Battered Behind Dark Glasses
By Michael Lee Johnson


An otherwise beautiful lady
with eyes matted and closed
is not exactly sleeping.

The trouble goes deeper,
the doctor has a laser
light drill penetrating her eyes
that have turned thunderstorm
black with smudges of red and pink.

She tells herself this will never
happen again, there will be no
rebirth with him.

In idle hours she self-nurses
a cave of hurts. The lights are off;
her eyes are bruised and burning.

In the morning, still in bed she looks in a mirror,
Her face thickened with puff and irony-
she weeps splinters sounds.

Above her head on the lamp desk the alarm clock keep ticking,
across the room, around the corner, the refrigerator keeps humming.

The man who had his way is dark in her, like distant echoes
embedded in a memory or shadow.

She owes him nothing. He hears none of her sounds.

-1983-


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Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at: http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa.