Poetry & Prose by Jo VonBargen

in the night, in the myths
I tell myself, there is a secret
haunt, a cave of darkness
where my heart wanders,
sometimes in fear, sometimes
in wonder, the heart
being so dessicated one is akin
to the other, really

my battered consciousness
is etched with cryptic pearls
of illusion even as
there is a wealth of
brightness above

there is no dearth
of wariness, and the riddle
cannot be approached
by what anyone has promulgated,
but I will not be disentangled
from the cave of night
and always howl against
the injustice of the blight
but become blind
and amoeba-like
in the sun

I draw darkness around me
like a shawl, and something
inhabits one wall…creatures,
I’m sure, conceived on
some torture couch of Hell,
and always room for one
more…me…
happily, though…
knowing they’ll break
their chains and go for
my throat, violent in their
madness, mutilating my
body in ways unspeakable

Make it my sanctuary,
nevertheless, for
sweet wind blows upward
from the depths
and to the dim end, no
matter what the magic of grass,
water, precipice or
pain of wounds,
the dark makes death look dear
because beauty will go savage
in the secret mountains
before the end, when
I crawl out on a ledge of rock
and die snapping like a wolf

–Jo 2008