Gyre

Days
Days when I was lost
Lost in the universe
I was given a hand.

A hand that brought me closer
Closer to my seismic duty.
Closer to the fashion of my soul.

Many have left.
Journeys mistaken.
Toes upon the gurneys,
Unbalanced with the time.

Now that I am here
Here in this dreamscape
I see you clearly, but we talk as if strangers.

Moments
Moments are fleeting
Forever fleeting with the hum of our vehicles
And sound of rain.

-Sonja J Johnston © 04 Jul 2015 

Forget Me Not

Is this the moment of conviction
or are you just a heart passing through?
Have you folded it in
or are you smiling again?

My arms have waved in speeding sounds,
boot heals down.

In this moment, the sun pours in.
You drive by into the evening.


The road holding hostage our lives in commute.

Yet, for a moment when the sun breaks free of the cloud,
there is that clarity.
There is that moment of conviction.
You turn to find me smiling.

All these small things are my conviction.
A heart just passing through.
My rushing spring in the mountains.
Lost in the moment.
Connecting in time.

Sonja J Johnston  © 12 May 2015

Mutual

How I wonder as waters pervade through the endless seams.
Seems like our precious commodities have bent like metal under pressure;
Hidden from persuading eyes.
Kettles bubble and sing.

Singing to the sleeping babe.

I can hear the fate of your laughter in the sound when the earth shakes.

Carry, don't get carried away.
Let's see what tomorrow brings.

It all comes back like waves carried back to shore.
Sometimes lines cross.
Sometimes weather changes.
The phone rings and it's not for you.

Pressure from the weight of the world, the diamond it hides.

© 5 May 2015 -Sonja J Johnston

Overlooked

See where it unmentions her?
They bestowed her gallery.

Witnesses are never secure allies.
Wrong is seldom quelled.
Anger, excitement, punishment,
uncertain in the burgs where they prevail.

See where it unmentions her?
They bestowed her gallery.
They damaged her heritage;
her thoughts of family.

Now she goes though the motions
and closes out the damage.

Sinister spinners in the lives of their siblings.
For the sake of tradition, tradition...

Reclused in the city.
Her very proclivities forced into technical confines.
The song plays louder
in the body that has never slept in the right house.

© 11 Apr 2015 -Sonja J Johnston for R.Y.

Paradise

It's in the depth of your syllable,
insurmountable charm;

Shining through my mind when
I speak your name.

You are on the road, when I'm alone, 
and it's still the same.

Cover my body.
Drape me in light.
You are my mascot on the darkest night.

Unfurl this time;
Unblind my eyes to see
the great divide and the mystery.
the biggest victory.

Come a little closer.
Please don't stop.
I have a little bit of heaven on my mind.

© 22 Mar 2015 -Sonja J Johnston

Pearls and Silver III

Little hands make a connection in a ring.
His hardened hands sit back and admire the robed woman who is with these children.
Other robed women come and sit, but are unwilling to stay.

There is music winding up inside his hardened hands.
Playing guitar to the children
Words behind the eyes;
smoke behind the mirror.

Forward is why we are here now
Music and art into a new time
A new measure in time.

Trumpets of the unearthed gather at the ceiling and walls;
springtime offerings.

Little hands, big eyes fill
and the water is running over the cliffs outside the window.

Sonja J. Johnston  © 18-March-15

Engel

The soft ermine swaft of her hand between the gules and lavender fell gently.
Engel in full light.
It befell that on the same day he would find her; 
paint her and add her to his collection on paper.
She, with the endearing eyes hugging the winds.
Within him stirred as paints were mixed.

© 17 Mar 2015 -Sonja J Johnston

Your Pleasure is Sick and Thin

You are my car wreck nightmare; the gravel in my floorboard.
It is a wonder how you get to the big world in me with all those hours you have.
I cannot fathom my piece in it all.
We have nothing.

I fly the depths of my reality,
while you are the reducer in the dirt digging.
I wish I could take your pearls back to the ocean; wash your words in the torrents of the sea.

I am sick of your commotion,
this bitter knife you raise at the table.
I have too many hours of my own to
weep for real things.

I am not part of the plants that you grow.
It is what isn't.
Stop making it incessant.

Blue lights on the highway.
Spare the debris.

Sonja J. Johnston © 16-Mar-2015

Glimpse

No matter I think

As I try to take a similar stance;
I can do this.



I can park away every longing.

It will lock up like my body

and freeze in time.


A poet set in stone.


Still, I point out the dream

and the dream, and the dream

I am sitting with these.

Perhaps I am ill prepared, but they don’t go away.



Do you still hear me as

a distant motion through the night?



I see the radiance in the jetting of morning birds

before the jerk of the grasp that takes me to that place

that blurs me under.



I sit in your lap.

The moment is listening

for spectators.



This sweet diminishes with the

track-lights that bring up the crowd.



Even in the brevity of the moment,

I am rendered speechless.



Here in my waking, it is even worse.

I feel like somebody else that knew you

In a different lifetime.



There it is, burning in me like an

attachment to a child.

Greener than the evergreens,

sparkling.


It’s with such sorrow, we are so mortal in this place.


© 03 Feb 2015 -Sonja J Johnston

Calling Bluff on the Blind

Calling bluff on the blind

Where sleeping dogs lie.

The telephone ringing

In the center of your thigh.



Dangling feathers down the

Side of my head.

Listening to that mockingbird call

Flight paths, heaven fed.



Take a look skyward

They are directing you

to the frequency rendering.

Where the bare code stands,

resurrecting.

Bare to where every coat seems outdated.

The morning, she speaks

Of translations and cups

That need drinking.



I watch my branches

Shake out words from

Their buds.

Notes that carry to your

Mental lips, whispering.



So round up your lavender

Your, muddy water and wine.

Splash it upon your face;

Rusty old artifact of time.



You are my mirror

Resurrecting from the

dusted clouds passing by.



© -Sonja J. Johnston 18-Mar-2014

Noxious neighbor wanting somes

She goes on with her pontificating.
Sterno on her fingertips,
alcohol on her lips.

Bleeding and bereaved

for the rains that never stopped.

Drugs and her found companions from the zoo of after dark.
Raising glasses,
raise a hands,
Having a blast
of delightful sin.

Kiss and tell while trying to manipulate her atmosphere, ..
The ungoliant spinning into us her futile web.


The bottle slips out of her empty hand
down to the streets end.


Somewhere it is gone.
It was left.

Away she goes on pontificating.
The grin so large.
Vacuous eyes moving in all directions.

Our flesh looks meaty, but we are protected by our doors.

Sonja J. Johnston © 06-Jan-2015

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)