POETRY
BY: Michael Lee Johnson
Gingerbread Lady
Gingerbread
lady,
no sugar
or cinnamon spice;
years
ago arthritis and senility took their toll.
Crippled mind moves in then out, like an old sexual adventure
blurred in an imagination of fingertip thoughts.
Who in hell remembers the characters?
There was George, her lover, near the
bridge at the Chicago River:
she missed his funeral; her friends were there.
She always made feather-light of people dwelling on death,
but black and white she remembers well.
The past is the present; the present
is forgotten.
Who
remembers Gingerbread Lady?
Sometimes lazy-time tea with a twist of lime,
sometimes drunken-time screwdriver twist with clarity.
She walks in scandals; sometimes she walks in soft
night shoes.
Her live-in maid smirks as Gingerbread
Lady gums her food,
false
teeth forgotten in a custom-imprinted cup
with water, vinegar, and ginger.
The maid died. Gingerbread Lady looks for a new maid.
Years ago, arthritis and senility took
their toll.
Yesterday,
a new maid walked into the nursing home.
Ginger forgot to rise out of bed;
no sugar, or cinnamon toast.
Charley
Plays a Tune
(Version 2)
Crippled
with arthritis
and
Alzheimer's,
in
a dark rented room,
Charley
plays
melancholic
melodies
on a dust
filled
harmonica
he
found
abandoned
on
a playground of sand
years
ago by a handful of children
playing on monkey bars.
He now goes to the bathroom on occasion,
relieving himself takes forever; he feeds the cat when
he doesn't forget where the food is stashed at.
He hears bedlam when he buys fish at
the local market
and
the skeleton bones of the fish show through.
He lies on his back riddled with pain,
pine cones fill his pillows and mattress;
praying to Jesus and rubbing his rosary beads
Charley blows tunes out his
celestial instrument
notes float through the open window
touch the nose of summer clouds.
Charley overtakes himself with grief
and is ecstatically alone.
Charley plays a solo tune.
Mother, Edith,
at 98
Edith, in this nursing home
blinded with macular degeneration,
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace−
as yesterday's winds
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.
"Oh, where did Jesus disappear
to", she murmured,
over and over again,
in a low voice
dripping words
like a leaking faucet:
"Oh, there He is my
Angel of the coming."
