MATTHEW JOHNSON - POEMS

Matthew Johnson is a sports journalist in central New York. He has written for The Carolinian, Fansided and the USA Today College. He has had poetry featured in The Carolinian, The Coraddi, Obsidian Magazine, The News Verse News, the Yellow Chair Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Sick Lit Magazine and Ink in Thirds. He has poetry forthcoming in the Roanoke Review. You can find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Matt_Johnson_D

                  There Was a Snake in My Garden
 
 
Snakes in the early dawn never intend for good,
But maybe the dewing wet in the seep of this garden
Have cast your willowy shadow on this lawn
To cool the bates in your slithering, looping mood.
 
Snakes in the early dawn, when the sun is coolest,
Is a boneless outcast passing round and round
Until the birds of the air descend on my backyard,
Who squawk for losing another meal, or provide him Nature.
 
 
 
 
                                 Winter in Love
 
 
I love you in Winter, and in all seasons.
 
I love you in your black, now silver, snow-scraping coat
That now shines like a crystalline gown,
As the silver, free-wheeling laughs you shout
Are only heard by me, the sleeping city and hushed clouds.
 
I love you in Winter till you are toasty.
I love you like only love can be loved
When we can only be this human,
And can only be this young.  
 
The smoky wisp of neighboring chimneys
And the breath of the moon
Only brighten the twinkle
In your snowflake, tickled eyes.
 
I love you in Winter, and in all seasons.
 
I love how you leap in bushes of snow
As we roam in the flurries dumped by the sky
That give reason for your red scarf,
And another for why we hold another so tight.
 
 
 
 
                   Night Watching the Universe
 
 
Gift me everything about you
On this roof-top.
 
Let me know if you think
God is up to something.
 
Tell me your familiar things,
Tell me your scary things
That would make this world
Seem like small space,
Or death.
 
Or would you like
To roam the cosmos
Finding stars before the
City Light countdown,
Or until the universe drops itself?  
 
 

                                   Your Stories
 
 
Bring me your stories, and I will be your keeper of tales.
 
From your towers damselled in distressed,
Let me scribble not theirs, but your escaped lores and fables.
 
Away from everywhere, in the midst of this empty, plastic domain,
Paint me your passionate parables impressed on your purpose,
For I will stain and dye your untamed spectacles on chronicled lines.
 
Share with me those long walks in autumn,
Where the golden trees hang like mythic shadows.
Or perhaps where you dropped those last pieces of leaves
In those metropolitan cities, where language is wordless.  
 
Allow me to capture the welling tears of an unblinking martyr.
Tell me His Kingdom, as in Heaven has come. Tell me that God is dead and done.
 
Let me linger in your abandoned howls from midsummer, from beginning to October end,
As this weary patience dangles on the fringe of explosions, without escape!
For I will seek what you abandoned to hide,
And bring your double identity to light.
 
For in all the crumblings of the tellings and findings of what you thought you knew,
I will scratch your adventures of living proof for a world and heaven complete,
But all I ask, is that you please continue…