Subatomic

Out of the hospital,
Internalized blood.


Working up to my own memorial day.
As physical manifestations overtake me.

It's some kind of Voodoo when the overlap comes.

Assumptions are pointless.
All is relative to the direction.
Ethics can only prove, not eliminate.

In this cloud chamber,
the elusive spins round.

Every second gained was depleted.
I surrendered to it.

Wake me up when you are breathing again.

© -18-June-2014 Sonja J. Johnston

Shifter

How can I act absent when I am so present,
taking in knowledge that is not my own?
In a moment, my path is swept away with the wind.

A wind-up toy, wobbling back down;
A tree with dangling branches
Reaching, alive with life and then death.
Outside of the object and then within.

Perhaps I'm just a shifter.
Fluxing in and out of this place.
Focused and then forced to be embedded.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 18-Dec-2014

Series of Awake

At night they beat upon my soul grasping to sense and stage through in my waking.
I long for sleep as the walls of life thicken.
My spleen aches with internalized pain.

Those shore-side see my beacon as I  hide my sight.
I am awake, but in need of sleep.

 © 18-Nov-2014 -Sonja J. Johnston

Sugar Dissolving

Time is a flame going out.


Confirmations,
I tie in knots and tell myself 

wait.


Cupping hands,
Crashing waves
Another day to place the pain away

I want to reappear from this void.


From here, I only see.
I only feel, but not where spirit wishes me to be.


Confirmations,
I tie in knots.

Lost in this moment.
Lost in time.
Vanishing out in the streets.


Tops of daisies floating the gutters,
fluttering.
Get, get,
Give, get.
Yeah, lucky got lucky.
Dreams hang and dangle.

Stay my stay as I find a way 

to crack the code to the place spirit knows.



© 12-June-2014 Sonja J. Johnston

Gorgon.

She follows you with eyes of a Gorgon.
Stonewalling life as you know it.
She sends me poodle tails
and acts like a baby without her candy.

Anxious for the pleasure in the manipulated
stones thrown.

Someday, she will turn herself to stone.

© July 15, 2014 Sonja J. Johnston

There Are Always Victims

Put it on the table.
Chop it on down.
Pull out the seeds.
This is what you've found.

I'm taking on your karma for what is.
Everything called normal scooped out;
leavings on the floor.
Bending back the branches till' we all fall down.

I cried this moment before I knew.
I prayed it wouldn't be me.

How must we explain these walls we've built with victims inside?
Time may kill me first for your burdens I approved.
This was never my dance, but naked we show the flesh.

Tapping into the fruit; taking the seeds.
See me bleed in this and I will take your karma away.

© 13-July-2014 Sonja J. Johnston

Color Me In

Rolling under the complications of the routine.
My heart is in ill repair.
I lose sight of the light.
There is a shortage of paints.
My colors have been swiped and I’m left in black and white.

I’m not so good at smoke signals.
The gun will get triggered if the hour gets too late.
Stuffing a dream not yet awake.
Your conflict calls from where it wants to stand but can’t.
I am in between a flicker in a storm.

I’ve thrown away my fire, but haven’t given up.
All is clear and all is shadowed.
Please unpack this soul from its hiding place;
rolled under the complications of the routine.

This is that game you know in black and white.
The dice you roll are in play.
Drive into the night.

I stay away and burn with the odd closeness the distance brings.
My tired eyes disengage.

It is quite a bruising we have taken
for the sake of the light
we were set to discover.

Rolling under, rolling under,
Please unpack this soul from its hiding place.

© 30 June-2014 Sonja J. Johnston

Void

Ancillary, so full of every moment.
All moments touch the void.
It is in everything.
I am ink on vellum.
Shells around the neck and tears everywhere.

© 10-June-2014 Sonja J. Johnston

Invisible Drive-by Shooting

Blood-shot masterpiece
Stripped pavement
In the company of flies.
Rage and its motion.

Loss has already taken the fire escape.
Broken glasses,
Abandoned lives.

Discharged algorithm.

Take me in this minute
from the outer limits.

Sonja J. Johnston © 17-Jun-2014

Turn Around

Why don't you get out of my yard?
Who invited you to take your stay?
You act as if this is your a birthplace
As you try to leave your mark.

Give me back my space.
Give me back that stuff you stole.
Just a crack in the wall
Gets you through like a small rodent.

I know you beat your kids
But I'm not giving up my goods.
Go back home with your delinquent pride.


Four and twenty
You want plenty
But you need to get spayed
And now my time is frayed.

Just last week I was pushing you out the door
Gold miner looking for some medicine.
Took my toilet paper and tried to take my man.
That's it and that’s all.

I have no more.
You have no credit.
I’m not a store
You don’t pay for.

I know it’s all going to change
You’ll find the next one to dredge
And drag them down into your demise
Evil in the disguise of hurt.

All for something
Left for nothing.
Where do your little boys go?
No wonder they only speak a handful of words.
What’s the sense
When they call every man Daddy?


© -Sonja J. Johnston 25-Feb-2014

Noted the military man

Your character of steel is
Wound so tight to places one could
Easily dismiss.

Frought anger in that protective place,
Battling that bullet-proof mind of yours.
Slammed with defiance.

We ran the roads therein collapsing.

Plans were suspect and pulled.
My chaired chaperone.


Let’s play a game of illuminator!
Scrap-yard maker.
Inaudible audiences surmise
the inflatable atmosphere.

Opening the wound lets the sun shine in
While security likes to check everything twice.
Giving fire to one’s breath,
Sucked in and held.

Souler-Gypsies advanced upon us
Blowing hands and blessing our backs.

Breaking the glass,
And allowing an opening.

© 1-Dec-2011 Sonja J. Johnston

Big Head Ed

This week, on the day you took yourself out of this world, I spoke of the the evening I was hanging out at 69 Main Street New Paltz and you asked me what kind of woman I was. I didn’t know how to answer. You came at me with a sharp knife and I just sat there. You nodded your head in confirmation saying, “You are a woman that doesn’t react.”

Today,  I read from a friend you took your life.  I guess I needed to go back to that cut throat, bedeviled moment with you that seemed so calm and small, but so poignant in my life.

© -Sonja J. Johnston 29-May-2014 for Ed Buchanan (2-18-57-5-27-14)

A Model Life

Standing here at the baggage claim
waiting for someone else's dirty laundry.
Trailing a lost suit on the platform
as the skyway transforms.

I try to lift off the heavy baggage,
tightly sealed with no keys
under watch of security dogs and
air that smells of rubbing alcohol.
They are too heavy to lift.

Now, I find myself back at the staging area
picking up pieces of light
that somehow shattered under pressure.
Vivid colors and several healings that
must have dissipated in the mist.

I am breathing now from the clouds
and sending up smoke signals.
Sage-ing and engaging
Sending off that baggage to the doors
behind the doors for someone else to mind.

© -Sonja J. Johnston 12-May-2014

Vanishing Cream

Vanishing cream
spread on thick
gives me chills;
drives me hot.

Life is finding you're gone;
fighting for air,
suction inhaling
between the scenes
and flickering.

Queen in the keyholes
with white gloves
points a finger.

The castle moves forward
and back.

My sanctuary is lost.
I am left shaking this
crackerjack box.

© May 5 2014 -Sonja J. Johnston

The Dance Unbroken

Hanging on the thought that you are gone.
and  humming the bit of you with me.

I was biding my own
when you walked right up to me.

Stared right into me
and had me memorize
without pen or ink.

Persuading me with your mental dance
Entranced in the evening air.


With all said and done 
I was happy the day was won.


Through all the facts you had shown
and honesty freely spoken;
the letters on the window open
to all that remains.

Stated frankly with precision 
here is the time and place in
which we stand.

Mirrored to you,
Mirrored to me.

Waltzing the Wood
Playing the dance in full
the heart having spoken.

Pushing through the commotion
of this insane forefront
a vision was being documented.

We stole away from the world
driven by journeys of
divine will.


© 2011 Sonja J. Johnston

Witnesses

In his grieving, he still finds time to argue.
One hears the scuff-echo of shoes on flagstone.
Strings of lilac span across my lips and I am frozen in this shroud of amethyst.

The children at the scene
like two glittering gems in the road
unable to move under such circumstance,
continue to witness.

In the face of rage
outside the corners
and deep within the
dark meadow holes
boring into the rich soil
of brain.

©-Sonja J Johnston 25-Aug-2009

Dolomite Tornado Evergreen

There's a tornado swarming beneath my sleeves
that rises in the distance.


The movement, twists from the vines.
Slumping up edges, hiding away the rain beneath the shine
formed on freshly grown evergreen.

I have built a space, but it is a tornado
ripping loose.

Hang onto your boots.
Don't let them get stuck in the black marsh.

Pieces of me like dolomite 
amplified by self inclusions
Tornadoes  from my resting,
no longer sleep; exploding into this space of morning.
Traveling with the missing,
forever in search of the living pieces.

Rocks picked up in distant meadows
A garden of heart shapes
and bony outcrops.

Wildflowers hardening on our dashboards.

© -Sonja J. Johnston 19-Apr-2014

Hand Trembler

Tonight I drink these words in search of cure.
With my hands, I tremble and find those that are lost.
Numbing the stretch of my body;
The healer teaching itself how to heal.

Zaire, Zaire
sings in me like a cradle.

The steps and hands turn and remind me I am
found in a position, a hand gripped hand.
I run the bridges away.

It is tomorrow
with limbs missing.
I wait on the wall watching
to be last.

Making true thought through hands
shaking find the future.

I knew of today
It was beautiful
the thought of me
healing the mad in dance.

© 1984 Sonja J. Phinney

Transisted

The cold drum
Coked.
You know the best drummers have blood in their urine.
Where is this going?
Underground
Like a subway screaming.

First it is like this
Candy storm of images
Housed in a pair of scrubs.
Shaken like a branch full of cherries.

It could be tomorrow
When the wet soul is
Thrown loose and you are
Left watching it soar off
In the distance with your first love
Like burning a history.

The makings of tomorrow,
Going up in smoke
An uncontrollable laugh,
Hiccup in time
Standing, transfixed with our mirrored images.


© Sonja J. Phinney March 2006

The Capture

Attracted to the spider,
To it's web
And and it's bite.

The boundaries
Stick and preserve to my
Wings and feet.

I tell the spider,
“I love you many legs, many eyes,
Spinner, hunter;
I love you.”

I do not understand as he speaks,
‘tic, tic.”

Bundled I am dazed

I am to be of nourishment.

I am one with closed eyes.

A jewel, sweet to the taste.

© 09-Oct-1993 Sonja J. Phinney

Craic

I bet no one ever warned you;
That I could fold you up and send you,
Straight on down to the ground.

Why wind yourself up
And let yourself go
When the circus is in town?

That act will get you tied up in a knot
Where there is no escape
From under the cape.

There are no more cake walkers;
No more prizes to win.

It’s a sucker’s walk
That’ll land you empty.

In those eyes vanish
What you’ve set out
To begin.

© -Sonja J. Phinney 04-Mar-08

Sling Shot

You ask me when?
I say, "Ask the one who holds the grains of sand."

Waiting for the change
to re-arrange a new gear.

All you want to do is
shatter it
Platter it
Toke it up to victory.

It is all you need.
It is all you concede.

Hours and Hours
Welcome to the drop zone
where the sparks fly
into the hanger.

Don't get sand in your eye.
Don't, Don't, Don't
let it pass you by.

You ask too may questions
and stick yourself inside the hourglass
confined by time.

I am wind brushing against
it's glass.

Sling Shot.

© -Sonja J. Johnston 23-Apr-2013

Casting Sails

The Pope mobile resolves into the distance
He is waving to the crowd.


Confession time is here
As are the demands for miracles
On the conveyor belts of time
and it's remains.

Forever moments
in stop delay
a postcard
set aflame.


Today's yells
behind the shelves
of a fabricated job.

We catch the news
between the elbow room
and sip our beers when we can.

The eggs get dropped
our friends get popped
returning home again
and placed six feet under.

It is quiet
and still this
ghost of a town
where we once knew
is a shoe
and a pipe
a fragment

diddle.

©-Sonja J Phinney 1998

Following The Direction

You gotta set it up
just to break it down.
It's a method of self destruction.
Under constraint
and all the red tape,
you just gotta wonder
who has the gumption to hide away the infrareds
from the series of misconceptions?

Bring to me the mystery,
the masters of show and tell.
Breathe life to the wisdom among us,
heavy with harmonics,
amplified by sight and smell.

Tired eyes
follow western skies
with predetermination.
Aching thighs
seek mortal cries
a sweet indiscretion.

It comes in waves
and stays for days
Leaving little trace
of it's perfection.

Then it melts away like a
snowflake on the tongue
leaving an olfactory glimpse
and an element of intrigue.

© -Sonja J. Johnston 20-Mar-2014

Fire Proof

In this three tiered transparency

laughter hits me with tears of history.

This poverty assembles its attributes;

detaching the beautiful sad glow

beside me, sparkling.



The proofs are washed in red

Forced to confront the dregs.

Eyes utter landscapes

intact.



Pleading liberties by name

in the pockets of soldiers.

The underbrush echoes,

strained and off-shot.



Under deconstruction

scattered places extend

to where I must attend.

Fallen absence marches

and is privately eaten by fire.



©-Sonja J. Johnston 18-Mar-2014

Venom

We are charged by the very thing that becomes poisoned to the charge.



I am bringing flowers

I am bringing a gun in a pillow-case.



This misunderstanding is just a standing, misleading.



Troubles asphyxiate.

The heat is packed deep.



Still, the movement of energy in motion;

Of gallant emotion riding in, igniting.

We eat off our flower heads.



©-Sonja J. Johnston 17-Mar-2014

Samadhi

Listen to the house speak
while all are asleep
Hear the hum of a lullaby.

Samara twirling down
makes a sound
in spoon cupped hands,
Samadhi.

Regenerate while awake
Become the one fresh from the vine.

Be pulled
out of the heart
Of pure divine.

© Sonja J. Johnston 27-Jan-2013

In My Hand

This path has found us prisoners.
Dark with patches of sun.
Scissors and gourds hollow metal.
Strings in our lips shrunken down.

See how you are controlling the seas
And upsetting the weather?
Breaking chairs and conflicting our mothers?

Opened mouths
Opened eyes.
Bent and broken your breath feeds the flame.

You are playing horse shoe
Ready like a ringer.

Harpsichord child in a sleepless night.
A shrunken head in my hand and a
Documenting traces of a hungry hunter.

Running and returning
With gourds and scissors
in my hand.

© -Sonja J. Johnston 24-Aug-2013

The Fourth of Yesterday

From the bleachers our friends could see us walking the high wires;

Switching lines of finer foreign design.


We tempted new destinations, sweet stepping to victory.


Was it the shake in the line that pushed our souls into a perilous pole dance?

Or was it just a false offering?


Other wire walkers found our shadows

And wondered how anyone could have

Prepared for such a fall.



We were flocked in white feathers

unsure of where anything was

Coming and going from

Only that the image was covered

By thick wood and a hungry

Noise was flickering about.



Our shakes in the shadows,

were Bound.



As far as the length of an eye

The time bird flew off into sky

And tiny threads arrived with the

Sunrise.



I looked down.

We still had the ground,

A parable.



The bleachers rumbled

With shouts

Resounding and familiar.


© 04-Sep-2011-Sonja J Johnston

False Distribution

He will not talk
I can't listen.
Words, actions, meanings
twist.

A wanted correctness
Blunted blur in confrontation.

Think a moment and connect the past in
and all the possibilities.
I am confused with all this false
distribution


© 1982 Sonja J. Phinney

White Charade

The light is hardened
in this season of white.
All is not forgiven.

You have become pale.

In your waking, I am a passing stranger.

Your arrival is unprepared
and must be hemmed before
too many seams are pulled.

I can not dwell with your reason
in this season
of white.

© Dec 1993 Sonja J. Phinney

Dandelion Hill

Panrious hears my sideward footfall,
Gravel Sounding.
I enter like a waitress with Betty Boop smile;
Skirt fluttering in the breeze at the doorway.

Panrious reaches down into his record collection
And pulls out an album.
He knows the record by the grooves.
“Duke Ellington right?”
“Sure is” I say as I play it for him
While he swings back to a steady rock in his chair.

Ellington plays glass ear tones.
While the black cat sits like a musical note on the windowsill.

Scratches like sparks from a fire
Jump up between synchronous notes.
Dust dances in the light.

I bring a wine-glass
He holds with two hands,
Listening for pouring vibration to cease.

Squeaky Chair
Toy horse on springs
Flowers in the meadow.
He smells the cork in my fingertips.

“Caterpillar Dust” he says as my skirt flutters against the chair.
I remember when I used to hold him in the fields,
Blowing dandelions into his face
And kissing him in supreme joy.

Panrious reaches, touching the glass on the window.
His smile is vast and timeless.
Fingertips capturing the sun.

© Sonja J. Phinney 1990

Today's Catch

Ho Jack bear
Toes mossy,
Bees hived up.
I trot myself up to the cabin
and eases my feet to dangle.

Pappa cookin’ fire good
Fish is good.
Back, hands worked.

My favorite is the fish’s tail.
Pappa cooks for me.
I eat and grow strong
Beat my drum
and rattle my body in youth.

© Sonja J. Phinney 1974

Undergrowth

Farther than my earthly heart could carry
I fit pieces through the small links.

We had an audience looking our way,
Talking and walking away.
They knew they wanted to feel it,
But laughed and smoked it off instead.

Small pebbles, echoed mountains.
Our lightning sundered the ground.
We were the storm in the horizon.

See, they were running to the notion
They could live without transformation.
Drive with their mega mugs holding too much
Of what they never needed.
Blocking the simple connection out from view.

At least some arrived with their senses.
Portraying with their eyes.
Able to escape being the senseless victims of compromise.

© -Sonja J Johnston 24-Feb-2014

Where Goes The Dawn?

He trucked right down route 270
Past the mass commuters with their suits and ties.
Forward bound with his head all filled up with her.
Breaks faltering, feet shaking loose.

That’s when he decide to take her away;
take her off his mind.
There wasn’t any sign
when she vanished.

There wasn’t any evidence to any degree.
Lost breaks, lost mind;
divided across an
Incongruent divorce.

Where goes the dawn?
When the remains slip off the shelf?
A safely devised code transverses
in the hum of wings.

Elegant, smooth, renascence.

© Sonja J. Johnston 18-Feb-2014

Gregation

Turn me around so I can laugh.
Bring back to life that story.
I need a community in my body;
that fire on my fingertips.

We must be the weavers making music.


Why must this wait?
Why must we close our
doors to our own clocks?

Open up your souls and
let your spirits shine!
I want dancing!
I want fire in my fingertips!
There is too much music to be made.

You can do this.
It’s just one GIANT step.

© Sonja J. Johnston 18-Feb-2014

Downstream of The Bear Dance

They talked of music, Janis Joplin and Hendrix.
They talked of Nam and the hippies near the res.
They hid from her camera and she communed with a morning beer.

Looking up at the foothills
lost among the shavings
With the banned Utes.

Static buzz
hammer and nails
The creek was high.

Black cats
Black sheep
Black engines
Buried deep.

Stray dogs
Stray clouds
Drops of water off the fence pipe.
Riding this one out as one Ute's brother baked up in the mountains in hopes of visions.

Standing empty in our skin, we also waited.
It was noon and there were places to go.
Time became unglued as the day trembled.


Looking with glass vision
Raising a toast to his teeth
Chapo rose to acknowledge his reservation,
His failure, unfed.

Her mind walked off.
These were days of repair.
The car was fixed now and her life was busy mending.
Her father had finally come around to meeting her after knowing of her existence for five years.

“Good bye.”
“Never say goodbye” says Chapo, say “See you later.”


© Sonja J. Johnston 12-Feb-2014

Ground Charge

Scarlet skies turn over fallowed land
as the last ashes burn.
Calculated winds pass.
We stand magnetically on ley lines edge,
beating through the ground.

There is a hum from the trees
That pulls us directionally.

© Feb-2001 Sonja J. Phinney

Behind The Veil Of Casualty

Father, prisoner
Hides behind a veil of casualties;
Of loves lost.

A firearm ready in the cool misty morning
stings the forearms, more secrets are dawning.
Bodies struck
Duck heads stung up.


The marrow sucked out
Shadow cloud
Each cell occupied and then,
Unoccupied.

The one who made me soul
Folds his iron wings
Devouring in his space,
But now that we’re all here,
I’ve broken the gates
And opened the causeway.

I found a key and have unlocked a
Portion of what makes him whole.

Measure by measure
The years surrender.
The raven unfurls
Standing at a safe distance
Warming his wings.

© Sonja J. Johnston 11-Feb-14 for Dad

Angler

You just draw me in
Swallow me
Erase me
Find a way to hide me,
Angler.

I’m already sketched into the pavement,
Wrecking ball.

I can’t stand to watch you holding strong
Breaking off
Masking any remnants.

In these confines,
Holding your remote.
Everything real is now
A contaminant.

© Sonja J Johnston 11-Feb-14

Dance of the Jinn

Sing to my soul.
Take it to the marrow.
Later, we will dervish around the roses until we fall into our souls.

Up to the stars they carried our knowing essence, while our souls ground below.
I’ll meet you there someday again.

The psychic told me we were not to meet during this life.
Yet, like a puzzle with a missing piece, we found ourselves in a crowded place, mirrored.

We are an abstract in time.

© 04-June-2007 Sonja J. Phinney (for Chris Volpe)

Chamber and Seek

Forcing the push to happen in
this limited space in time.
I fell into the spell of the
wolf for lack of better sight.


Behind the pane of glass
You now play this little pantomime.
It's a prison you've created.

Can't you see this protection grow?
It needs breaking again, but do it slow.


I look to find you there,
pull you from that glass.
Pull you through this night.
Find you and pull you through;
Ensure you of yourself in flight.

You have forgotten in your struggle
and shut under command.

Your pleasures and your pains remiss.
Security paints your actions.
If only you could open this door
It would bring you back your senses.

But senses come and go quickly like heavy fogs.
You can keep them alive for a moment
and crush them in the next.



Born of bewitched ardor,
crying at a cold backdoor.
Like a black cat stepping gingerly.


The flight plan is a detour.
There's light in the confines revisited.
Looking within the hand gripped hand,
heroes washed in pain.

Our ebb and tide was seeking
that compromise in
our ability to engage.

Take care of these simple things
where we find connection.

Don't break the compass,
It is used for navigation you know.



© Sonja J. Johnston 01 Feb 2014

A Scar in Time

Superficial is the scar
that digs and tunnels.
We are passengers traveling on this mock route;
Carrying our self desirous luggage.

What frequencies we leave about.
Tie it like a knot in time
stitch after stitch
Scarred up, riddled.

An old eraser, uneasy in child’s hand
Rubbing just enough that it can’t be made out.
Are you awake or just receiving static?
Just a flicker of your surrounding?

I am in and out
Of flux.

© 28-Nov-2007 Sonja J. Phinney

Shoes On The Door

He got angry and nailed her shoes to the front door.
This was the dream that awoke me.
Three years later, I found myself overseas
Walking and taking pictures when I came across
A pair of shoes nailed to a front door.
It made me laugh
And I still wonder, the meaning behind those shoes.

People disembark the train with half empty expressions
Around the large station clock, unchained.
Bound to their next destination past the rail noise and announcements.

The air breaths down my back as I pick up a book from the waiting area.
A chattering of families swoop across the station as I read about the local death of
Some teens who had taken an overdose of ecstasy.
White teeth flash in front of me.
I feel the moment of neon and floorboard in my ears.

Hands on a shovel in the cold rain.
Mud through the grass.

A measured moment between flickers
Skin and teeth, feet and shoes
Nailed up like a worded reminder
A broken reminder of what is left behind.

© -Sonja J. Johnston 21-Jan-2014