Long Wafer Poems

Was this a bold  endeavour or worst-case high risk plot?
 In one sense I was caught between two poles apart  concerns.
One must never underestimate indeed trivialise a devilish 
difficult decision.
A decision that may...

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"The Crow Bar"

she said,
here I bury my dead,
you can hear them sleeping
somnulent forget-me-nots,
snoring blithely unaware,
in neat rows between 
the thick,
ink injected lines,
their soiled lives
ploughed and 
turned over 
replanted
sunnyside down
expunged and 
wrung out

eventually,
not totally oblivious, 
they...

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“Concrete Hearts, the Deep End Keys and the Miniaturist's Poetry of Sleep”

Following the Babel paths,
where footprints progress
like rough-hewn braille,
temptation shows itself well deep
to be turned and touched,
substantially labyrinth

The Open 
is lead  
further in, and...

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“Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. 
The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable 
may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment 
to acknowledge...

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Upon a dark and stormy night...

as jagged bolts of lightning
tore thru the the midnight clear
and figuratively ripped the sky to shreds
(analogous to jumping Jack flash),
and ear splitting thunder crackled
testing the threshold of tolerance
zombies of Sugar...

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I: THE UK

Poling, Patching, Nether Wallop, 
Matching Tye and Droop

Plumpton, Lickfold, Puddletown, 
Westward Ho! and Throop.

Hole of Horcum, New Invention,
Boghead, Bath, Cat's Ash

North Piddle, Staines and Pen*stone,
Wash Dyke, East Breast and Flash.

Six Mile Bottom, Mudford...

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“Nightingale and Roses”

the heart burst open
like a canary cracks open its cage with a song
listening to the nightingale with roses
flying like a throatful soul escaping 
from somewhere deep within,
soaring out the cavern measureless to man,
that...

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SPIDER

Eight furry legs
Approaching black blob
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeech


COCKROACH

Periplaneta americana 
Out of planet, preys on women's tuxedo
Blob of fat, smell, monster


JULIA'S HAIR

Chameleon
Gunslinger, sniper
Death,myriologue


O SPACE

A junkyard
Sepulcher of machines
Requiem

CROW

Squawk 
Squawk
Gasconade 


LIZARD

A baby lizard
Drops on my hand
Check in


TELEPHONE BILL

Krinngggggggggggggg
Krinngggggggggggggg
Pay your bill today...

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"The Emperor’s New Clothes"

We write about beliefs
our prayer flags flying 
like chrysallis books on a branch 
of those higher deities we trust, 
submerged, we are always listening 

in our quiet hours of sleep
mostly when 3.33...

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"La banque du cœur"




To traverse the deadly deep canyons
of my heart you would need a suit of the 
hardest amour -
steel chain mall and 
crucifix is of no use,
you’d be better equipped with 
Jousting pole...

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There is an ancient sadness that runs through you,
Creeps through your core,
Burrows deep,
Bound fast with rotting roots,
The sorrows and sufferings of your ancestors,
Immovable in decay,
A proud heritage,
Of hypocrites,
Heretics,
And the occasional martyr,

You know them still,
Lain beside...

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The rising of the seventh moon in an ornamental lampshade is equivalent to a nice round smiley dinner plate that had been recently washed,
Recently washed is neither a rotating wimpy wishing walker and neither is...

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A Volume of McClatchy 
 (on reading "The Ten Commandments" by J.D. McClatchy)
	-  Cheryl L. Higgins @2001 

I picked up your book. No, I ordered your book 
special hard-back from the local shop
a neighborhood...

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Oh wow. Oh great. Look over there. Quickly now. Come on. It is the mitigating migrating mammoth mansions. Brick by brick and bone by bone. In a line. Travelling. Traversing the plains, fields and mountains...

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Don’t worry about being thinner
Get yourself off down the pub
Then go home to a good British dinner,
Of British traditional grub

Delicious roast beef of old England
Served up with a thick Yorkshire pud
With roast spuds and cabbage...

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"Walking on Water in the Between Worlds Place" 

when darkness came
the remaining, 
those beautiful 
transingularity 
neo-automatons, 
imbued with dark matters 
running through the wired 
dendrites of their splintered brain, 
where implanted, the voices 
of the...

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It is gone forever now, a swirling mote of dust, 
  above the hills and fields, memorial fleck of dying love, 
vanishing from tear swept sight, away from the world, 
  oh how...

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Bendy old whales taste like snails doing a backflip. But swarms of over eighty nine peonies are closely followed by nine bulls, an elephant tribe, a beetle colony and a party of laughing butterflies. Whose...

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Ashes to dust
If you must 
You will only end up in a bust 
You see you proclaimed yourself as a King 
In a place where they did not want to hear such a thing 
Defending...

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Michael Lee Johnson				                	
60143-1542
PO Box 486, Itasca, IL 60143
Ph/Fax (630) 467-1332/30
E-mail: promomanusa@gmail.com
Or:  poetryman@walla.com

(If you see any typo’s please let...

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While the dislodged pain flows on tear
I stand in the raging river,
dragging sands of grief in wafer
that seems to not lie still ever,
raked from river bed like sliver
of broken heart when it quivers.
Shards of your...

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5/16/22



I helped others and put myself in danger
There I stood by a manger
Weighed down with an anchor
Full of anger
About to put one in the chamber
Because of far too much rancor
In this world it's become unfamiliar...

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Next to me on the train
going home to the suburbs
is another guy stuck in a suit 
reading his paper,
a normal-looking guy
who suddenly says
it’s terrible, what’s happening
in Syria and Iraq, 
terrorists killing people.

Then he says if...

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I was seven ~ war coming on
living with aunts, uncles ~ parents divorced anon
the church I walked to ~ the road seemed long
in Minnesota ~ not woe be gone!

A Catholic school, name of Saint, nuns...

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did you know that the first food & drink ever consumed on the moon was
the “communal wafer” & the prospective wine that goes with it?
did you know that buzz aldrin actually asked
NASA
control
if he could have...

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