pentecostal mind- confused by hints of Catholicism and prayers to Mary- He heals himself in sacred ponds tossing holy water over himself-- touching nothing but humanity He recoils and finishes his desert walk somewhat alone.

-2007-

I'm a Riverboat Boy: Poem on Halsted Street

As sure as church bells Sunday morning, ringing on Halsted and State Street, Chicago, these memories will be soon forgotten. I stumble in my life with these words like broken sentences. I hear and denounce myself in the distance, mumbling chatter off my lips. Fragments and chips. Swearing at the parts of me I can't see; walking away rapidly from the spiritual thoughts of you. I am disjointed, separated from my Christian belief. I feel like I'm at the bottom of sinner's hill playing with my fiddle, flat fisted and busted. So you sing in the gospel choir; sang in Holland, sang in Belgium, from top to bottom, the maps, continents, atlas are all yours. I detach myself from these love affairs drive straight, swiftly, to Hollywood Casino Aurora. Fragments and chips. I guess we gamble in different casinos, in different corners of God's world, you with church bingo; and I'm a riverboat boy. No matter how spiritual I'm once a week, I can't take you where my poems don't follow me. Church poems don't cry.

-2007-

Hanging Together in Minnesota

Two thousand men on death row in the state of Texas. I've never been here, still I'm worrying myself to death.

Webs of worry travel fast, scan over my memory bank back and forth like a copy machine.

I refuse to get out of my bed I'm covered with burnt dream ashes held in custody my cobwebbed anxiety sheets waiting for the on looking armed system of justice to take me away.

Their loud speakers keep screaming channeled commands through vibrating my eardrums; their messages keep cross-firing against my own desires.

There must be a warrant out for my arrest.

I will not listen period. I will shut out the sounds period. Insanity echoes with stressed sounds.

It's Sunday morning, prayer time, I swear I will block out the church bells ringing on Franklin Avenue, ringing at St. Paul's Baptist Church.

Religion confuses me like poetry or prose.

I curse I will hang where Christ used to dangle; wooden cross-post in a Roman Catholic hole, or was it protestant reformation?

I'm the thief, not the Savior.

I don't want to die in my worry, my words, stranger in this world alone. I want to resurrect the dream before the wounds came, and placed me in exile.

Long before the sounds of cell phones came ringing. There must be a warrant out for my arrest. Mixed in war, thunder, and sentence fragment.

-2007-