Hello.
Thanks for visiting my blog.

I'm posting my photos, poems and other writings here, along with news about my readings and publications.

I also plan to make available the sound files of my radio show, Across the Borderline, which has aired for six years on WBCR-lp in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Stay tuned,

Phil Johnson

Wednesday, November 9, 2011


Where are you tonight
Bunky?
                                                 flying over
California shore lines
where we
jumped the rocks
at low tide,
battled black murky
January surf

      (I didn't
         mean to hit you
with a rock once
                    in the head
Remember?)

                         Drove
your brother's car
without a license
rolling it out
noiselessly
waiting to pop
the clutch
at the bottom
of the hill
where we thought
your mother
wouldn’t hear us

                  Where will we go now  :   out to Bird Rock?
climb past the wind wet promontory
dark windowed rock house
haunted by the sea
each last wave
sucked back
from the smooth stoned shore
a long moist breath
taken in through the teeth

No stock car races
to sneak into
 : I'm through
         the barbed wire
     Catch me
            when I fall

No ties or striped belts
left to shoplift
                              laughing
at the buckle
sliding
out my pant leg

                                The corner cop!
knew nothing

                           So cool
         checking records on the racks
we walked out
                               with 10 or 12 lps
under my baggy jacket   
                                             went home
to be bombarded
                                    by Bird  Bach
Beethoven's 5th


Then why did you die
                                             dropped
         from the sky
cremated
                  in that Navy jet
they loaned you
for your life

                                    3 days before
we would have been
together

                           Chet Baker
sounding his gold horn
still caught
in the slow motion haze of the 50s    can't

bring you back


© 1968  Philip Johnson


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