Articles by Michael Lee Johnson

Poem

The time has come for Mother Edith, and her Angel, too.

If you find no poem on your doorstep in the morning, no paper, no knock on your door, and your life is poorly edited ...

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. He is heavy influenced by: Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Allen Ginsberg.

I'm a raindrop Chicago baby, silhouetted in the night ...

A Metis Indian lady, drunk -- hands blanketed as in prayer ...

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois.

I walk in a mastery of the night and light, my money changers walk behind me ...

"Transition, is song, passages..."

"...life is a brass lever, a wordsmith, an artist at his craft..."

"I find your footprints here in snow..."

"...The night is a dark believer in drifters..."

"...my life insurance policy is a carburetor full of fumes, worn out filters, filled casket..."

"...tugging emotions out of memories embedded..."

"...refuge, folded, wrapped in cool spring rain leaves --"

"...I fall in love with birds, strangers and wild women..."

"...one cup of cool, clear, fool's desert gold..."

Once you've been there, it's in your heart forever...

"...Children...love the moon with small hearts..."

"...a raisin dry personality who tries to keep sober..."

"...Coon hunting, fox hunting daddy, I'm the storyteller..."

"...No longer a dishwasher at the House of Pancakes..."

"...reviewing the joys and the sorrows..."

"...Her head stuff, insulated with cotton candy dreams..."

"...in the single night, air alone..."

"...Go away, leave me thinking..."

"...Death is a passport, a left behind baggage note..."

"...chip off an edge of prairie..."

"Night is drifters..."

"...I don't like to think about endings..."

"...Just a teen aged nighttime boy..."

"...inside this thin, onion-skinned wall dingy with your dreams..."

"...laid back busy lives, consuming our hours,..."

"...Shots offered by traveling strangers..."

"...earth possessions strapped to my back rawhide..."

"...these sweet bird sounds lost --..."

"...People are dying around me, but I can't save them..."

"...Change is a choice where your energy flows..."

"...It's going to rain tonight, thunder..."

"...my heart is beyond the sea now..."

"...left to struggle with the bitterness..."

"...their spines the centerpiece on crosses on scarecrows..."

"...The singers of songs love bars..."

"...I am a temple of worship with trinket dreams..."

"...conversations idle to a whisper..."

"...Death still comes in the shadow of grief..."

"...I will be at my keyboard late at night..."

"...freedom school, free education..."

"...facing my own death on my own time..."

"...the light by which we love..."

"...swim into eternal days like this..."

"...a thumbnail image of myself in centuries of dust..."

"...I hear your voice, fragmented words in thunder..."

"...Let me drive you home for the last time..."

"...raise the poets of merit up from the grave..."

"...those who long to be free and ferocious..."

"...to hear a few slim notes for just transitory seconds..."