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Download this writing in the free chapbook Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems by Michael Lee Johnson (released 07/28/10)		you can also get this writing as a 6" x 9" perfect bound book with either a Chicago day or Chicago night cover! click on the left images, or follow the link below to order Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems

Order this writing in the 2010 poetry collection book		click on the book cover for an author & poem listing, order the 5.5" x 8.5" ISSN# book order the 6" x 9" ISBN# book

Rose Petals in a Dark Room

Michael Lee Johnson

I walk in a mastery of the night and light
my money changers walk behind me
they are fools like clowns in a shadow of sin,
they’re busy as bees as drunken lovers,
Sodom and Gomorrah before the salt pillar falls.

In a shadow of red rose pedals
drunken lovers walk changing Greek and Roman
currency to Jewish or Tyrian money-
they are fools, all fools, at what they do.

Everyone’s life is a conflict.

They are my lovers and my sinners
I can’t sleep at night without them
by my bed or the sea of Galilee.
Fish in cloth nets are my friends and my converts.
I pray in my garden alone; while all the rest
who love beside me sleep behind their innocence.
The rose is a tender thorn compared to my arrest.
and soon crucifixion.

It is here the morning and the night come together,
where the sea and the land part;
where the building crumbles
and I trust not myself to them.

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

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