GAS Featured Poet: Michael Lee Johnson

 Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he is a poet in the greater Chicago-land area, IL. He has 354-plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, a song lyricist with several published poetry books, and a nominee for 7 Pushcart Prize awards and 7 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 653 published poems. He is the editor-in-chief of three poetry anthologies, all of which are available on Amazon, and has authored several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 653 published poems. Michael has administered and created 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member of the Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/ and Poets & Writers: https://www.pw.org/.  His poems have been translated into several foreign languages. Awards/Contests: International Award of Excellence "Citta' Del Galateo-Antonio De Ferrariis" XI Edition 2024 Milan, Italy-Poetry. Poem, Michael Lee Johnson, "If I Were Young Again." 

I Conceal My Craft

 By Michael Lee Johnson

 

I conceal my craft beneath the shell

of an armadillo, snug in its embrace,

nestled near its warmth,

as insects buzz under the midday sun,

where stories collide with struggles,

and words fester like unresolved thoughts,

distant from the critics' needle pen hearts.

Their relentless demands, cold cash, 

and hollow praise layered thick with honey

on pages between verses, where every line

holds a lingering scent or memory.

I gaze up at the vast sky and chuckle.

Speaking in tongues nervously out of mind

shining chimes waiting for the next critic

to declare my thoughts don’t flow,

out of character, my rhythm’s a misstep.

I tally each word, joy, and sorrow.

One poem, one collection of verses for me;

One poem, one collection, a poetry book against me.

Breath shallow, breath hard for the heart with age.

I conceal my craft under the armor of the armadillo.

 

The Older I Get (3)

By Michael Lee Johnson

 

The older I get,

the fewer friends I got.

My teardrops fall on empty ears.

Imagine those soaked pillows.

Friends, some I've had for over 30 years.

Now, they are petrified by their own fears,

confined in jealousy, self-disgust, or gone.

Evaporation takes over the space where leftovers are stored.

They left my world nibbling on little, left behind.

My abysmal room, insane, schizophrenic

smells of pending death. Do my crying, do my praying.

Brian Wilson, “In My Room.”

Prayers seldom go beyond my ceiling,

mystically tucked back inside my brain.

Growing older, wiser, figured out nothing at all;

nothing worth worrying about.

Less tolerance, more self-opened space,

fewer gutless enablers, as time passes, doors close.

Old doors don’t squeak, no need for WD-40.

Key phrase: they die or show their true colors.

The older I get, the fewer friends I got.

I start best when the world awakens, roosters crow.

I fall asleep, like my mother, into slow-wave sleep.

 

Su Zi's Review of Father Tectonic by Robert Frede Kenter

When the Book Itself is Art

While the history of the artist book may have begun, as Wikipedia states, with illustrated manuscripts, and continued into our times with citations that include major art movements, discussions of art books contain two crucial elements: the object is a deliberate artistic creation, and the object is intended to function as a readable entity. Oftentimes, the experience of seeing an artist book might be in a restricted situation such as a museum, where the object itself is displayed but not touchable. Oftentimes, the lack of tactile interaction with the object lessens the experience of engaging with an artist book, as it is possible that the tactile experience is a significant part of experiencing the art. However, historical artifacts are fragile, and our experience of them must allow for respect and reverence to still the fingers’ lust to experience materials perhaps no longer available. Contemporary artist books are also rare, but still available, and any bibliophile with a personal library ought to include such entities in their collection.

Of the artist books available, one consistently delicious producer of artists books is Ethel, which reliably produces poetry chapbooks of extraordinary beauty. Typically, an edition of any book in their series will feature a cover involving physical collage that involves actual stitching, and editions tend to stay under one hundred copies. While it is true that many editions from the press are rightfully held in special collections, it is also possible to own a copy, to have one in hand, to touch the art.

In the case of a book called Father Tectonic, with text by Robert Frede Kenter, the book’s cover itself requires consideration: on a base of mylar, the work’s title and author have been printed, with the book’s cover image physically sewn to the mylar base...one can touch the delicacy of the threads rising above the smooth surface. The cover has additional stitching in varying colors of thread that form a grid column between the cover image and the spine, which is hand sewn—hand sewn in “toji”, a type of traditional Japanese binding where the stitching itself is a part of the aesthetic. Most stunning to this edition is a tiny pocket sewn on top of this collage, that contains a single yellow button. Thus, the book exists as a work of fiber art, as a kind of quilt, in that it is a sewn collage.

Artist books often contain text, and Kenter’s Father Tectonic is a full-length poetry work in and of itself.   The poems are muscular, with a maturity of voice that pleasures the ear. In “Milk River”, the poem opens with: “metal taste     methane/ his military   chest medallion” (16) and continues with irregularly lined stanzas that nonetheless have the fluidity of  speech. Kenter’s ear is impeccable here, with phrases such as “Ambling toward comatose” that are both macabre in semantics and lovely to the ear.

Experienced readers of poetry ought to take especial note of the poem “21 Investigations”, a long poem in sections that is the book’s physical centerpiece(pages21-30). The text here also employs irregular stanzas, numbered sections and the use of both italics and quotation marks, as well as open spacing with the text of the poem itself.  The sections vary in length, but each exists as a poem in itself, making the piece itself a quilt. The sort of quilt that Kenter is constructing contains some lovely fabric:

6

Mother when you came home from work

we went to the library

your black hair falling into your eyes

the light a certain quality of light

between maples and oaks the sidewalk

a vision through dusty glass windows. 

In the car your arthritic hand held the wheel

you read to me quietly as rain

falls between the cedars.  (24)

The emotional tone of love despite pain is a consistent element throughout this work. While the characters are recognizable as both specifics and symbols—a family—Kenter’s language mixes the violent or painful with language sensitivity. In this section above, each stanza functions on an assonant repetition: the o for “mother/home/work”, the  i for “library/eyes, light/ quality light/ sidewalk’ before the slant shift in “vision” to the sound of “arthritic hand”, the poem’s climax. Since this poem exists as an element in a poem series of twenty other sections, it is a poem within a poem, genre-bending in itself.

What we have thus at hand is an artistic consideration of no small weight, despite its  physical ability to fit into a simple mailing envelope. Given the temporal limitations on the availability of the object, it’s a wonder that art of such gravatas can be ordered and held at hand as prosaically as any kitchen subscription. That one can actually subscribe to the press and get such wonderful books for less than a pizza is a wonderment of our times.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.

GAS Featured Poet: R. Bremner

 A four-time honoree in the Allen Ginsberg Awards, R. Bremner has been writing of incense, peppermints, and the color of time since the 1960s, in nine books/chapbooks, and hundreds of journals and anthologies including International Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Journal of Formal Poetry, Red Wheelbarrow, Oleander Review, seventeen jazz poems in Jerry Jazz Musician, and Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry. His eBook Mirrors, from Grandview University, is available free of cost from the author. Ron appeared in the legendary first issue of Passaic Review in 1979  along with Ginsberg, Laura Boss, and a plethora of sanguine young poets.

Mega

You have an ego the size of a small planet.

You have to win at everything.

But there is no assurance that you won’t end up in a spittoon.

Perhaps, depending upon your luck and the weather,

       you will even be a footnote to history.

You have a target on your face 

(or what remains of your face after the cosmetic procedures have worn off).

Dorian Grey reminds himself of your life.

Take nothing for granted, my buddy, my pal.

You have been the winner in wars

     in wives, in arguments, in poker, in stocks.

In real life. 

In the olden days it was enough.

“A glimpse of stocking was looked on

       as something shocking.” 

Today, your earnings, your wins, 

     are subject to “legal review”, 

     especially if others who’ve triumphed

     seek to assure their continued triumph.

 

Having a headline featuring your financial ruin

       is no enviable position. 

Those who are featured on the covers of magazines

      which pretend respectability and honor, and

      newspapers which twist and disparage the truth  

      eventually end up recycled or burned.

 When the picture of a disfigured Dorian Grey

        begins to appear familiar when you look in the mirror, 

        it’s time to hire a ghost writer.

Take nothing for granted, old pal,

       after your eyes have been yanked and sold for spare parts. 

Your heart, kidneys, liver, sold to the highest bidder. 

Your conscience, vote, opinion, beliefs — 

       kidnapped, and held for ransom. 

No more “good old days” for you

       unless decency and justice rear their beautiful heads.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for decency and justice.

Not in this time and place.

By the numbers

1. Subcutaneous dreams ensconce sodden memories. Wishes from your secret self perpetuate themselves in a swollen cask, like a fine wine.

2. Push back the cuticles of daily subterfuge to find yourself lurking unawares.

3. The whole shebang wandered in search of freedom’s sarcophagus on the dawn of an era presumed to be darkened by the blood of the lamb, but actually consecrated to heights unimagined.

4. Your mental muscles move cautiously beyond the realm of sequestered innocence.

5. Your giving back the blue jeans you wore in yesteryear's triumphs collided with my memories of unsanctioned, filibustered gallons of hope and bliss.

6. Dubious explanations dominated our desires.

7. Curious endeavors cornered the market on contrived creativity.

her feet echo from wall to wall

her feet echo from wall to wall.

the quick air died at her back.

lost luster blew its whistle

in the whorl of her burdened ear.

all the night gave her was granite shadow.

the guise of the world 

could break her down, but 

with the weight of her grit and

the bulk of her heart

she turned back.

(A found poem. All lines taken from various poems in Sylvia Plath’s Colossus.)

GAS Featured Poet: Jim Murdoch

 

Jim Murdoch is a Scottish writer living in Cumbernauld. He's been writing for over fifty years and his list of rejections is voluminous but he keeps at it. He's written most things over the years--novels, stories, songs, even plays--but he thinks of himself primarily as a poet and is currently producing poems at an unpresented pace. There are worse things to be doing in your sixties.

The Curse of Dimensionality

  

…refers to the phenomena of strange/weird things happening as we try to analyse the data in high-dimensional spaces – Swapnil Vishwakarma

  

Poems exist on a page, in the air,

in many minds, as bags of words,

as symbols and ideas within ideas.

  

Poetry exists in five dimensions:

three spatial, one temporal and

one existential.

  

The first four are positional,

either/or or here or there

but meaning is contextual

  

so,

in layman's terms,

it depends.

  

Meanings are not are or are not.

Meanings only ever seem.

Meanings are spooky.

  

And don't get me started

on the observer effect.

  

  

It Takes a Minute To…

  

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago. – Jim Bishop

  

…get started,

make a first impression,

say the Lord’s prayer—twice,

listen to a third of ‘A Fifth of Beethoven,’

figure out where you are

     and what comes next,

make a cup of tea (to fortify yourself),

read a page of Being and Time

     and not understand it,

be silent (in remembrance),

find your feet/phone/groove/voice,

copy 40 words out of Moby Dick

     and maybe understand them,

be the hero,

let the truth sink in,

take out the trash,

water your plants,

feed next door’s cat,

travel 22,000 miles through space,

watch a couple of ads on TV,

ruin a perfectly good relationship

     and have plenty of time to regret it.

Habitus

  

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us 

– John Dryden

  

I see the old man at dawn most days—

mostly dawn, no later than daybreak—

with his plastic bag and downcast eyes.

  

He never picks up anything but sometimes,

sometimes he lingers—no, attends—

and I wonder if he might and he might.

  

He’s sad—sad-looking, at least—or maybe,

maybe I’ve got it all wrong and maybe,

just maybe, it’s the other way round.

  

He’s like a writer wandering about

with a dried-out pen in his pocket.

And no notebook.

  

Or I may be reading way too much

into that damn carrier bag.