Ever Since I was Born

I can tell you the path that is hidden,
But can not touch it's ground
Ever since I was born.

An inconsistent eye spot intricacy.
Foot meadowed, tree sprouted,
Hurdler in motion.

It’s been waiting
Here on the stair
For a new friend,
But there is only she
With bow and arrow.

Bug net water shoes in
A world of one that
Wants to share this love
Ever since I was born.

Giving away true light to
Hands that cannot hold the water.

They cannot hold the water.

Passing dreams by way of stream.
Tops of daisies in a mud puddle.
Heartbeats been waiting for another
Soul dance.
Watches that honey bug
Dervish dance
With lily and heron
From a moon lit swing.

© Sonja J. Phinney 1986 for Koyo Marrow.

Carillons

I. With no intention upon sleep,
II. yet no intention on waking.

I.

Atmospheres streak through me.
I am elsewhere smelling bread being made;
listening to the distance;
feeling foreign in my body.

II.

I am haunting a stranger’s house along the lakeside.
I’ve terrified him.
He tells me not to look at the pictures by the stairwell.
I’m out-of-body and perhaps his recognition of me is more frightening to me than I am to him.

II.

I’m morgued and am being transported around like a doll a child might talk to before sleep.
Stiff, and heavy with stench.

I.

This time, I awake with the smell of ash in my hair.
I had met a child by a fire on the shoreline.

She has also awoken,
surrounded by her white bed sheets...
Hair also smelling of ash.

I.

In the mountains, I come across a hum;
A flash of the Japanese character, Power.
I am inside the courage shell.
The sound penetrates my forehead and back
Ringing large and loud along the lush Gorkha trails of Nepal.

In the distance,
There are Carillons ringing
From bells to quakes,
Time tolls it's sound
from air to ground.

© Sonja J. Phinney Apr 2006

Suspended Living

The Butterfly hovers
between two worlds.
A humming bird flits
to the same vine
and then away.

The moth
wants something
so badly it is
eaten by flame.

My heart is suspended
over the distance
while the pull of my wing
feels the sureness
of flight.

© -Sonja J. Phinney 1987

Dream UK

Traveling the wind plucked by harps.
I’m taken to Tavistock where is mentioned,
One of the first printing presses.
With a band of locals
I am again reawakened to the
Sound of some home I’ve yet to receive.
Cornwall calls, yet I’ve not yet flown.
Music, friends, and rocky land
Beg my attention.
Sleeping on the Gig
While little one floats
Through my ears.

© Nov 2004 -Sonja J. Johnston

Jigsaw Sky

Ripe
Elastic
On the pavement,
Soon to be sprayed down.

He stands sideways in his trench coat
Distorted in the horizon
Looking in a peculiar way, upward
And in a moment, onward calling
In the direction of a gravel walk.

A red smoke stack pipe rises
Out of a jigsaw sky.

Abstraction, soon to diminish
As words most often are, between desires.
Defining a sentence of a few weeks
And expressing himself in disgust
To the world, to a puff of smoke.

As quiet as the cancer itself.

© 1981 Sonja J. Phinney

This House is Built of Laughter

This place is not my own.

What’s here is not my home.

Even when I reach it sometimes,
I feel myself alone here.

This house was not built with hands.
Come in from the heat.

Lie down from the stars from the ground
Beneath your toes on fire.
Come into this house.

Fill your bones with laughter and sing again.

This house is built with laughter
come on over
fill your bones with laughter
and sing again.

Reaching for my place
through rocks and leaves and thistle
This ground is not my home.

Drape me in white.
Make me thin.
Take me home.

© 1987 Sonja J. Phinney

Lilac and Pine

It was a hot Monroe night
In a psychiatric summer.
I was trying my time with
A schizophrenic brother.

Living in a house with one sick
and one drug induced musician.
I was summoned to this place
As a makeshift physician.

I ran off on a hot summer's night.
The place got loud and I had a fright.
I drove like mad past the city lights
And found myself a lilac tree.

I curled up beneath it
Surrounded by a grove of pines.
The police saw my car and were
Looking for me.
Curled up silently.

They walked by with their torches bright.
Hands near their weapons.

I silenced my sound
And sucked in the scent.


They walked right by and didn’t notice me.
Stepped right by with their tall black boots
And into the dark in pursuit.
Past the pines, looking for me.
Curled up so silently.

I rushed back to my car with no delay.
Ran though the grass as if on air.
Drove off into the AM power line hum;
No place to lay my head.
No corner to run.
No place to drive.

I lost my safety and returned to the city;
To the place now settled down.
Placed my head on my pillow.
Neon sign blasting through my window.

©-Sonja J. Phinney 1993 Rochester,NY

Inside this Giant

Inside this giant whale, encircled.
From the moment we’ve been taught

So much more we could already see.

©-Sonja J Phinney 07-Jan-2005

Waltzing the Wood

Mayflies, Dragon wings.
A raincoat resonates over spidery legs.

She, a dancer, prances down the evening path;
bushes swaying their springy branches.

Valerian and Sweet Dame hum.

There is the taste of Absinthe in-between sentences
of Sumac and Kukicha.

Her leg rises; the conductor's wand balances
on the edge of the willow.

Linden nutty notes and trumpet tongues bounce
amongst these melodic hearts.

Leaves quilling ink
filling each vein.

Tumbling staccato embraces.
Unstable perfection.

The woodcutter enters.

Each moment of performance initiating a
Waltzing of the wood.

© 26-Oct- 2004 Sonja J. Phinney

Being Walked

Today, my first love is a two year old child
pulling at my fingers,
begging... me, me, see, see.

He works at my chains
in which I have lost the key.
He says he can fix my heart
with his plastic tools.

All dreams have become heroic
and my ventures swim within.

Sometimes I light a match
and look for colored flames from my breath;
With so many sparks hatching from my brain,
surely there must be fire escaping somewhere.

The child puts on his fire hat and charges forward,
Me! Me! tugging at my fingers, allowing colors
of morning dew to run through my limbs.

His plastic tools become a ball being swept from my hands
Through imaginary hoops
in the clouds.

-Sonja J. Phinney 13-Aug-2004 (for Peyton)

Project of the Heart

Find that elemental spot that exposes the soul.

Where moments pass like a coaster ride,
Sparklers and the sound of hot air balloons.

It is in the turning of a hand
Glanced in an eye off just off stage.

Open the project of the heart.
Care not of what others may think of it.
Every moment will penetrate through to passers by.


© 11-Aug-2004 Sonja J. Phinney

Axios

I talk with you through blue eyes.
Throughout life, the cord remains.
We stand as reflections, amazed.
In a word, Axios.
Never a thought as to anything less than what is there.

Violet resin lingers on our finger tips and lips.
Pups romp and wag in circular motion.
Sap drips down,
Now stuck to a little boy’s hands
Who is Nosing needles from the pine.
A curled caterpillar protects itself.
Time in sequence, is shut off.

Candles burn
Shadows form
Winds howl a blind memory,
Dream-like.

In this adopted habitat there are noise carpenters,
Dame’s Rocket, and Kukicha.
The ignition of the brain is a powerful motor.
Outlasting all events that we know in time.

© 23-Feb-2004 Sonja J. Phinney

Waiting on the Rain to Shine

My money's been laid up.
Nobody's got a hold on me.
I'm just holding on myself.

Time's been wishing for a better place
to shed my inner grace.
Placed in wait.

The smoothness bends slightly and
I am pulled to see this way of living
I have never known.

Living in shadow.
Waiting for the rain to shine.

- 1992 Sonja J. Phinney

Windows Watch

One haunt reads along the shoreline.
Shadows into mist
Light into spark
in the eyes of two eternal lovers
A passage instilled within, lingers out to the depths of the universe.
Others look at us still, like fresh mint by the stream.
Daisies, Dames Angels…
Something delicately placed there for its beauty.

©-Oct 1988 Sonja Phinney

Waters

Swimming over
as my final day
remembers that it must
move on.
Winds skirt
the warmth of flowers beckon a memory.

© 1990 Sonja J. Phinney

Movie Within

It is a fear dream.
Enslaved and hungry
Teeth grinding
Muttering to the dust
tempered, aged, and finally uncorked.

-SJP _1990

The Days of Venus

Oh for the days of Venus past.
Multicolored stripes, swinging heads.  
Laughing, murmuring trees blast.
Leaves  now turn from gold to red.
Without thine smile, there comest the tear.

Dream away thy sorrow in the sun.
Thou canst always live our lives in fear.
We mustn't leave in fright of the gun.

Art thou wondering about the trees?
The way they smile? 
The way they breath?
So talk to me in the night breeze.

Now they have gone.
Now they have left.
Come listen to the heavens.  
Come see Venus giggle among the sky.

-Sonja J. Phinney for Renaissance Day,  © 1984.

In the Pines

He balanced his hand
Sweat-locked from the chase.

A valiant ardor to his lady
Now, with his head reeling
he lay the pewter cup upon the stone.

With a heartfelt glace
and burdened limbs,
he set to rest.

Amber ash pulling him off to dream
Stuck like an insect.

The grey mares retreated
A falcon stood in the distance
as several deer in strident force
scuffed the ground and snorted.

Turbulent winds rushed round one tree
and then another.


His lady's fervent hands set around his,
nestling close in the pines.

Sonja Phinney ©1995

Aikido on the Shore

Faltering and then bending.
An everyday thing turned into such a horror.

Stress and release
Stress and release.

Hid beneath, in a burrow of past belongings,
haunted as hands touch them.

Slower now as the scanner processes.
Breathing forward, hands at side.

The wave is in motion.
Gaining and falling.

Released into mist.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 1995

Kismet

I was caught in my power of words.
I built a snare for us to get stuck in.
Ashamed of the happiness stolen.
My love with an ardor
has the passion of a moth.

-Sonja Phinney © 1991

Blues on You

Shuttering winds cast 'round the streets
as I pull you with my charm.
I heard she claimed her blues on you.

We often pass in reflection,
How careful we step,
Afraid of breaking the egg before it's allowed to hatch.

Your number still remains on my counter waiting for a time.
A connection is all that's needed, but I love to pull my charm on you.
The roses are in bloom, yet dead flowers remain in this empty room.

© 1988 Sonja Phinney

I'm Still Driving Your Heart Away

I remember
The mask you wore for me.
Night and day.
The alcohol driving your heart away.
Our struggles thrown and begged.

The love behind the mask
Bound inside,
Unwilling to show.
I see you now, ‘bout once a year
And cry the love behind the mask.

© Sonja J. Phinney Sep 1989

Busin' It

Hung together
A voyage stressed
Ganging on
Ground a drum
Ring the station.
Gripping a sandwich
Bag closing, shadow growing.

©-Sonja J. Phinney (1982)