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 one's 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

Misted Up

You tell me today of things I've yet to know.
Of misting up to the heavens as I breath it all in.

Smeeching my soul
A fohat that invades my ride.

Awake my divine release of this dividing light.
All I have to do is to say it and the feeling is there.
 The burst between here and so near to there.

I wave in this breath, a new goodbye;
Things that can only be spoken alone and to the sky.
You and I know this well.

See you in the mist sometime behind my eyes.
In this promise today
You reached from that place
and made me feel that misting of our souls.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 30-Dec-2015

Spectral Sounding

Sounding the shore rocks
making hollow echo's
like water clasping and letting go.

Your dawn is waking;
moving like a flutter on my
shoulders aching.

Brother over the waters;
brother over the sails,
the sea we travel is heavy;
the skies turbulent and pale.

Moving to the pictures
damaged by the shocked birth
of something larger undertow.

Others wear their wool vests with watch fobs.
It is unseasonable, but we didn't particularly
find the door to perfection.

It was already in us if we only knew it.
Precarious, and on the edge of two worlds.

I sound the shore rocks.
You shake from your sleep.


Echos, echos,
carry them close.
Hear the clasping of water,
and of the letting go.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 27-Dec-2015

 

Nightingale

Times that stuck, got struck from the itinerary.
A hole in my favorite sweater,
where the soul shown through slightly.

Brazil nuts opened
Meats flavoring the tonal frequencies.

Sun swelling the carpet under toe
All the clocks chiming and clanging.

You cull the memories.

Foredone earthy matter.
Times that mattered

Eyes chime familiar glows.
Time slows.

We are caught in that speck of sunlight.

Glasses clang.
Our clothes are wet with angels
singing over our shoulders.

Nightingales in the mist of the evening.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 26-Dec-2015

In the Afterglow

Lights collide.
Embronic brine takes form in the atmosphere.
Screaming beautiful fireball from afar
expelling light casts upon the canvas of sky.

Vaporous and blinding, we stop to watch with wonder.
 Our own battles forced to outshine and extinguish;
burning to ash white.

Fading into distant waters,
We return to the glow of the universe.

By starlight

We sweat in the stage light,
in the afterglow.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 28-Sep-2015

Can't Shake You

We are actors
We are lovers too.
We are killers
with the back-stage crew.

You are in your neverland and
I can't shake you from my dream.


You shine your knives living other lives
Yet we pass glances at our different selves
Knowing full well of the
acts, the loves, the sharpening of knives.

I will not not give up knowing.
I give in.

Dream lover,
Connected soul,
Unsolved armored trooper.

Seven on seven and into the night.
Dashing the lights, camera shy in the fire fight.

I dance with your
embers that eat me away
like coals in the fire.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 27-Dec-2015

Elevate

Who knew that hiding under my bed,
Afraid of some violation of self would end me up
Outside of my body?



When I started to sleep atop,
I didn’t want a pillow.


I was but five when I first took flight.
Pulling out through my toes and though the sheets.



My framework feeling the framework around me.
Sometimes I could feel myself pulling through the inside of the springs of my bed,
Sometimes it was through the walls and pipes therein. 

Then, to the skies and electrical lines;
to houses of people I didn’t know. 
Down the road, I would go.


At some odd moment in time,
like to sell something at the holidays,
I would know a picture on the wall of someone down the road.



It wasn’t really until a speech class in eleventh grade,
I came to understand the defined:
Out-of-Body Experience.



Was I broken?  
Could it be because I was adopted?
That I was threatened in some way? or was I just born with this ability?


Surely I was not in death state every night I went out.
It wasn’t until Monroe, that I understood more and about remote viewing.


This is the state of mind and body that I spent my childhood, my youth,
and some of my college years experiencing.



The turning within is such a strong, provoking thing when we are in it alone.
Resources were like mud and my boot that I was was forever at a loss to explain.
The magic trick that nobody ever got. 


Now I find that I still remote view and can verify the details. 
It never ceases to fascinate me.


-Sonja J. Johnston  © 19-Dec-2015

Feather Weight

Closer oh the case we carry.
Another moment we shan’t wait.
For if we tarry our time away,
more luggage gets packed in the crate.

Intentions are lost on  flight decks where we are
in transit.

Vanishing with open eyes.

Over seas, over mountains, we are
like children, masters of music, peddlers of grand endeavors.

This feather carries much weight.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 19-Dec-2015

Just an Echo Away

For years we have been in the dark,
shut under sight
of the waking dawn's precious light
with the burden of maintaining the confines.

Further off, bursting waves call.
This is how it is
and it's damn hard to make the day shine
with your soul left behind.

We think back to those days of hide and seek
our waving hands and trailing feet.
Time was us running in the wild
leaving trails in the snow by the mile.

Yet, awake in this moment of meet and greet.
We are deep in the precious tonotopic call and response
where inclinations beckon.

Just an echo away
where stars take flight,
paint me in yellow and white.
As all is just an echo away.

Listen for for it,
We are just an echo away.


Sonja J. Johnston © 10-Dec-2015.
 

Keeping In Mind

The sun rolls up its sleeves

As the day moves forward.

Faces, like abstracts

shift in and out of the hemisphere.

You've been livin' the mad life

corrupted and unsound.

No generic prescription can mask

it's inner workings.

The escape is a wicked

mission of madness and

self destruction

Your memories are distorted.

One day, upon your return,

the familiar place has a memory

but the parallel shows it's face

of control.

Cursed by day and the

light of it's discovery;

By the voice of the image

profoundly alive and watching.

A calculated, compartmentalized elimination

eats though and the game's in play.

The battle voices it's falsity.

It's a charming idea on a mission.

Standing, half erased in the crowd.

-Sonja J. Johnston © 27-Oct-2015 (for a project on  schizophrenia.)

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