Sunday night and the park policemen tell each other it
     is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan.
A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach
     farms of Saugatuck.
Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a
     flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill.
Running along the deck railings are festoons and leaping
     in curves are loops of light from prow and stern
     to the tall smokestacks.
Over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a
     hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses
     playing a Polish folk-song for the home-comers.

Golden crown
Dancing gowns
Swirling dresses
Are shimmering
Orchestra makes the sound
Watch the glass ball glimmering
Angels on the plastered wall
Painted in your preference

Perfect people prancing perfectly
While the poor are starving
Ruling class
Never lasts
Ages will not remember them
Years to come
What they run from
Is the truth

Monarchy
Stupidity
Docility of the masses
Enslave the brave
Make them kiss the brasses
Big fat *****
In the military
And brainwash all of the children

Wealthy woman
Gleaming gems
Exist in popular circles
Hasn’t changed much since then
But in the end
The money made monarchy
Will get what it deserves

Moving from left to left, the light
is heavy on the Dome, and coarse.
One small lunette turns it aside
and blankly stares off to the side
like a big white old wall-eyed horse.

On the east steps the Air Force Band
in uniforms of Air Force blue
is playing hard and loud, but--queer--
the music doesn't quite come through.

It comes in snatches, dim then keen,
then mute, and yet there is no breeze.
The giant trees stand in between.
I think the trees must intervene,

catching the music in their leaves
like gold-dust, till each big leaf sags.
Unceasingly the little flags
feed their limp stripes into the air,
and the band's efforts vanish there.

Great shades, edge over,
give the music room.
The gathered brasses want to go
boom--boom.

If I were a painter
I would craft a goddess, hung
Immortal to some museum
or midst the the dusty collection of some baron
With body, flawless
Form, divine
And all of her admirers
Turning the muses flanking Apollo, jealous
But the real fire, the life giving spark
Would flare mad passion in her eyes
And the thundering, A call;
Theodora, freed from the patriarchy of old Byzantium
A bearer of the old magic, ghosts dancing from another time
Her beauty would be harmonious
To the glittering brown-gold of honeydew
And bursting,
Like a symphony loud and tremulous
All the true aesthetes, trembling
That a painter got to meet a woman so
To set his heart afire

And if I had been born a sculptor
If I had been given the power to shape
My crowning achievement
The great anthem of my time, spent
Would be a face;
A chin, gently tilted skyward
The eyes, sparkling with that unknown sea
Hair disheveled, parted, smoothing the cheeks
and the glimmer of lips,
Softly pursed;
But the eyes, the doorways to that tidal force
All of the dreams
All of the feelings, trapped and rolling, the ocean beneath
Would burst forth; A thousand church candles,
Or a gathering of street lights.
If I were a sculptor my greatest achievement would be cast in Lady's Dream
Not for the skin, but for the glittering eyes

Or if I were a composer
Working on my symphony
I would have the brasses buzzing,
and the strings
A chorus of thought
And the melody would be defined not by the loudness
But the silences
The gaps of deep thought, juxtaposed
Amongst the roaring
The soft gasps of tide being pulled back to sea
and all of the sweet undulations, the rivers of a mind
If I were a composer the audience would get a glimpse,
The briefest moment,
Of the beauty
Of quiet
The deepness
Of thought

But I am merely a poet,
A poor shaper of words
Strung out on hope,
Gambling on luck,
Trapped, eternally, to the brightness of the sun
And lost to those whirlwind emotions that govern men so
And for a moment, smiling,
I got to know the wildness in another poet's eyes
The softness of her smile,
And if I could spell love in her heart
I would
But I am merely a poet,
A poor shaper of words
And with these powers
I can merely say this:
When I say beauty
and the thoughts fall loosely on the page,
hopefully bringing forth a smile
When I say beauty,
When I say beauty
What I mean:

You.

Stillness preceded the sonic storm.
Then the baton plummeted,
To summon low “D’s” from orchestral depths
And a hundred voices roared, “O Fortuna!”

The throbbing ritual had begun!
Rhythms drove and lurched
Through songs of Springtime, alcohol and lust.

Brasses flared.
Muted strings cast veils over the hall.
The chorus hummed and shouted
And tender solos wafted
Over graceful flute arabesques.

The thin white stick carved the air into segments
And by some mystical synchronicity
Instruments and voices reveled together -
Medieval Latin decked out in modern attire.

A baritone sang from a tavern
With electrifying irresponsibility.
The counter-tenor mournfully chanted
The complaint of an entrée roasting on a spit.

The love of my life skied her voice
To a high “D” then descended -
And we turned Fortune’s wheel back full circle
Rounding out this earth song beyond all comparing.

“O Fortuna!”
O Fortuna, indeed!

*July, 2006

Her aspirant heart once ventured
and then she was gone
No bugle at dawn.
The Songstress's cascade
bedeviled by the World unknown,
ivy festooned Water Towers
languished by the winds screech
siphoning the brasses cheer,
the pitch standing hollow
no longer lustral
merely a speckless  whisper

All that glitters (as Wisdom has told)
may turn out a deception, resold
to the gullible masses;
mistaking the brasses
for shining electoral gold.

Je me regarde
Dans les reflets
Du café corsé
Du petit matin brûlant
J'y vois
Mon visage qui se dissout
En vesou
Et ton sourire-poème qui apparaît
Dans les remous de la tasse
Et qui murmure du fond de sa mer noire:
"Dor, Dor, Dor !"

C'est un dor sonore
Doux et amer
Un dor comme un pélican
Qui plonge au ralenti
De son mancenillier en fleurs
Pour y gober une lame de mer mordorée.

"Dor Dor Dor !"

C'est une mitraillette de sept plumes de coqs de chine
Qui transperce ma dérive de ses plombs et hameçons
Veux-tu donc que je morde,
Scombridé anthropophage,
A l 'appât de houle
De tes vingt brasses de tresse verte ?
Veux-tu que j'amarre
Mes paupières lourdes
Aux crève-coeur de ton misainier
et que j 'ancre mes rêves
Dans les cales d'un port sans relâche ?

"Dor dor dor ! "

Et voilà le marc de café qui tangue
Embarde, cavale
Dans le roulis d'or de ta voile aurique
Dorlote mon gouvernail et me lit
Au fil de mes haut-le-coeur dans la caféière
Qui jouxte le cimetière joyeux
Où flânent les ombres des petites morts
Près du pont au-dessus de la rivière Saison.

"Dor dor dor ! "

.

Faut-il que j 'ouvre dans ton miroir la porte à la douleur ?
Faut-il que je chante joie, plaisir, contentement,
Jouissance et nostalgie, manque et absence ?
Faut-il que je mette dehors la petite cuillère
Et que je me rendorme en buvant comme du petit lait
Cette dor qui perle en riant de tes lèvres-nasses
Assoiffées de café anthracite de soleil noir,
D'ombre de soleil, de souvenir de soleil,
D'espoir de soleil d'or ?

Old and Tattered.

Stuck cold.
Like the vicious snot in my throat.
Nestled platoon of dew.
Molding the tunnel.
Configurated Japanese combatants.
Planted in the deepest of the deepest.
Halls.
The twitching of subtle brasses.
Lightly hugged by breeze.
It's nice up here.
Balance in intimacy.
Of such is feared.
Too young of Neil to use such diction to describe such another half.
For only fiction can thread through these lines.
As intimacy is scarce in the lands I walk.
The melody sits sweetly.
Like a whisper.
So clear like a resting lake.
So pure As the calm eyes that appear from the tree line and sing into the soul.
Standing here all alone.
The lingering glow of something that was.
Into something that wasn't.
Or something that never was.
Gentle like the strings "Down by the river".
An acoustic outcast to live for.
Burnout in a sanctum covered pine trees.
Cinnamon water, and blueberries.
Folded cough drop wrappers to be used as cigarettes.
Woolen blankets.
Mirror.
Year long beard.
Three year hair to the shoulders.


Garrett Johnson.