Forked in Itasca

I am so frustrated
I want to chew
the dandruff
out of the internet hair implant
and dislodge it,
for a lost love affair I never cared
about and hardly knew.
Don't tell me about my sentence structure,
I am human in these simple words.
I swear to you I curse.
Then the ram of my affair falls short
frustrating my approach to the world
at my fingertips.
No Yellow Pages here my love.
The dial up of my local connection
is wretched, stuck unincorporated
in the land I approved to live in,
monopolized by Comcast the
robbers of the poor and the humbled.
All I hear is the rambling of the railroad tracks.
I grow numb in my deafness faint with my hearing.
Did I ask for your opinion?
I am a frustrated foreign camper
in my own community.
Of a village I don't live in,
but I love this local village I lie about.
I am estranged.
I tie knots in contradictions
when I travel light and far,
visit home I long for a journey
past where I have never been.
Is this the reason I am lost
forked in between
the poet I think I am
and the working man
my bills dictate?

Michael Lee Johnson is a freelance writer and poet, who has created over 355 poems published in over 135 journals and online publications to date. He is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc and Directory of American Poets & Fictions Writers: http://www.pw.org/. He is a member of The Illinois Authors Directory. Illinois Center for the Book: http://www.illinoiscenterforthebook.org/directory.html . He has been published in the United States, Scotland, Canada, Turkey, New Zealand, Australia, Nigeria, Fiji, India, and the United Kingdom. Michael Lee Johnson's personal website can be found at: http://poetryman.mysite.com/ Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago, IL after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Viet Nam era. He is a freelance writer and poet. He is heavy influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, and Leonard Cohen. Recent publications: The Orange Room Review, Bolts of Silk, Chantarelle's Notebook, The Foliate Oak Online Literary Magazine, Poetry Cemetery, Official Site of Laura Hird, The Centrifugal Eye, Adagio Verse Quarterly, Scorched Earth Publishing, Café Del Soul (The Cynic Online Magazine) and many others. He is the author of the paperback poetry book: The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom.

Find more by Michael Lee Johnson in the Author Index.

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