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