January 2015

FEATURED POET: MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era:  now known as the Illinois poet, from Itasca, IL.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 750 small press magazines in 27 countries, he edits 8 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  From Exile to Freedom (136 pages book), several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 70 poetry videos on YouTube. Check him out on http://poetryman.mysite.com/

Alberta Bound

I own a gate to this prairie

that ends facing the Rocky Mountains.

They call it Alberta-

trail of endless blue sky

asylum of endless winters,

hermitage of indolent retracted sun.

Deep freeze drips haphazardly into spring.

Drumheller, dinosaur badlands, dried bones,

ancient hoodoos sculpt high, prairie toadstools.

Alberta highway 2 opens the gateway of endless miles.

Travel weary I stop by roadsides, ears open to whispering pines.

In harmony North to South

Gordon Lightfoot pitches out

a tone-

"Alberta Bound".

With indepenence in my veins,

I'm a long way from my home.

― Michael Lee Johnson

South Chicago Night

Night is drifters,

sugar rats, streetwalkers,

pickpockets, pimps,

insects, Lake Michigan perch,

neon tubes blinking,

half the local street

lights bulbs burned out.

― Michael Lee Johnson

WRITE YOUR POEM:

Wyoming

The past catches up.

All day, smoke in the oil fields

blurred the sun, choked out

the last sparrows across the dusty plain.

Putrid strands of lank black drift down

like heavy cobweb in the dark, darkening

the bleeding earth where once

the sweating beeves had stampt and steamed.

― Sam Hamill

What drives your poem?  Is it the place?  The event?  Sam Hamill loves to zero in on the place.  Make you sit in that location.  Take in the sights.  Wyoming has wide open spaces.  What captures your space?  Write it on the napkin right next to your resolution.