Journey: Cross Genre

familial

when i heard the news
that i had no mother
that my carrier intended me dead
that an angel saved my life
but could do nothing for my soul
i packed my things.

wandered deep into the forest
of my self. until i came to a clearing
and there i slept. and there i ate
and there i gathered from the night,
mothers for my self.

i was seed plucking fruit from trees
when only weeds would feed me
toni. maya. bell. zora. nina
i gathered.

harriet. fannie. angela
come, mama. come
ka'ahumanu. liliuokalani. haunani
i gather. assata. jamaica. bessie.

take back to center. billie
ai. sapphire. alice. audre
come, mama. talk to me.

i gathered
am gathering still
i am embrya
building tribe

- journey

art credit: the mothers' by käthe kollwitz

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Journey: Cross Genre

As a lens, Astral Tribal: Poems and Epics unflinchingly brings into focus, oft times, dark matters such as su***de and depression and the impact of an unjust criminal system of racism and classism on targeted ethnocultures. Daring further, Journey dips irreversibly into the darker still hush topics of in**st and patricide as well as the tragic abandonment of the infant daughter of a single mother struggling through prostitution.

It is in no particular order that, almost mercifully, the reader is navigated to the soothing spaces between, where the indestructibility of Love embodies itself in gazes of lovers succumbed to the godliness in touch, the resuscitation of a mother's compassion in the midst of rage and agony, and finally in the omniscient presence of ancestral empowerment as epitomized in the title epic Astral Tribal.

Written over a decades-long sojourn as both co-conspirator and awkward observer of marginalized sub-societies, Astral Tribal: Poems and Epics is a portrait, however marred, however piercing, of a people, beautiful, bleeding and eternal.

Astral Tribal: Poems and Epics Astral Tribal: Poems and Epics

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Journey Johnson Spoken Word - YouTube Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

Fog

To want to reach
Instead recede

To watch the petals
Of your favorite orchid
Float beyond peripheral

To not turn head
To think it better
Dead

To inhale
To smell casket
They are burying
You

To feel satin
Against pulse

Sound of earth
Raining down
And over

Darkness swallows
Every word you
Should have said

Verbs crawl
Out from under
Pallbearer's sleeve

Pool into tear
In corner of eye

Slip
Into
Ear

To want to reach
There is no room
To move inside
This space

Recede

To feel the salt
Inside of sweat
Bleed through
Sunday best

Your
Favorite
Color

They have
Always loved
The way Blue
Becomes you

To feel the light
Slide 'cross the deep

To sleep
To reach
And then

Recede

They
Are gathered
Here today

Save breath
For journey
Beloved
Save breath

Amen

- Journey

From Astral Tribal Poems and Epics

First Earth

First earth. You were
First God. Belly. Stretched
Beyond. Brown horizon, I
Crawl over. and

My earth. Have
Mountains. I, cub
In cold world. Hibernate
Upon. Under. In
Safe

My earth. Eagle's wings
Of arms. Swoop down
Pick up, sn**ch from
Danger. Watch ground, I
From talons. My earth.
You were

First sky. Gaze be cloud
Cover. Stars twinkle when
God laugh. Overcast
Rain down. Thunder be
Threat in slide of eye

First heaven. You were
First religion. Born zealot
First church. Was hem
Of skirt. Pray under. Peek
Out. Grow up. Believe
In angels. Be sin
In saint

My earth. You were
First God. Belly. Stretched
Beyond. Brown horizon, I
Walk into

- Journey

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Definitions belong to the definers, not to the defined. - Toni Morrison

https://youtu.be/u1eC5LXPXJo

Love Note Love Note Spoken Word by JourneyProduced by E Nina Jay

Love Note

I keep
Our last kiss in my pocket
A tenderly scribbled love note
Worn by the longing of retrieval

Roll of tongues imprinted
Fingerprints
Thumbed through
Skimmed

In the dim light of remembrance
You are my favorite sonnet
I memorize you
My four letter alphabet

Teach you
To my children
That they may learn
What it is to be loved
Beyond a mother's prayer

I wear
Your pheromone
Behind each earlobe
Across each wrist

Don you
Like my Sunday best
On Wednesday mornings
When the world is all
But void of divinity

Yours is the voice
I reply to
All by my self
Crazy

I am that apparition
Beneath crescent moon
Howling
neck out stretched
Wind through tuft of cloak

Empress
Of palace inhabited by none
But echo
Of a love note
Written
By unseen
Hands

-journey

Edge of Bone

We swing from edge of bone
Holy men have told our stories
On the streets of St. Colette
We were children then

We hear our names on
Tongues of savages
Their silk ties sully the
Light beneath our
Bare feet

We smile at the smiles
Of their pity. Pity the miles
They will tread before
Drowning

Nod our approval
Of the cotton they have picked
For our offering

'Spare some change, brother?'
'Gods bless you'

How the cotton doest fall
From their leather trees

The elders have taught us well
We must speak the language of skin when
Moving through flesh vessels

We swing from edge if bone
Carrying the wind in our marrow
Flying with our eyes closed

-journey

Glass Lakes

We are
Stone swans
On glass lakes

We understand
But have not mastered
The necessity of
Smooth and steady strokes
Lest the ripples we create
Send us spiraling
Through the dark
Of a depth we have not
Capacity to comprehend

Flaunt we feathers
Of obsidian. Spellbound
By the play of light.
Think we light

Think we other
Than sinking swans
Through glass of
Mirrored flight

So smooth
We never see the ripples
Or hear the shattering
Of stone swans through
Glass lakes.

-journey

Only Notion

And I would forfeit next lifetime
To be at once the inhale on your tongue
And teardrop licked from crest of lip

If at this moment
I could ride the reverberating
Current of 'I love you'

That electric river
Coursing through your throat
A deity' s meditation

I would shed
My heathen's cloak to
Kneel before your altar

The inhale on your
Tongue. The teardrop licked
From crest of lip.

- journey

Siren Cry

It's like
I can see the rain falling
But I can feel it

Somewhere
I'm bleeding
But I can't see it

The sirens are crying

I want to run
But am trapped by the cracks
In caged thought

I want to talk
I want to scream
Silently into the
Solace of solitude

But my voice can't find
The fortitude to past
The ghost in my throat
And I choke on the sound
Of bit tongues

The sirens are crying

I can see him. Staring
But he can see me. See
He's not breathing

My father
I shot him
He's dead

The sirens are crying

I want to let loose
This piece
Is heavy

Like burdens of babies
Bearing the weight of fathers
Less fathers than men

The sirens are crying

His eyes, I want to close them
Stop them from accusations of temptation
But my hands are clenched in indignation
To what has begun to come undone

Index and trigger are one
Meshed like flesh entwined
In secret vortex of regret

The sirens are crying

I wanted him
To stop
On top of me
He said
I wanted him

I wanted him
To stop. Pop, stop.
Shots stop pop's breath
From breathing
Down my neck

The sirens are crying

I played death
So well I died

Pushed him aside
While he slept
Crept to the door. But
Eyes spied dresser drawer

The sirens are crying

I wanted to close my eyes
But my ears wouldn't hear
It was easy

Like Sunday mornings
When mama went to the
House of the Lord and
Left me behind on the
Devil's playground

The sirens are crying

I wanted to stop in my tracks
Backtracked to bedroom door
Never wanted anything more

The sirens are crying

Than to stop him
On top of him, I said
He wanted it

And he wanted it
That way. Me on top for a change
Strange new game in our
Arrangement

The sirens are crying

Engaging smile
So mildly arms wrap
Around waist, and the look
On his face was so
Peaceful

The sirens are crying

So peaceful, I squeeze
Freedom from iron bent
Into gun on his tongue

The sirens are crying

No. No.
Please. Don't.
Oh, but

This time the
Words are not mine
This time the words
Feel divine

Behind my back
The walls talk about me
They talk

But I can't hear them

The sirens are crying

For me.

- journey

Present Company Excluded (revisted)

I don't mind ghost
Fact is
I like the company

But there came a point when
The house of my mind
Got too crowded
And I had to learn
To separate my own ghost
From Those left behind
By people who were careless
With their s**t

People who did not
Respect either of us enough
To take their belongings
With them when
The time came

Once in awhile
I'll notice one

Clung to my spirit
Like a child I
Did not born and
I'll say to it

I have nothing against you
But you have to leave
I have my own mouths to feed

And I'll hold the door open
With the tip of my pen
Until all that is left
Are the tracks of their feet
Across the mat of my page

-journey

Sugar
Is purest in the morning
When the spiritual palate is clean
Before the sweat begins to bead
Before the eyes begin to sting
Before the fog of thought rolls in
Leaving its bitter cloud to
Rain in your coffee.

- Journey