2 poems by Garrett Johnson

Of the Generational Sort

i was young and thought
i could keep an ideal in my slippers,
thought the oars were patterned
in the maze with catered semblances.

i watch as people undertake the same thing i tried,
weaving and sailing, and without a doubt the lovely crane
leaks into the grease that orbits their endeavors.
i am eager to know if little hairs can make this bread become solid.

the grooves i create are in records that were filed
by generalized conscience and teasing glimpses.
there's a disruption in my palette, and grey hair in the midst
of assignments singing. i think about what to do

and the ash tells me to step back, assume my role
as platypus in the actor's rear. this seems sufficient,
and no matter how empty this offering may be,
it is what trails my regarded hands.


Conversation

It was the horns by the gate,
the desert a thing to get mesmerized by
and the great tone, chisel blank, wattage to not fear,
basement roses, routines to compliment.

I followed him up the partly paved way,
he spoke of honeycombs that hang in thin air,
and thick air that was like billboards. "I am afraid,"
he said, of this downfall into what rises from heat

after one can indulge in an anthill that 
is not foreseen, and what the stick figure
horizons can mean in such a stylized deluge.
For this is a margin that is perhaps forbidden territory,

an awful skyscraper hanging from the telephone lines,
or something just as consistent, a gesture towards vision
that poses as both a disruption and that which reaffirms this consistency."
And he walked confidently, noticing the care taken on building step paths

for the first or second time, exalting that, it is built, there is no lie.
I walked alongside and watched the plow
invisible in the sky, the tethers on the ranch at a comical distance,
and receded into mercy and hesitant delivery.




Garrett Johnson currently resides and writes in Athens, GA. He studied Creative Writing and other assorted stuff at Warren Wilson College and the Evergreen State College. He is currently learning guitar chords and being secretive.