Paradise Broken

 

Rid her of me for revenge.

Take her away.

The fact has now dawned,

destiny, twist-o-fate.

Things aren’t as they used to be.

Where did you go?

A perfect escape

is just a cage

I can’t erase.

Can’t erase the thought

Can’t erase my word.

A perfect escape 

is just like a cage.

Can’t erase the thought

Can’t erase my word.

A perfect escape 

is just like a cage.

Rid her of me for revenge.

Take her away.

The fact has now dawned,

destiny, twist-o-fate.

Hideaway, destiny, all the sin

that’s been gathered.

How does a king gets his way with such a thin sail.

Such a thin sail.

Rid her of me for revenge.

Take her away.

The fact has now dawned,

destiny, twist-o-fate.

Things aren’t as they used to be.

 Where did you go?

A perfect escape

is just a cage

I can’t erase.

Can’t erase the thought

Can’t erase my word.

A perfect escape 

is just like a cage.

Can’t erase the thought

Can’t erase my word.

A perfect escape 

is just like a cage.

Hideaway, destiny, all the sin

that’s been gathered.

You’re wondering how

I’ve been on both sides

I’ve got to hide away, hide away

Sonja J. Johnston © 03-Oct-2015

That Diner Girl

 

Entwined in conversation on this excursion.

It comes around like a lone knock on the door

Someone who connects in an instant and for hours

Who can ask for anything more?

 

Hands and eyes and coffee cups

Soulmates from a trace of memory.

Nothing to define,

Just a moment of brightness

in the movement of time.

 

I’ll be your diner girl

You’ll never forget

Peace of mind lost in conversation

No need for any other distraction

To find this elevation.

 

We breathe with the expanse of sky

Until we have to say goodbye.

 

I’ll be your diner girl

Fill you up with the brightness

Fill you up like a coffee cup running on empty.

No need for a booth or bar.

Happy with us as we are.

 

Years go by, but in a moment,

We hear each other’s voices

When you hear my call

I will always send you my all.

 

I’ll be your diner girl

A spark of joy

To your troubled day.

Wish we could talk for a few more hours,

But already we are stuck for time.

 

Entwined in conversation on this excursion.

It comes around like a lone knock on the door.

Someone who connects in an instant and for hours

Who can ask for anything more?

-Sonja J. Johnston 30-April-2021

When Things Change

Check what you’re doing; braying at your life.
You’re on the side-line looking at your wife.
The years seem to have gotten sucked down the drain;
followed by the rage and then the silence.
All is done but never forgiven.
A ride is an escape from your duties.
You removed your breath from the family ties.
All the doubts you have made; all the faults built-up

Making a fool of this circumstance
that time never resolved. The thing never forgiven.
You try to leave it, but the tremor piles up in layers

Pick a number, stand in line.

She shows her tears.
There’s no band-aid for the family you abandoned
Your stature proven wrong and the shadow you left behind

are the proofing from the vision of the words you never gave.

Sonja J. Johnston 5-Apr-2021

Bonds

 

Once we were nudes,

Rippling in the wind,

Broadcasting to the universe

With hands entwined holding in.

 

Now we operate by distant mental code

Holding families in faraway abodes.

 

Still, I remember that luxury of knowing you from lifetimes ago.

The grandeur of our step like swans with necks curled up.

Runing our youthful steps in woolen coats through the snow.

Small symbolic gestures, treasure boxes, of indigo and yellow.

 

The days to come bring offerings of memories never to extinguish

In times of anguish the theme of these moments will vine and tether.

More than a love,

A shell unbroken, hallowed even in flight

To our forecasted destinies.

Painted and nested in our sleepy visions late in the night.

 

Hold it in and hold it close

Don’t lose it in times of need

As it glows the most honest of self

Mirror reflecting soul brother, soul sister.

 

-Sonja J Johnston 31-Mar-2021

Hung in Glass

So you want thunder?
A crack in the bell?
I'll give you a hollow tree
to mourn and wail.


You shake my hand as a reminder
Stalk out my name.
Stage a drive-by which
only puts you to shame.


The burden's in a cage
The elephant shakes it's ear.
Beer runs sour
this time of year.


Cocks fight for control
and I am grabbed by the neck
But it's only a knee jerk reaction,
a kind of blinded theft.


Hello is forever more.
Friendly shrieks
Elegant outings of
Warlords and freaks.

It isn't so easy
to find the remainder
when you are falling through an hourglass.




Sonja J. Johnston © 22-Aug- 2019

RED CENT

Hey Sir, when you gonna’ make a dent?
With all the money you’ve been making, you haven’t served up a cent.
Time is sitting here wasting
While your fellows are congregating.

Taking arms in your video game seems to make sense
Arming your virtual defense.
The backlash of eyes burning
As the world keeps on turning.

When it comes to life, are you just going to fake it?
Do you know when to act or are do you just forsake it?

Everything is outside of the window
The sun and the moon glow
Knocks on the front door,
but you don’t answer it do you?

When the day comes, what do you have to show?
A filled up hard drive and broken down back.

When it comes to life, are you just going to fake it?
Do you know when to act or are do you just forsake it?

© 24-Jul-2017 Sonja Johnston

Landslides

Mad eyes
Landslides.
Hang-gliding through past lives.
Sliding through my buttonhole,
But I'm still in control
While others crash land in quick demand.

Harvard guise
Alcohol dimming his eyes.
Skin peeled back to scenes unreal.
No sooner than likely
The trash is full of fools in clown shoes
Waiting for those who can also
Help them down into the rabbit hole.

-© Sonja Johnston 11-May-17

Nexus

We throw our faith on the line;
A heartfelt shine.
A mad hatter's gleam
In an ethereally charged suit.

Eyes snap to the music of it;
The sweet hum carrying our souls,
Connecting us out of the patterned confines.

When they try to strike my pose,
it looks like Harpo.
Yet, it makes everyone laugh and sing a

different tune of boy and jazz.
I pick it up and play it on the B side with some seriousness.

The allegory is in each human encounter.
You can't just wash your body of it.
If you live it, it gets stuck somewhere on you... in you.

We throw our faith on the line to be luminous.

The hum, louder now, elevating the shine from the dew.

Music finds a way in.
I take off my shoes
Anticipating,
yet the melding that made this art as we call it to life is worth every moment of its profundity.

© 27-Apr-17 Sonja J Johnston

Freedom Funk Forever (For Dennis Greene 8/23/66-7/31/03)

We met under precise circumstances,
Running headlong like children,
discovering what it was to communicate ones passions.

You took my heart, but couldn’t take my hand.

I lost you to the wind and now I hear your whisper,

With lightening ideas too strong for your head, ambitions busting loose.

A great mind destined to grander places than time could amend;

your house could not contain.

Instantaneous, spontaneous, and everything a heart could know.

A freedom running loose and lifted.

We could hear it in the falls and the echoes underground.

The tides could not bury the song.
Freedom funk forever playing.

Flying back from Germany,

My eyes fading into your arms.

I was running from a wanted commitment
back to your freedom sands.

Society was in slow motion rolling by in your truck;  windows open as I bared my chest.
We board-walked and island hopped.

The day was on fire.

It was our last time.

I awoke one day years later to your voice.
You whispered my name as I arose from bed.

I tried to find you, but you were already gone.

You had taken up the delivery of love and overtook yourself.

I thank you making my days shine.

Our sweet gatherings in time,

The ethers

most clear to me,

dear to me.

You send me now a portal key and such wonderful musical outings.

You took my heart, but couldn’t take my hand.

I lost you to the wind and now you whisper

Loudly though me.

We could hear it in the falls and the echoes underground.

The tides could not bury the song.

Your freedom funk forever plays.

©23-Sep-16 Sonja Johnston

 

The Curse

The curse of the pharaohs
haunts through the years.
Be careful what you touch
in the antique hutch.

A cat in play
gets stung in the hay.

Close is the ghost
that can throw you some pain.
knocking at your door,
stalking the floors.

Do you take the gift given?
Do you throw it to the side?
Is it a big hot potato?
A thorn in your side?

Pouring oil on troubled waters.
It is the curse
falling ill as a bystander.
Treading water in the kill.
Reading Tomino's Hell.

Sunken in decline
Mothered in detention.
A moth beating it's wings on my window.

There is a plague on the lose
says the grey goose,
nose in the air.

Close is the ghost that can
do you some pain
The curse of the pharaohs
upon you.

A subtle little death
Raps at your door.
It may show up in slippers
with mummy beads.

It is so close
So historically present.
Dissipating like the very
vapor drifting.

It's a giveaway.
Be careful what you touch.


© 14 Sep 2016 Sonja J. Johnston

Sitting in on Hollywood

We’re just sitting back in our Hollywood world.
California, Gandolfini, bright eyes and nutinies.
Sensies puffing life into our cloud servers
Blinded by the lack of snow living in this bubble.


The mirrors are up in this deviled maze.
Our useless guide cannot change our gaze
Sources say we are ignited, pinned, dying, and reckless.
One more click and we are home eating breakfast.

All of these lights blind our way
We are unable to see and unable to stay.
Red on profit-sizing wind
Green on the back of sin.

We’re just sitting back in our Hollywood world.
California, Gandolfini, bright eyes and nutinies.
Sensies puffing life into our cloud servers
Blinded by the lack of snow living in this bubble.

© 15 Sep 2016  Sonja J. Johnston

Never Held Like the Ground and Sky

Instilled in the treatment of childhood,
laughing in the willows with friends.
Hot loaves of bread eaten beneath leaf piles;
the comforting cocooning into ice tunnels.


The quartet revolved around the circumstance.

But, behind doors closed, secrets were kept.

Beside a coat leg, testing with the glance of an eye.

An arms length of incredulity,
unable to truly hold it.



In the sky, a solivagant seagull.

The magic pushed in.
Push pin, and memory of a bloodied finger.


Scraping the batter to a crescent moon.

Patter in the pattern returning to the yard
to lay in the grass that held me like the sky.



-Sonja J. Johnston © 08-Jan-2016

Misted Up

You tell me today of things I've yet to know.
Of misting up to the heavens as I breath it all in.

Smeeching my soul
A fohat that invades my ride.

Awake my divine release of this dividing light.
All I have to do is to say it and the feeling is there.
 The burst between here and so near to there.

I wave in this breath, a new goodbye;
Things that can only be spoken alone and to the sky.
You and I know this well.

See you in the mist sometime behind my eyes.
In this promise today
You reached from that place
and made me feel that misting of our souls.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 30-Dec-2015

Spectral Sounding

Sounding the shore rocks
making hollow echo's
like water clasping and letting go.

Your dawn is waking;
moving like a flutter on my
shoulders aching.

Brother over the waters;
brother over the sails,
the sea we travel is heavy;
the skies turbulent and pale.

Moving to the pictures
damaged by the shocked birth
of something larger undertow.

Others wear their wool vests with watch fobs.
It is unseasonable, but we didn't particularly
find the door to perfection.

It was already in us if we only knew it.
Precarious, and on the edge of two worlds.

I sound the shore rocks.
You shake from your sleep.


Echos, echos,
carry them close.
Hear the clasping of water,
and of the letting go.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 27-Dec-2015

 

Nightingale

Times that stuck, got struck from the itinerary.
A hole in my favorite sweater,
where the soul shown through slightly.

Brazil nuts opened
Meats flavoring the tonal frequencies.

Sun swelling the carpet under toe
All the clocks chiming and clanging.

You cull the memories.

Foredone earthy matter.
Times that mattered

Eyes chime familiar glows.
Time slows.

We are caught in that speck of sunlight.

Glasses clang.
Our clothes are wet with angels
singing over our shoulders.

Nightingales in the mist of the evening.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 26-Dec-2015

In the Afterglow

Lights collide.
Embronic brine takes form in the atmosphere.
Screaming beautiful fireball from afar
expelling light casts upon the canvas of sky.

Vaporous and blinding, we stop to watch with wonder.
 Our own battles forced to outshine and extinguish;
burning to ash white.

Fading into distant waters,
We return to the glow of the universe.

By starlight

We sweat in the stage light,
in the afterglow.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 28-Sep-2015

Can't Shake You

We are actors
We are lovers too.
We are killers
with the back-stage crew.

You are in your neverland and
I can't shake you from my dream.


You shine your knives living other lives
Yet we pass glances at our different selves
Knowing full well of the
acts, the loves, the sharpening of knives.

I will not not give up knowing.
I give in.

Dream lover,
Connected soul,
Unsolved armored trooper.

Seven on seven and into the night.
Dashing the lights, camera shy in the fire fight.

I dance with your
embers that eat me away
like coals in the fire.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 27-Dec-2015

Elevate

Who knew that hiding under my bed,
Afraid of some violation of self would end me up
Outside of my body?



When I started to sleep atop,
I didn’t want a pillow.


I was but five when I first took flight.
Pulling out through my toes and though the sheets.



My framework feeling the framework around me.
Sometimes I could feel myself pulling through the inside of the springs of my bed,
Sometimes it was through the walls and pipes therein. 

Then, to the skies and electrical lines;
to houses of people I didn’t know. 
Down the road, I would go.


At some odd moment in time,
like to sell something at the holidays,
I would know a picture on the wall of someone down the road.



It wasn’t really until a speech class in eleventh grade,
I came to understand the defined:
Out-of-Body Experience.



Was I broken?  
Could it be because I was adopted?
That I was threatened in some way? or was I just born with this ability?


Surely I was not in death state every night I went out.
It wasn’t until Monroe, that I understood more and about remote viewing.


This is the state of mind and body that I spent my childhood, my youth,
and some of my college years experiencing.



The turning within is such a strong, provoking thing when we are in it alone.
Resources were like mud and my boot that I was was forever at a loss to explain.
The magic trick that nobody ever got. 


Now I find that I still remote view and can verify the details. 
It never ceases to fascinate me.


-Sonja J. Johnston  © 19-Dec-2015

Feather Weight

Closer oh the case we carry
another moment we shan’t wait
For if we tarry our time away
More luggage gets packed in the crate.

Intentions are lost in dream
On  flight decks we are waking
in transit beneath the sleeve.


Vanishing with open eyes.

Over seas, over mountains, we are
Like children, masters of music, peddlers of grand endeavors.


This feather carries much weight.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 19-Dec-2015

Just an Echo Away

For years we have been in the dark,
shut under sight
of the waking dawn's precious light
with the burden of maintaining the confines.

Further off, bursting waves call.
This is how it is
and it's damn hard to make the day shine
with your soul left behind.

We think back to those days of hide and seek
our waving hands and trailing feet.
Time was us running in the wild
leaving trails in the snow by the mile.

Yet, awake in this moment of meet and greet.
We are deep in the precious tonotopic call and response
where inclinations beckon.

Just an echo away
where stars take flight,
paint me in yellow and white.
As all is just an echo away.

Listen for for it,
We are just an echo away.


Sonja J. Johnston © 10-Dec-2015.
 

Keeping In Mind

The sun rolls up its sleeves

As the day moves forward.

Faces, like abstracts

shift in and out of the hemisphere.

You've been livin' the mad life

corrupted and unsound.

No generic prescription can mask

it's inner workings.

The escape is a wicked

mission of madness and

self destruction

Your memories are distorted.

One day, upon your return,

the familiar place has a memory

but the parallel shows it's face

of control.

Cursed by day and the

light of it's discovery;

By the voice of the image

profoundly alive and watching.

A calculated, compartmentalized elimination

eats though and the game's in play.

The battle voices it's falsity.

It's a charming idea on a mission.

Standing, half erased in the crowd.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 27-Oct-2015 (for a project on  schizophrenia.)

Gyre

Days
Days when I was lost
Lost in the universe
I was given a hand.

A hand that brought me closer
Closer to my seismic duty.
Closer to the fashion of my soul.

Many have left.
Journeys mistaken.
Toes upon the gurneys,
Unbalanced with the time.

Now that I am here
Here in this dreamscape
I see you clearly, but we talk as if strangers.

Moments
Moments are fleeting
Forever fleeting with the hum of our vehicles
And sound of rain.

-Sonja J Johnston © 04 Jul 2015 

Forget Me Not

Is this the moment of conviction
or are you just a heart passing through?
Have you folded it in
or are you smiling again?

My arms have waved in speeding sounds,
boot heals down.

In this moment, the sun pours in.
You drive by into the evening.


The road holding hostage our lives in commute.

Yet, for a moment when the sun breaks free of the cloud,
there is that clarity.
There is that moment of conviction.
You turn to find me smiling.

All these small things are my conviction.
A heart just passing through.
My rushing spring in the mountains.
Lost in the moment.
Connecting in time.

Sonja J Johnston  © 12 May 2015