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.

 

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.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Jonathan Hayes

 

Jonathan Hayes has edited and published Over the Transom a Bay Area literary journal for the past twenty-seven years. He has also taught poetry and published booklets for children in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. His most recent publications are Ghetto Sunshine & Other Poems 1997-2023, Mel C. Thompson Publishing, California, 2024 and Purposeful Accident, Holy&intoxicated Publications, England, 2022. Recent work has appeared in Unlikely Stories Six, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, LAdige Review, Haikuniverse, Cul-de-sac of Blood, Poetry Super Highway, and others. He lives with his wife and their cat in Oakland, California.

Mongolian Woman in a Box

 

In 1913, a Mongolian woman

was condemned to death for adultery

 

She was confined in a wooden crate

and left in a remote location to die 

in agony from starvation and exposure 

 

To prolong her torture and suffering 

a small hole was carved for her head 

to stick partially out allowing her

to beg for food or for water from 

a bowl on the ground next to the crate 

 

The bowl of water was not refilled

 

The photographer, Stéphane Passet, was on

an “Archives of the Planet” expedition

bankrolled by a philanthropist and came upon

the Mongolian woman in a box

 

He did not free her taking photos instead

presumably in empathy and as historical documentation

 

What was her name, her favorite color, did she have children, 

how old was she, did she have a soul, and did her soul escape 

when her body died, was the wooden crate burned with her body 

still inside, or was her body taken out?

 

History leaves the photograph

 

The Mongolian woman still trapped to death inside

 

 

 

The Red Grocery Cart

after WCW

 

so much relies

upon

 

a red grocery

cart

 

weathered w/ dirt

and scratches

 

beside a homeless

person

 

GAS Featured Poet: Michael Lee Johnson

 

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet of high acclaim, with his work published in 46 countries or republics. He is also a song lyricist with several published poetry books. His talent has been recognized with 7 Pushcart Prize nominations and 7 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 653 published poems. His 336-plus YouTube poetry videos are a testament to his skill and dedication. He is a proud Illinois State Poetry Society member, http://www.illinoispoets.org/, and an Academy of American Poets member, https://poets.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."   

 

Turnips in Southern Tennessee Still

In Tennessee, the shadows of the southern

wooden structures stalled off the narrow

highway and came to an abrupt end.

Lost in the deep eyes of forest green,

closing in on night.

From the top of a Yellow Poplar

tree scares me looking down

at the hillbilly stills. Moonshine

and moonlight illuminate the fire stills.

Moonshine murders of the past,

dead bodies hidden behind blue walls.

Mobs lie in Chicago, bullet marks

on the right side lie dormant through plaster.

This confirms my belief that Jesus

only works part-time.

Let me look at this mirage

picture photo album.

One more time—

find the turnips in the still.

 

Steel Bars a Single Sheet

I'm Steely Dan Seymour Butts,

South America, trust me on that.

I can't pull up my sheet inside

these steel bars anymore. 25 to life.

No man is God in the cold or the clouds.

Isolated poets grab words anywhere

they can find them in newspaper clippings,

ripped-out Bible verses are a sin.

No one pities people like me in prison.

Spiders hang from my cell ceiling—

dance the jitterbug, "In the Mood."

Jigger bug fleas on my unpainted

cement floors.

My butt is toilet paper brown, flush.

Toxic thoughts grind on my aging

face, body, and declining health.

In this dream, I reach

for a hacksaw that is not there.

End this night & so many more

suffer in just a snore.