Poem From My Grave (V2)  By Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, IL

Poem From My Grave (V2)
By Michael Lee Johnson

Don’t bring the rosary beads
it’s too damn late for doing repetitions.
Eucharist, I can handle crackers and wine;
I love the Lord just like you.
Catholicism circles itself with rituals-
ground hogs and squirrels dancing with rosary beads,
naked in the sun, the night, eating the pearls
feeling comfortable about it.
Rituals and rosary beads are indigestible
even butterflies go coughing in farmer’s cornfields-
Cardinal George, Chicago, choke on the damn things;
some of his priest think it a gay orgasm or piece
remote found in naked scriptures-Sodom and Gomorrah
But my bones in ginger dust lie near a farm in DeKalb, Illinois
where sunset meshes corn with a yellow gold glow like rich teeth.
My tent is with friends we say prayers privately like silence
tucked in harvest moonlight.  Farmers touch the face of God
each morning after just one cup Folgers coffee Columbian blend,
or pancakes made with water, batter, sparse on sugar.
Sometimes I urinate on yellow edge of flowers,
near my tent, late at night, before the hayride,
speak to earth and birds like gods.
Never do I pull rosary beads from my pocket.
It’s too late, damn it, for rosary beads those repetitions.

-2007-
(Revised 07-2013)