Category Archives: poetry

Twisted and tampered

I’m twisted
and tampered
And feeling Pampered
by Life
This Night
This tribute to Light
is but a Face
Of the race I run
The case I’ve begun to sort thru
And contort to
And still the Sun shines thru
Like icing on the cake
That in my Womb I bake
With creativity at stake
For far too few
Understand
The clues
And wake and take the break
For Life is the Steak
And potatoes
Of the Days which grow
Through my labors

I take the Smile and
Fake senile
And pretend to Forget
That I Am
still Wet
Gleaming like sweat from the brow
Of the Holy Cow
Who Was
Slaughtered in Fear
Cooked
for our Dear who is Slave
To the Tears
That have Flooded before…
Knocked
down their doors
And
Dripped right through
The cracks in the Floor….

Peace
Is Sweet
And a Covert Operation
At best
Is less
Than a fatal test
Of the rest.

Charleen Johnston
2002

Breathe Deeply….

Take a deep breath , folks,21st century Fox
Poppin off the top of this metropolis, Mocks
Your intelligence and plays on your emotions
So easily led and Fed the poisonous potion
Of political devotion gift wrapped with Shock…
Take a Deep Breathe and be ready to surrender
All the Scripts that rip right thru this Dyin ember
….
Step away from the Line, step away from the Lies
Every single scene is a Set meant for your mind
A studio Setting created just for the blind
Adherence to the program that steers your Lives….

It’s not even abstract, not just metaphor…
A Literal Configuration of Lets Pretend Some More
Actors n Agents and Fictitious Stages
The masses addicted to social Graces from
Instagram faces in Media Contagion….

Bless Your hearts, my friends
Find your Center, Within
Everything else
Is a trick
Of the Lens

Charleen Johnston

1-7-21

Freshly Fingered Fabrics

Art by Vali Meyers

Freshly fingered fabrics
lapse into gentle silence,
those fraudulent fabrications
that twist into violence
and disappear
have dragged tear by tear
down my cheek registered fear
among all but the meak
The brave, they say, is
the true slave
to fantasy…..But I
pledge myself to anonymity
suffering gently these
sweet thorns that are born
from trying too hard
from crying too loud
aching and waking and forsaking
the crowds
sweet appraisal;
The damsel is silent, in distress
underdressed in her amnesty…
this distant hypocrisy
forgets me
and I swerve to define this
line of my observations
this truth of my inner nation
proclaiming itself to be
free
mired in mud
transpired in blood
higher than the seers
who predicted the flood.
Babble on….sweet priest
deceive the ignorant on the streets
of Babylon
anoint your tampon and slide in
to plug up
the slut of your ideology
to stop the flow
of connection of energy
from the heart of god
to the god of Earth
who whispers secrets
in the form of Birth.

{Charleen Johnston 11.27.2002}

Broken Through

Becoming one with this itch, I scream
silently pointing fingers of blame
mirror mazes blazes back at me
with glaring intensity
I scratch; hide from the faces
that hatch within this mould,
folding in on me; becoming me
in some sick dream…wearing
my masks and laughing
till my words spill chaotically
trying hurriedly to heal
the split; duality disappearing
with Light embracing Dark,
a dance of essence…
and I am reformed,
consciously;
I take the fake parts and hearts
and tear them apart
to reveal the Real,
the healing taking place between
this world and this dream
the great arc, the great bowl
with which my fever is fed,
this empty vessel fuelling
fire in my head;
I am held; they drink of me
like a wine sweet;
the intoxication of the beast;
listen, dear sir…would you care
to cleave this belief with me,
turn it into dichotomy?
Ah, there’s the secret, the sane
hand with which I claim
this land, this realm…
splitting hairs for fear of
Life, reconciled in the wiles
of the worm; earth furnished
and tarnished to term…
faded…outmoded…games played
with translucent trust…
am I breaking apart, fading away
claiming only the name of
the game, but suffering the
flame like all the rays
that have manifest here
since the Dawn?

~Charleen Johnston 2005

The TerraFractal

….the eye of the hurricane is on its way, to ransack and flapjack
the core of all our brains, speeding up the rate at which we perceive the
perforation, the fate of which could rip and tear a nation, a station, a
fusion of minds incoherent redundant grasping for meaning but dormant
fleeing the feeling of torment peeling the rots from the dealings and
knots from the zealous run leper run

run leper run its all just for fun
on a level so deep its not understood does it make it less
Real
does it make it less concrete does it make it worth
the run the gun the gripping of the sun in attempt to hide defeat

SMILE on the periphery it is a storm, a chaos, an insistence on resistance
but at the core, it’s unchanged, it neverwas and neverwillbe, and neveris,
but still
existing giving us the balance to create
lands in time hands in line to co create with malleable laws

implicate order enfolded within each explicate experience
shooting out from the source in fractals of difference and intensity
and vibration and density till the impulse reaches completion
loses its thrust coarsens its vibration yet mimics the One
and then begins its evolution back to the Within with all the
cohesion of experience and lessons and soulsparks and
mouldings holding on to Awareness as it ascends
back to the heart of the hologram to enrich the totality
of all that is
with each divine perspective as it returns
and ReTurns the wheel as the cycle continues
and spins out again
the impulsion the force the flickering light of
love to enforce the dynamic dance of desperate
dreams……………

charleen johnston 2004

Requiem

What does this spiral storm
Hold for me
Where does this winding path
Lead me

Am I passing thru unnoticed
In fragments of disguise
Remnants of understanding
Discarded
As l i e s….

The cycles compel us to
Forge forward
On this journey
The wheels of time
Ever so gently turning
Twisting
Stories and dreams
And whisperings into
Sculptures with essence
And imaginings

Dance like silver star s I l v e r n I g h t
Smiling from afar

(are we barred from ever reaching
Those shores that speak of transcendence?)

The ringing singing tone
Of E ve r y th I n g
Clap clapping deafening

Forces me to awaken from this dream

The requiem
Outlasted me

Finding once more simpler
Shores timeless tales metaphors

The path of fire that leads up thru time
Up thru spine out of mind

Is open before me

Am I
R e a d y to r e c I e v e ?

Charleen Johnston 2004

I saw Her face in a Dream

I saw her face in a dream
and knew that she was me
just a child just a wild
apparition running free
but where to hide
when the light peeks thru
to spaces that remain
untouched by truth
where to hide when I die
forced thru the threshold
to life, birth, earth
river, flame, sky…
…I chose this moment
to swim thru the sieve
I chose the mother
whose heartbeat I recieve
till the lightning strikes me
and I am born,
torn from the watery depths
shorn like wool from
my mothers lips…as she
whispers me, sings me into
Being, breathing, teething
seething underneath for
those phantoms and thieves
who starve the souls
who carve the coals from
the mothers folds, strip
her of her glow, furnace
flames grip and will not
let go,
let be,
let come to me this
hidden dream, a birth
to be recieved, a slow
moulding of individuality
though sheltering unity,
ah, but disease, follows me,
I heard her cry,
teardrops slipped from her
eyes, my eyes, mothers thighs
have been violated, raped
with scraped knees she
begs me now, recovering from
the crowds jeers and cheers
and fears of what lay beyond
the tunnels, the ponds
that make up her body,
the veins that feed the
brains that bleed the
sanity, leaking in streams
humility, dripping it seems,
splitting the seams
of this alltooreal dream,
and she closes her mouth
to keep out pollution
to keep in the solution
to her fears, to her years
of writhing in misery,
to be delivered from
humanity(s)weet plea,
please, hold the hand
of the motherland, surrender
to life and birth and
death on earth it’s all
too soon it’s all too
blue it’s all a cycle
of force and food,
feed the seed,
need the me
that slips
thru tunnels
soft like dew
slips thru caverns
to be born
to you…

Charleen Johnston 2004

I Live in A Giant Battery

I live in a spectacular natural battery
I live in a womb
I live in hygieias chalice
Entwined
By the serpentine flow
Of Life Energy
Thru natures Spine

When you understand electromagnetic energies and this earth playground, and know why you chose to Inter Carns Nation in this blissful unique zone of wonder

There are large amounts of iron ore in these mountains
This Mountain ring within mountains
This valley within a valley
Surrounded by the Sinuous sine wave of flowing water
Oh Shenandoah ….
Wrapping itself around like
A kundalini serpent

Bowl of hygieia
Churning the synapses
And bursting thru somatic
Maps

The poeisis of space
In this chaotic time
Of birth

The cup of hygieia is the womb, and the SineWave serpent is the Sexual energy/life force….

We have another womb, too….

Birthing mothers know that there is a direct connection between the larynx and womb… and the pelvis and the jaw….

What are you gestating…. In your fractal fugue of fantasy, what iMages are percolating
That eject from your vocal
Womb, what do you allow in to your Somatic Alchemical Furnace room?

What have we birthed from our wombs…in our eternal foray into Time….we have each birthed monsters….from our loins snd from our mouths…. As well as beauty. Can we forgive ourselves and reclaim those chimeras? Can we have compassion and defragment the hard drive….let the soul fly again….

Somatic Trauma Work….my ongoing love affair with Pain

Four Hours in this waking reality
Time-frame
Of intense Somatic Trigger Point
Pain
Bodywork and Descent
Into the Inner musculature and armature
And inPrizmMent
Of my StoriesInTimeSpace
Trapped and held
In my Shape
Navigating landscapes I had
Forgotten
But which had not
Forgotten Me
Twisting into the aching pain
Of the waking strain
Of aeons
Of Trying to See
And Dying to Be
Free
To Bleed
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Of nonLinear Destiny
Wrapped around the core
So tight
We cannot fail
To recognize
The Fight
We locked away
In Prizm Cells
In Somatic Shells that protect
The Seed
As dramatic deeds and
Infected Dreams
Plead
To be Released from these
Semiotic Seams

I cried as the Memories of Me~s
I’ve tried to hide
Spoke again
From the infinite fractal
Face
of wide-eyed Time
In a Space
I created
In Order
To wake the blind
Embryos
Of Selves in Sides
Of Chaotic crimes
So they could swim free
In rising tides
Of harmony
As I unBind them
In this fugue of MyStory
Mysteriously unfolding
Before Me

Charleen Johnston
2-5-22

🌹✨🕊✨🌹