You took away my childhood
Robbed me of my early years
Replaced what should have been the best days of my life
With loneliness and fear

 
Never tried for your crime
Brought to account for what you’ve done
Never punished for my nightmares
As my mind replays every punch you’ve thrown

 
Somewhere in your drunken haze
I cling to the hope you felt just a glimmer of guilt
In the years after we escaped and you were left lonely to rot
That just for a second you had wished you had not

As long I have thoughts to write
I’ll stand up, I’ll fight!

But I feel tired

I lay in my bed
With no dreams in my sleep
I’m sad, but I’ll keep!

(after Georg Trakl)

after Georg Trakl

Into the brick abandoned house the tired mice run.
Curious slivers of moonlight peek in.
Icy wind scatters pages of black leaves
From an old Bible left on the floor.

Pink bellied and starving, they devour Acts 2:1.
A percussion of white squeaks begin.
In the demolished ribcage of dirty brick,
Their eyes shine like dogs in wet moonlight.

Whose is this horrifying face,
This putrid flesh, discouloured, flayed,
Fed on by flies, scorched by the sun?
Whose are these hollow red-filmed eyes
And thorn-spiked head and spear-stuck side?
Behold the Man: He is Man’s Son.

Forget the legend, tear the decent veil
That cowardice or interest devised
To make their mortal enemy a friend,
To hide the bitter truth all His wounds tell,
Lest the great scandal be no more disguised:
He is in agony till the world’s end,

Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago. He is a freelance writer and poet, heavily influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, and Leonard Cohen.  Michael Lee Johnson’s 1st chapbook of poems and his first paperback of poems are both available for purchase or download at: lulu.com.

Burning through my veins is a fear that will transform kindly into despair and sickness

Leeching slowly up my spine, it drains and feeds off meager insecurities that uphold my weakness.

I accept this shredded comfort of skepticism with complete rationality through tears that coerce me to hate.

Deep within is a metemorphosis that drips slowly away frim this fear of air that grips so violently in an eternal yearning to atlas; Triangulate

Seeing and intrinsicly enforcing my past to dissipate into a pool of salty fleshs spawned from a seperate, but kindred heart.