The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom, by raising star, Michael Lee Johnson, poet and freelance writer, is about one man's journey into exile to Canada over the Vietnam War many years ago, his struggle, his survival, his road to recovery and strength manifesting itself through his prose, poems, and personal convictions. Mr. Michael Lee Johnson now lives in Illinois, United States. We feel sure you will delight in his work. Michael is a poet, painting his words with a tender and gentle touch, allowing them to create a broad landscape with just a few deceptively simple strokes. Take a short flight into freedom and read the adventures of an unusual life, touching the moments many with an average eye simply miss. Whether it be the agony of self-imposed exile for a cause; or a tender moment with lights flickering in the dark, the emotions come through. Here are two sample poems:

Skinny Indiana Boy

With a heart once as big as Texas
or Alberta where he came from,
the draft resister tries to erase
the memory of his sordid past;
coming out of the Rockies,
down over the slate, out of self-imposed exile,
he leaves the northland shaking
his bandaged fists at the prairie sky.
He was robbed of his own conviction
by a war that ended, others forgot,
there was nothing left to die for, to wait for,
no more protest signs to carry in the dark -
only the chill of the northern winter left
to remind him of what he once felt,
once talked about.
The night looked long in his deep green eyes
robbing his faint life away.
The scream of loneliness has turned
his innards inside out to pity.
Non-religious accept for those
weakened moments, empty nights,
vacant lots, he leaves behind lightless
ten years of those silent wars
without refuge.
He no longer speaks with bullets bleeding
from his mouth, he no longer searches
the quiet whispers that echo in the pines.
Now he is at home near the land of Indiana lakes
where in his childhood he created the vision for his
now dead dream, content to say nothing radical anymore-
just glad to be alive.

-1981-

Flight of the Eagle

From the dawn, dusty skies
comes the time when
the eagle flies-
without thought,
without aid of wind,
like a kite detached without string,
the eagle in flight leaves no traces,
no trails, no roadways-
never a feather drops
out of the sky.

-1981-


Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago, IL after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Viet Nam era. He is a freelance writer and poet. He is heavy influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, and Leonard Cohen. To date he has over 348 poems published in over 133 journals and online publications. He is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc and Directory of American Poets and Fictions Writers: http://www.pw.org/directory/. He has been published in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Nigeria, India, and the United Kingdom.

Author can be contacted at: poetryman@walla.com or promomanusa@gmail.com

Book Review by: Carol C. Marcus, Independent Writer and Book Reviewer, Editor
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