walk away/like a fool someone telling you it’salmost too late your entire life,and then it is, and is thiscomedy or is ittragedy? do you outlive your children orbury them all one at a time? and maybe i’m part ofthis particular … Continue reading →

st elena speaks with the voice of a carrion bird the almost and thealways and the never and theneverything in between close yr eyes do you see now? let the map take youfrom here to there let the desert be … Continue reading →

owego poem, from a great distance or all of us fucked like dogs in the rain or maybe just some of us beaten with the myth of god or of us raped but all of us left for dead and … Continue reading →

the distant past, approaching standing in the sunlit spaces of late-afternoon shadows, he is talking to pollock who is dead but the truth is something else altogether warm for november but not                 … Continue reading →

Bare trees stand like black cadavers outside my window in the darkest dreariest days ofMarch in Chicago.A whole row of them, without hope, with tangled teasing tumescent limbs and branchespointing everywhichway without insane order,Creating a beauty-reft thick dense woods of … Continue reading →

The water enraptures my body, which feels like forest-shrouded silkAs I clip and clop my awkward way through the waterAnd then suddenly feel like a dolphin.The underneath of Walden Pond is riven by rivers of currents birthed from mysterious          sources.As I swim, the current changes from foot to foot,           now alienating cold,           now feathery warmThe currents caress my body like eels that brush their liquid bodies against my chest,          torso, groin, legs,           tingling and tangling all up and down my skin,          shagging me, changing me, freeing me.I slow down, feel the water like echoes of the past,Know that Thoreau swam and fished and walked and lived here.I feel the sensuous caress of history,          of self-reflection,          of rebellion against the ordinary.The electric call of infinite Walden seduces me with its sweet and subterranean melody,Like the trapezer who paints the last act.I swim past the why current,Feel the fins of curious fish brushing me.None knows really how deep Walden is,Or what the source of the pond is.It was born eons ago in the distant primordial past of the past of the earth,Born in the majestic ruptures of the earth,Born in the thousand-yard-deep chaos of water and stars,Lifeless at first, then slowly emerging in the slow movement of unforgiving atoms and           aimless instinctsAnd meandering, sensuous being. Christopher Johnson is a writer based in the Chicago area. He was a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a free-lance writer. Published short stories, articles, … Continue reading →

Glazing and glistening grey clouds clot and rust over the cityLike dreams pouring from the steel mills andSpilling their detritus.Red-black smoke thickens like scabs,Suffocating lives and dreams.This was where I worked one summer because my old manTold me to.Me, all … Continue reading →

Ancient stump with brown pine needles sprinkled on the forest floor.No sign of the trunk and canopy that was once rootedThrough and by this humble stump.Further ahead, a hickory stands like granite.Around its crooked and askew trunk winds a vine,Embracing … Continue reading →