Sour Mittens

It is wintertime and we walk into the candy store with our snow encrusted mittens in search of sour candies, wax lips and mustaches.

I play behind the mounds of snow remains,
at the top with icicle stuck to my palm.
Another snowplow passes and I’m and hit by the spray.

At that very moment, Randy slid down a hill and under the wheels of a passing car.
I was too young to know about real tears.
I still don't know about them actually.

That night, I  drifted off to sleep and took flight over the electrical wires, streetlights beneath my feet.
The tree tops narrowed by my waist as I glided over the geography of my little town.

White winds swept round our houses and the smell of sour mittens permeated the air as theywere  removed from the silvery,  radiator.

© -Sonja J Phinney (10-Dec-2006)

Spent

Hollow clouds hang,

plaster and paint

These people have coins on their eyes.


Deerskined scouts with bandanas, scourging.


It was found round the center cut,

Dark and flaring.

The tide winds round the naked ankle of a summer’s day.

Roots are harvested by a man with big hands.

How heavy is the sky?

Intermit, stand still

and still the meadow’s whisper.


The hum is in the beginning.

A Midget and tall man standing

A symbol of torture hung round his

neck..

speaking of witnesses.

-SJP 9-9-03

Sun's Up

Sun’s up

The orchestra of morning sounded from one
Cow to another
And in response, the commuter traffic.
The countryside dressed in yellow and orange
And through its openings, birds swiftly glide.

“Sun’s up” whispers Peyton into my ear
Like a carnival had just turned up it’s lights
And was taking customers.

I know these days are being erased moment
By moment, but as we move into tomorrow,
These words will remain written for these
Days of sun and autumn.

-SJP 30-Oct-2006

In The House of the River Witch

She sleeps at night,
With the covers ready to sail.
The haunted meadows
Tail around in play
Till dawn’s burning ray.

A pinch and sprig
She brings in
To make a tonic
That bitters the tongue.

She knows the path that is hidden
And can touch your soul with passing glance
The river witch holds fast
To the secrets and blessings untold.

She is the river witch that stories are told
She is the river witch that moves in gowns of gold
Wise is the river witch
Who lives shoreline

Wise is the river witch
At ley line’s edge
Where she empowers her spells

Arcana voices of ancient times design
And the seven blessings shine down
crowning this field with erratic sound
A girl finds some sticks and makes music
With the elements
Singing upon found ruins and
Waltzing the wood
Ash in her hair

While a child awakes
With the scent of smoke on her tongue
A dream-spell translated on her face
And given to her mother
Picked up from the crib

She is the river witch that stories are told
She is the river witch that moves in gowns of gold
Wise is the river witch
Who lives by the river’s edge

Wise is the river witch
At ley line’s edge
Where she empowers her spells


© 19-Oct-2005 Sonja J. Phinney

Souler Winds

The goddess wind now whispers your soul eternally.
She took the wings and
Turning them in her
Hands, called you there.

Forever playing the airways
Wild as you wished to live
Your life.

-Sonja J. Phinney 10-10-07

Antennas

On a rocky moraine we correspond.
Echoing and reflecting out to each other
like rebel mountain goats pushing upward.

The night strikes obsidian.

St. Elmo’s Fire in a moment lighting up our lives.

© -Sonja J Phinney 06-Sep-2007

What is Left

I’ve a bronze star in front of me,
But all stars fade away with time.
The season for travel is over.
No more good foods and drink.
All the days are passing and
Sleep is in abundance.

Even Sister Catherine who diligently
Would come to visit as a regular,
Has been reduced to a pawn on a chess board.

Airways narrow, bodies decline
Minds draw blank between…
Lost and foreign to self,
To the ability.

Broken
I see so many broken
With just enough sentence form
Or movement to state there is
Something still alive.
Unwilling to give up and throw
The final towel in defeat.

-Sonja J Phinney © 20-Sep-2007

Patch Worked

Unlike the medium,
I am attached to the living.
Taking on the life charge across the miles
Holding your pen in my hand
And another’s laughter in my lungs
As my feet kick about leaves in another country far
From where I sit.

I am attached to the living,
But how is it I am feeling so vast?
There is a network out there
A network weaving through our lives.
It is a wonder I can keep my
Taurean feet on the ground.

Sonja J. Phinney  ©  18-Sep-2007

Lemped

Hestia comforts near the dog sled red fireplace,
radiating the house full of phantoms and extinguishing
the stiffness.

A history beats against me analogous to the movement
Through walls and springed mattresses.

Smells of unconsciousness warbles as the people
Blindly enter and leave with shell-like gazes.
Possessed with spirits channeled though.

© -Sonja J. Phinney 30-Aug-2007

Two from 1986

There are doorways
We find from the past.
Doorways in which escape
A time in place,
Hungered for
In the moment of opening.

© 1-June-1986 Sonja J. Phinney


The Hand and its lines,
Paths.
The land and ley lines,
Paths.
Distant reachings
Within.

© 01-Jun-1986 Sonja J. Phinney

Catch That Rush

Give chase to the divining mediums in air
as several spirits contribute to the atmosphere.
All answers are melding as they fly off.

You can take your delinquents and take back the tides
On radiant condenses of sky.

Shining smiles that light your brain
and haunt your heart's refrain.

Send off your angels
to hover up high
Singing songs of radiance
With sounds of glory.

© 15-Aug-2007 Sonja J Phinney

Out of her Mouth like a Cork

Out of Her Mouth like a Cork


Her tears in your eyes
Sing a lover’s song.
Crossing over like a heavy current
She cut a hole in her dress where the cigarette ran through laughing with the headlights on in the fog.

Who once said: "You have to try everything once."
Would be here for a limited time only
Disillusion’s blood stain
Our celebration in her passing let's off like a cork escaping into the atmosphere.


© -Sonja J Phinney 6-Apr-2005

Magellanic Cloud

Beyond fallowed land
Pillow tangled in
The brush, asleep.

The starlit sky slowly turns
As the last ashes burn.

A snake peeps out its head
From a nearby quarry.
The moon shone.
In the backwoods, there are crickets.

A sleepy town remains undercover.
Swans hug their young on the banks.
Each hollow crawling, breathing.
Springs pour out above sodium vapor glows and
Sounds of static.

Bread remains half eaten by the pillow
Hands chilled by the fire
Something inside narrows and lifts.

Winds rising in calculated progression
Compass in hand
Researching the inner realms.

Magnetic drifts
Having force upon the land.

This place is seen by a child who has taken flight.
A bright uncontrolled passion,
Gleams the universe.

The woman tries to communicate to the child
From the brush,
Dark hair ravened by moon.
She touches the child’s cheek, silky white.
Around the trees, there is a humming, and then a
Pulling away.

The woman awakes abruptly.
The stone, warm beside her.
Ashes dance up from the fire hole.

A child wakes up with the smell of fire on her lips
From beneath white covers.

© -Sonja J Phinney 1991

Riding on Heat Lightning

When love gets stuck to your soul
And you can’t shake the physical
And you are getting sick on the motion of emotion
Things that can’t be put out with fire.

Just remember when you feel grounded
To Sunday's morning ash
That you've escaped the flame.

Holding to the reflection in the mirror
Beyond desire,
Beyond connection.

Riding on heat lightning
Safe from the rain
Always a place to return to
Again and again.

Without nets or capturing device
It is in my eyes
When love gets stuck
Stuck to your soul.

© 06-Jul-07 Sonja J. Phinney

Whose Shoes

Better watch out cuz I’m in your shoes today.
I can see the rocks and the tumbling waves.
There’s some sand in my shoes,
But I cannot stay.

Into a strangers belongings
I am here and I’m there;
A drifting soul to spare.

Pairing off in hologram force.
I’m on the porch
As you come down the mountain
Or drive by the post
And you’re writing a letter
While I’m in your head.

Cuz I’m in your shoes
Streaking across the mountain tops;
Catching the sound of waves on rocks
Looking with passion out of your eyes.

Sipped from the lip
Whose shoes? Whose shoes?

Shall I slip into today?

© Sonja J. Phinney 03-Jul-07

High School Psy kick

They say I have a fortunate divinity for it
When neither they, nor I know what “it” is.

The process and achievement are unknown from speaker to listener.
The thing is a pattern,
A process arrived at from  a different circumstance called me.

©-Sonja J. Phinney 1985

The Shadow Zone

Here in this moment in time
as shadow people drift into our waking presence,
daily reflections consist of lifetimes ago.

We are among the living,
edging towards the elsewhere;
investigators lost in time,
surveying the atmosphere.

Do we really want to be consistently in such a pattern?

© April 2007 Sonja J. Phinney

Bound Transformation

Her life was much like a cartoon story.
In each frame she expressed her emotion like a fever quickly spreading.
Each wound, severe in its distinction.
Shot by Cupid
Shot by desire
Shot frame by frame
Explicit
Detailed.
Pressed into the papers, sometimes in color.

Returning to this expose,
A sigh waa caught in the text,
Like a fly in Venus’ trap.
Collapsing and devouring.
He settles into algorithmic focus.

Wrapping, transforming within the cocoon,
Wings growing.


© 07-Sep-2005 Sonja J. Phinney

Where the Stone Flower Grows

I hike to my place of escape

Inscaping to where the stone flower grows.

This is where I try to bring strong souls,

but they all vanish midway;

leaving me to travel on alone.


It’s not much further and it there is a spring.

Beautiful gems transverse the mountain.

I can hear the hum up ahead.


I try to stash pieces under my bed

To show the world.



©-Sonja J Phinney 24-Jan-2007

Jinn of the Ethers

A bird flits about presenting itself in full suit and song at my side by the window.
Every moment it speaks of the child.
The one nested in me.
The one I'm about to banish.

After the dreaded event, I find the nest vacant.
Sent to the ethers, my Jinn; my little one who whispered in the silence, sounds of joy, spring, and mourning.

Hello and goodbye, sweet, sweet, lulla bye.


© 1999 Sonja J. Phinney