INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Ali Znaidi
Silvia Scheibli
Richard Gartee
Deji Adesoye
Shutta Crum
Solomon Musa Haruna
Alan Britt
Fahredin Shehu
Laszlo Slomovits

Robert Nisbet
Gale Acuff
Rekha Valliappan
Fred Wolven
Aneek Chatterjee
Alex Ferde
Michael Lee Johnson
Jennifer Burd
Running Cub
Duane Locke

Helen Gyigya

Ann Arbor Review

is an independent

International Journal & ezine

Copyright (c) 2020 Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note:  in print 1967 - 1980.  Irregular publications 1980 - 2004.  As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 53 years all together....

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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven

Submissions via e-mail:

poetfred@att.net

MICHELANGELO:
PAINTER AND POET

Michelangelowith steel balls
and a wire brush
wishing he was
wearing motorcycle leathers,
going wild and crazy,
stares cross-eyed at the
Sistine Chapel ceiling-
nose touching moist paint,
body stretch out on a plank,
bones held by ropes from falling-
delirious, painting that face of Jesus
and the Prophets
with a camel hair brush;
in such a position, transition
a genie emerges as a poet-
words not paint
start writing his sonnets,
a second career is born-
nails and thorns
digging at his words,
flashing red paint:
it's finished.
 

ROSE PETALS IN A DARK ROOM

I walk through this poem one step at a time.
I walk in a mastery of this night and light
my money changers walk behind me
they’re fools like clowns in a shadow of sin,
they’re busy as bees as drunken lovers,
Sodom and Gomorrah before this salt pillar falls.

In a shadow of red rose pedals
drunken lovers walk changing Greek and Roman
currency to Jewish money or Tyrian shekels-
they’re fools, all fools, at what they do.
Everyone’s life is a conflict.
They’re my lovers and my sinners
I can’t sleep at night without them
by my bed grass near that sea of Galilee.
Fish in my cloth nets beget my friends, my converts.
I pray in this garden alone sweat
while my disciples whitewash their dreams.

The rose has a tender thorn compared to my arrest,
and soon crucifixion.

It’s here this morning and this night come together,
where this sea and this land depart,
where these villages stone and mortar crumble.

I’m but a poet of this ministry,
rose petals in a dark room fall.
Everyone’s life is a conflict.
But mine is mastery of light and neon night
and I walk behind these footsteps of no one.
 

RAIN

In the rain,
this thunder
on his way home
he rebelled.
He a disco dancer,
single Friday night award winner
on the floor.  High school dropout.
He drove off the road edge.
He was drunk, Jack Daniel’s
was his driving instructor.
Jack Daniel bottle left at grave.
It never rains in a dry casket.
Shelter under this roof,
no worries about cops-
anymore.
 

WALTZ, FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

December 24^th, I find footprints in this snow, yours frozen, our broken   
dreams.
Will your lawyer Grinch my wallet, fleece me while I pray to Jesus Christ tonight?
Even the devil stoked in flames has standards, jukebox baby.
Even Jesus suffers with the poor, feels lonely on winter moon distant planets.
Don’t torture me, let me drive you home in our old Mack dump truck.
Hear these sounds, new records on this old radio.
Care to dance a new waltz
renew, no mirages just free no chains-
or drift back to those old vintage footprints-
fog covering over old snow?

Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, Illinois and Canada