Michael Lee Johnson

MOTHER EDITH AT 98*

Edith, in this nursing home
blinded with macular degeneration,
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace-
as yesterday's winds
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.

"Oh, where did Jesus disappear
to", she murmured,
over and over again,
in a low voice
dripping words
like a leaking faucet:
"Oh, there He is my
Angel of the coming."

* * *

ROD STROKED SURVIVAL WITH A DEADLY HAMMER

Rebecca fantasized that life was a lottery ticket or a pull of a lever,
that one of the bunch in her pocket was a winner or the slots were a redeemer;
but life itself was not real that was strictly for the mentally insane at the Elgin Mental Institution.
She gambled her savings away on a riverboat
stuck in mud on a riverbank, the Grand Victoria, in Elgin, Illinois.
Her bare feet were always propped up on wooden chair;
a cigarette dropped from her lips like morning fog.
She always dreamed of traveling, not nightmares.
But she couldn't overcome, overcome,
the terrorist ordeal of the German siege of Leningrad.
She was a foreigner now; she is a foreigner for good.
Her first husband died after spending a lifetime in prison
with stinging nettles in his toes and feet; the second
husband died of hunger when there were no more rats
to feed on, after many fights in prison for the last remains.
What does a poet know of suffering?
Rebecca has rod stroked survival with a deadly mallet.
She gambles nickels, dimes, quarters, tokens tossed away,
living a penniless life for grandchildren who hardly know her name.
Rebecca fantasized that life was a lottery ticket or the pull of a lever.

*Published in Listening and Being Heard

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer in Itasca, Illinois. His new poetry chapbook with pictures From Which Place the Morning Rises and The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom are available at: http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa. Johnson has been published in 22 countries and is the editor/publisher of four poetry sites. He lived in Canada during the Vietnam era for 10 years. All of Michael Lee Johnson's poetry books are now available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com. Type in Michael Lee Johnson or book titles or simply go to this link: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=michael+lee+johnson.