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 1984

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-1984 Sonja J. Phinney


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

© 01-Jun-1986

5 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

Downtown Albany 90's

Pavlos

We came together because of the Magus, Stylianos,
So I didn’t feel strange dancing around nude with you.
As we dervished, I saw images
Of your home in Cypress.
One day I remember waking from my dream that was laughing at me.
I now know him as my dream narrator.
He laughed at me for not knowing
I was climbing the stairs of the Parthenon.

-Sonja J. Phinney 30-Oct-2006 (for Pavlos)

Arcturus

Arcturus

A costumed pronouncement of we
hungers a feeding of dreams and enchantment.

The meadow’s dew is pulled up
And glows of amber and mustard
fading chatter in the grooves of the woodwork-
Chamber trails.

Blue eyes in my arms
peer out to capture the amplified pulse of Arcturus.

-Sonja 9-9-03

You Wrinkled De Fold

A smothered flame
Sap sticks to the body, attracting flies and bees.

Watch it buddy, you’re steppin’ the lines.

Only hear what you want to hear
Placing fragments together and making
An incorrect sentence;
A faulty spiral encouraged to collapse.

The dance is in step;
They lyrics make no sense
And are eaten by a sick bear with honey
On it’s lips.

-SJP 1989

(for Abdu at a drum weekend in Ashokan who was so bold to serenade me, shower me with unwanted gifts, follow me back to my home and ask his wife if it was ok to take me as his own.)

Nepal poems

Sing with the vehicle we have made out of heaven.
The water doesn’t long for something special.
It moves with wind and stone.
What particle of it have you picked up and remembered?
The root you take makes it better where honey is made.
Flowers are abundantly open, Nepal.


© 1996 Sonja J. Phinney

It took years to clothe myself in this state of human existence 
Coming down, feet on the ground.
How many bodies in one body?
And how does one see?
Three bodies follow route.
Leaves flourish, seeds fall away.
Three bodies flying
Who can see, vibrates over sea and tree.

© 1996 Sonja J. Phinney

There are some things that are not explained simply by machinery.
A wire alone doesn’t create electricity.
We must remember it is not just the body alone that creates this energy.
Don’t leave this up to the nervous system, the brain, the being alone.
It is the house, in which we enter,
So be free of the womb.

© 1996 Sonja J. Phinney

Now, all praises are seen divinely in his light.
The gardens, hu
Playing with children, hu
Gatherings of meditation, hu
You are the child in my heart.
All is moving towards, not away from.


© 1996 Sonja J. Phinney

William B. Tell

Time to go now

Can I take that apple from your hand

And play William B. Tell?

The everyday environment

In it’s hostile simplicity.

An annoyance made larger than life

Penetrates like rocks through glass.

If I click my heels three times, could I go home?

Find the escape hatch

Where I can only hear white noise, sand, and rain?


Sonja J Phinney © 17-Jul-2006

Surfacing the Pond

I skate round the cold,
About the edges.
My spyglass hunts for a selection
of bold and useful connection.

I circle the distance
between the figures
and sip on that which is hot and
ignites my senses.

A snow rabbit squats at guard,
and I am hiding away a pocket-full of gatherings.

©-Sonja J Phinney 1982

Effulgent

Would best describe the pulling in of my surroundings
As I sit in this room of artists.
Personalities of restless angels meld into their gestures.
Floors and walls become my mental tablet where images
Circus around by default.
My own gestures fly out from centuries past.
Sometimes with the innocence of spring.
Sometimes, with the determination of a fighter.

©-Sonja J. Phinney 08-Apr-2006

Burrs in Winter

As the drapery folds, another stitch is sewn.
The burrs stash away snow in their sticky thimble thumbs.
I sit wooden in the living room.

Around me the walls feel my breathing.
Water still drips, cats still play...
Held in a pose simply watching the other hand move.

© 1990 Sonja Phinney in High Falls, NY

Quiet Misdemeanors

My motions are transgressive in this almost soundless environment.

Angels weave through the Jinn dancing like Lalla

Nude around the fire light;

Giving off Sophrosyne smiles

And grabbing the sparks

To ignite this wondrous illusion.


©-Sonja J Phinney 05-Jan-2006