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Get Alex S. Johnson’s writing in the FREE PDF file 2013 poetry chapbook Akashic Shotgun				You can also order this as a 2013 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book Akashic Shotgun

Order this writing in the book Drowning (a Down in the Dirt collection book)		get the 297 page July - Dec. 2013 Down in the Dirt magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

A Bottle of Djinn

Alex S. Johnson

I.
His eyes slant like Lee Van Cleef,
his pockets spilled of
utopian lint!

He’s clean, your Honor.
Peering down the barrel of the solar god,
Prometheus has chosen guilt.


So be it.

The eagle adroitly pecks his
freedom corset.

“Bailiff, stuff this miscreant
in a bottle of Djinn!”


How do you plead, poet,
assassin, martyr, flim-flam man?


He won’t defend himself
He says that what you see is what you get,
the flesh of humanity emancipated...


Did we get here too late?
We caught him red-handed, picking the
lock of the Law with this blunt
crude and shapeless instrument.


It’s a harp, Sir.


I can see it’s a damn harp!

Admit these staves of music
as Exhibit A.

II.
The laurels, weave of
the grape’s tricky
navel, cool in sweet splash of nudity.
Eve’s lack of guile ratchets up the
bar for corruption—how do you plead?


I’m not guilty
by virtue of my being
not guilty
by the hair on my chinny chin chin
not guilty
of sin
despite being stuffed in a
bottle of Djinn...


III.

Exile in an alternate space
ain’t so bad once you
get the hang of it, Prometheus said.
Wait till they need me—they can rub
the bottle till they’re sore.


Till they’re blind.
and deaf
and dead...


They found his attitude ridiculous
and sentenced in absentia
to become a poisonous liquor,
Prometheus took the shattered fragments
of his harp
to a new and terrifying
altar.
***

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