After the Flames

She was no predator.
I let her
do what whiskey did with whinos–
tear holes in our lives
so large you could drive a freaking truck thru

I wrote odes and lymrics to dreams of vengeance,
acidic words meant to give offense,
where stale joy came from artificial sunshine.
The fire I felt
burned and feels sublime.

Now years, I find I’m lonely.
Comforted by none who seem to know me,
realizing I’ve been waxing wicked
about a woman
I shared a kid with.

Now that her world is finally tumbling
with her begging and quietly crumbling,
I wonder at my marshaling malice.
Did my fury
ruin Wonderland for Alice?

I don’t know,
I enjoyed the show though.
I feel sorrow that my prediction–
that she’d taste ash and ruin–
has finally found fruition.

My anger realized autumn.
The fuel that fed it has found its bottom,
and in the silence I hear my echo
smell old smoke
and feel some sorrow.

The predator, I think was me,
and I’ve eaten my last feast.
I’ll probably build her back her Rome,
because, now that the fire is out,
I find myself with too much stone.

— Michael Johnson

Regret, Remorse, and Relief: The Three R’s of the Apocalypse

I’ll turn forty this year. It scares me. My mother was forty-nine when she died of brain tumors. My father was fifty-four when he died. It scares me. I have regrets.

 

When I was a child, everyone made the future sound bright and amazing. They told me that if I worked hard enough, I could be whatever I wanted. I still recall the first time I was allowed to go outside and play in the snow. It was otherworldly. It was more fantastic than Alice’s wonderland. It was more exotic than any adventure Alan Quatermain was written to have engaged in. I saw mysterious markings in the snow that would start and end without warning. I saw mounds of snow drifting against the base of our house, and it was wonderful.

 

I don’t know what this future is. It’s not what I was promised. The colors are dull now. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as vivid as it once was. The wildflowers are caked in dust. The roses are lopsided. The windows are cloudy. The sky doesn’t seem so blue. The water doesn’t seem so clean. And, it doesn’t appear that anything we eat is natural. Our crops are genetically modified or rapidly grown in hydroponic gardens that give us bitter vegetables, robbing them of any flavor. I don’t like this future. When I was young, they promised me things that I now know are lies. It’s disillusioning. But maybe the problem isn’t that I was lied to, what if the world has changed at all.

 

Maybe, the world is exactly the same as it always was. Sure, technology has changed, but what if the world hasn’t. I’m looking at a glass filled with spices. I’m dissolving them before mixing them in with the roast. I’m looking at this glass, and you know what I see? The spices, the heavy particles, have settled to the bottom. The lighter particles are floating in the liquid at different heights causing the water to be lighter near the top. Maybe, this here is what life is.

 

When we’re young, we’re floating near the top where life is uncongested and we are allowed a clear view of the world devoid of prejudice. There isn’t a lot there to cloud our sight. As we sink further into adulthood, we’re forced to look through all that came before us. As teens and young adults, we start to view this cloudy state. We begin to see the motivations and machinations of others. It’s stressful. It’s that transition period between seeing as a child and seeing as an adult. Like a warm and cool front colliding, there is friction, static, and stress. At some point, the building energy must be vented, and they rebel, discharging their frustration like a thunderhead discharges lighting.

 

As an adult, we just notice more than we did as a child. We notice the dust now. We notice the pain. We notice the dulled colors, the smell of decomposition, and most importantly, we hear the sound of a clock ticking.

 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

 

It terrifies us.

 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

 

It’s the sound of time marching on. The sound of life slipping away. It’s the sound of wasted moments. It’s the sound of regret, remorse, and relief. It’s the regret that we didn’t become what we wanted to be. It’s the remorse of having missed so many opportunities growing up. But most of all, it’s the sound of relief; a relief that it’s almost over. We saw the movie. We identified with the characters. The credits are only a few scenes away.

 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

 

I got to see snow for the first time, thirty-eight years ago. I got to feel my mother’s kiss, her caress, and her embrace. I got to ride on my father’s shoulders and sing at the top of my lungs. I got to wrestle with my siblings, defend them, and share punishments with them. I got to experience my first kiss, my first love, and my first heartbreak. I got to watch my fiancé become my wife. I held her hand and watched as she gave birth to our daughter. I wrote my first book–something I had dearly wanted to do since I was sixteen.

 

I didn’t get to grow up to be the man I thought I would be. I look back and wonder at all the missed opportunities in my life. I am plagued with regrets, but after what I’ve seen, sinking in among the other spices, I realize I don’t suffer from remorse much. I didn’t cheat on my fiancé with that volleyball player in college, though I often wish I had. I didn’t take that job with the Florida Department of Transportation when I was eighteen or the Florida Highway Patrol. I probably wouldn’t have ended up homeless if I had. I didn’t listen to anyone growing up and always did everything my way. I wonder at these missed opportunities, but realize, even were they to happen again, I’d still make the same choices. I would always make the same choices. Why?

 

Whether I dated a different girl in high school or not. I would have still got to experience my first kiss, my first love, and my first heartbreak. The girl may have been different, but the experience would have been similar. I could have married the volleyball player in college instead of the woman who became my wife, but the experience would have been the same. It wasn’t the people in my life that made my life what it is. It was me. It was how I reacted to them. It was how felt around them. I am where I am because of me. I tried to blame others, but the truth is, it was always me. I always had a choice. I hear the clock ticking every day. I’m relieved. It is almost over. Maybe I have another nine years; perhaps I have twenty. The point is, it is almost over, and it is such a relief knowing that my life isn’t permanent.

 

When we were children, we don’t worry about death. When we’re teens, we toy with it like a cat with a rubber mouse. We realize that we’re moving like a comet toward our end. In our twenties, thirties, and forties, we fear it. We’re terrified of it. We think we can cheat it, but we can’t. At some point, and I’ve reached that point, we stop worrying about it, and life becomes peaceful again. I realize that it is death that sets our pace in life. As a child we don’t fear it. As a vintage human, we just accept it. It’s the time in between that causes us our stress.

 

I’m laughing at this. All of our innovation as humans did not come about from eating an apple in Eden. It didn’t come from stealing cultures during foreign wars. Every advancement we’ve made was done because we fear death. It’s rather profound when you think about it. When faced with the prospect of a murderer trying to break into your house, you will barricade yourself if you the presence of mind. You will look for a weapon or create one. You will determine a method of escape or a method of neutralizing the murderer at your door.

 

When you think about it that is all we do in life. We create weapons to fend off the agents of death such as medicine and guns. We try to barricade ourselves so death cannot reach us by putting hand rails on everything and establishing safety procedures to keep us safe. When that isn’t enough, we try to defeat death through scientific and medical research. If we can just find the secret switch to inside us, we can turn of death. And ever in the middle, are people playing upon our fear of death to turn a profit; a profit they will use to do the very same thing everyone else is doing.

 

I’ll turn forty this year, and it scares me, but not like it used to. I didn’t get to be rich and powerful, but I got to be loved. I got to be a father. It’s amazing how those two things are able to make your life feel complete.

 

For Robbie

I often think on beginnings

and wonder at mine.

I was born on a tiny farm

in the midst of turbulent times.

 

We spoke of death in whispers,

of the death of fairer kin

and ignored the ivory elephant

traipsing through our sin.

 

If a tree falls in the forest

crushing your child into the ground,

do you make sound, mother

or poison Robbie with your frown?

 

Why were we in the forest;

To profit off our youth?

Kirby’s in the clay, mother.

You knew the fucking truth.

 

We were rumored to be mighty–

a distinction we thought fine.

But, you had to test our mettle,

now Kirby’s buried beneath the pines.

 

Robbie fared no better.

You broke the gears inside his head.

Now he sits around and giggles

at things no one has said.

 

You thought you lost a single son

to the tree that Robbie dropped,

but in truth you lost a second.

Robbie’s heart just hasn’t stopped.

Her

Her hair was longer now,

a waterfall of curls,

a soft carress of autumn browns

on skin as white as pearl.

 

She had vanished with the leaves

like mist before the sun,

and no one spoke her name

until the wintering months were done.

 

She told me her name a hundred times

and a hundred times it was forgotten,

but I remembered eyes that smiled

and skin as soft as cotton.

 

Her smile was shy but sweet

and as innocent as a dawn,

vanquishing the shadows

and the dew upon the lawn.

 

She was a flower without a garden,

growing beyond the fence,

and though I yearned to pluck her,

I feared the deed would cause offense.

 

I’ve grown to old to pick the flowers.

I hardly notice them anymore,

bobbing and bowing and laughing

in breezes that dip and soar.

 

I was the first ring to escape the pebble

that fate dropped into the pool.

She was the distant echo,

that captured the affections of a fool.

 

Losing Our Spark

Alone in the dark,

I hear the car park,

and my tension is gone.

 

I bounce from my bed,

quiet as the dead,

to bask in the glow of their smiles.

 

Only one came home,

saddened and alone,

no smiles for me–just a hug.

 

He grew somber and stilled,

and from his eye a tear spilled,

preparing the bad news to be told.

 

They couldn’t remove it.

It branched like a limb.

Mommy, isn’t ever coming home.

 

The doctors cut and they seared,

but it was as we all feared.

Mommy is lost to us now.

 

I cried till I sobbed,

while my toys I lobbed.

How could she leave without a goodbye.

 

He rubbed my back till I slept,

and in the dark wept.

Nothing will ever be the same.

 

My siblings knew what I’d learned,

but in their brains fear burned.

The sick don’t care for the sick.

 

With our sun gone and no warmth to be had,

we drifted apart angry and mad,

then daddy, too, withered and died.

 

Now we’re humorless and irate,

and for Death we all wait.

Our sand is nearly gone.

 

We walk toward the light at the end,

scored with wounds that won’t mend.

Our final escape is almost here.

 

One happy soul there was, in this baker’s dozen–

lost in a sea of siblings and cousins.

So many hourglasses are waiting to run out.

 

We rocked with our wrath,

and staggered along on our path,

Yet, there’s something we should pass on.

 

Talk past the tears,

hug back the fears,

and live like today is your last.