like golden eagles that
emerge from black sky,
then melt away in
a corridor of skeletal
trees, how did we become
separate persons, the “they”
so often spoken here?

speech is a little thing
a huge thing
a hurting thing
an otherizing thing

what makes me wait here
among the trees for all of
you, is a lost sense of
fire to print the ground
with parallel figures, shafts
of sunlight framing
fresh-cut trunks in the
clearings, and hollow stumps
on the ground where
we gather

this human forest is
torn, unrecognizable, rotting…
the everlasting thrum
too deaf, too fretful,
too polarized,
to gather hearts and
bring all to the table

you have all passed
this way, paused at the clearing
and, ignoring, dissolved like
a sigh, all around, and no
horror is even in it
in our eyes anymore, now that
at daybreak it’s
already almost night

–Jo 2008

I wonder if other writers get as frustrated as I do when watching what’s going on in our country and indeed, the world? These things are so obvious to me…how our rights are being eroded, how nothing is done for our vets, our poor, our homeless, how half the world is starving to death….are these things invisible to everyone else? Not to mention every advanced country in the world has health care for its citizens….except us. I just get so furious at all this stuff I could scream! Well, I guess I do howl a lot. I was born red-faced and yowling and never gave it up. I want to march in the streets. I want to storm the White House lawn. I want to make the politicians fear the voter once again. I want those fat cats up on Capitol Hill to be reminded in a very vivid way that THEY are the employees…and WE are the employer. I want them scrambling and bowing and scraping. And I want to take every lobbyist up there and throw ‘em on a bonfire. Oh, don’t get me started…. Just keep a light in the window and howl loudly, friends!

It’s a cynical view, but I have often looked at a map of America and seen Rome written all over it, and indeed the advanced technology of our and other superpower nations leaves us all holding our breath. I have noticed, over the years that people have drawn inward and concern themselves with only their own circles, very rarely getting involved in a broader protest. Not surprising, after we’ve all seen just how ineffective we are in implementing change. The forces and influence of the powerful have neutered our individual capabilities.

But let’s not shave our heads just yet; there is still hope for the world. As the poet said, “hope springs eternal in the human breast”. No matter how dire my situation, I have always awakened in the morning with a smile that I made another day and with expectation in my heart that somehow, somewhere, something good was going to happen to save us all. And I think that as long as we individually make an effort each day to do some small something to further that cause, our chances of making progress are at least decent.

–Jo VonBargen 2008

Many have asked me what it is, exactly, we do….we poets, writers and journalists who scramble up words with deliberate dictions and loaded meaning.  I can only say that it is a calling, a compulsion, a formidable responsibility, and an incurable disease…not to be wished on anyone.  Driven to lie low in sacred cow pastures, we wait for a first whiff of “something’s not right here”, then race maniacally through the streets raving incoherently, tearing our hair, screaming foul play.  Who in their right mind, I ask you, would consciously choose such a vulnerable profession?  Truth is, most of us have no choice.  It descends uninvited, like a pox…destiny’s cockamamie idea of a good joke.

We’ve been here through time, the world over, harnessing our energies for holocausts to come, ever poised to become red-faced with howling at perceived injustice and abuse of raw power whenever and wherever it occurs.  The fact of the matter is that, however it may really seem, we are not builders of the world, but its explainers.  We are keepers of the collective sanity, in our ironically imprudent way.  Striving to crush the vain idols of greed and intolerance with our sadly inadequate feet of clay, none of us is immune to falling prey to those same false gods.  It is an hourly struggle to not only examine the ills of society, but to police our own deepest motives as well.

This is not to say that all we do is look for blatant negatives. Among us are powerful creators who weave the tender and the magnificent into incredible poetry and stories that wholly transport us to another plane of existence. There is much in the world that is beautiful, positive and inspiring…and even more for which we should simply be thankful.  Certain of us neglect these aspects more than we’d like in an effort to speak for the otherized, forgotten and voiceless.

It is a fact that in writing about hopelessness from our lofty, secure havens, not many of us would be willing to relinquish that security to become one with the hopeless…but maybe that is what progress is all about.  Whoever is lucky enough to get out of the muck first reaches a hand to others still struggling in it. At least that is the ideal.

For all that is wonderful about humanity, there are many of us who serve in the capacity of exposing life’s not so pretty underbelly in an effort to awaken and enlighten those who deny or don’t know of its existence.  It is increasingly easy in our high-tech lives to become smug and complacent…blind to those problems that do not tangibly affect our own orbits and concerns.

The fact is that we are intricately connected to every facet of this planet and its inhabitants in ways that may not be immediately apparent.  I would say yes, we are our brothers’ keepers; and if this species is to continue to flourish, we must give respect and acceptance to each member and rejoice in our glorious diversity.

At times in our history, even in the present day, writers have come close to being an endangered species… having been exiled, imprisoned, executed and greatly maligned. But, will we go the way of dying herds, massacred by intolerant, mumbling prigs?  I think not.  We may be plowed under, buried, or our ashes flung to the winds, but we will inevitably sprout again the unkillable weed of our discontent from the rotting field of misused power…fueled by the sweet, soft rain of all that is good.  For all the manic highs and lows, the agony, joy, the sheer frustration and isolation a writer’s life brings, we are powerless to find the heart to do anything else. It is, after all, a labor of love.

–Jo 2008

in the stillness of the night
I walked your streets
my spirit entered your houses
your heartbeats were my heart

I climbed to your summits
I mirrored your valleys
your breaths were upon my face
and I knew you all

your joys and pains were mine
your dreams were my dreams
your thoughts my thoughts
your desires my desires

I laughed with your children
and longed with your youth
and laughed and laughed
boundless within you

you all sing and throb and chant
and I beheld you
and loved you
and no distance could intervene

I was like the giant oak
that covered you
and bound you to the earth
and thought to be deathless

but you are only as strong
as the weakest among you
and those small weak deeds
found my frailty

you are like the seasons
though in winter you deny Spring
still, Spring is never offended
and smiles in her drowse

do not say to one another
“He praised us well”
“He saw the good in us”
for you have failed me

your thoughts and memories
are of the ancient days
when a man’s word was his honor
and wise men ruled

in the flame and confusion
you have ceded your might
to the moneyed and the mighty
and towers of power and glory

pass by the fields
where you’ve laid your fathers
and tell me you’ve kept
their bold honor and promise

you will hang your shamed heads
you will tell me the storms
trapped you in your nets
you will say psalms of appeasement

but I tell you with knowledge
that the soarers are also creepers
the believers also doubted
and now you are not free

your spirit no longer envelops
the earth, except as invader
you don’t move with the wind
you speak nebulous words

you no longer see
you no longer hear
you have no regret of your
blindness or that you are deaf

by your silence
you have signaled your captains
that all is well and you bless
the darkness that’s fallen

I have measured you by
your smallest deed and found
you wanting, the ocean once
powerful frail as its foam

with fear for your future
with a heavy, heavy heart
with regret and much love,
I say goodbye

–Jo 2008

The wonderful Grandiva asked these questions on her blog:

“What about you? 
What moves you? 
What do you do because your soul demands it? 
What art makes you feel and brings you to another level for having experienced it?  What have you learned or gained from your shipwrecks? –Grandiva 2008″

Jo:

***************************

Poetry moves me.
POETRY
P O E T R Y
~poetry~
…poetry…
POETS

***************************

P erfect words
O dd moments
E legant thoughts
T houghtful deeds
R aw courage
Y ou on toast

***************************

My soul demands souls
words with soul
souls with spirit
spirits within
poetry with soul
souls plump with poems
spirit poets
warrior poets
fierce poetry
poems with music
Soft poems
erotic poems
soul poets with edge
edgy poets with soul

***************************

What art makes me feel?
God art, human art, earth art,
frail art, glistening art,
bloody art, pure art,
dirt art, suffering art

poetry, paintings, music,
star hums, cave thrums, tree
frogs, underbellies,
PINK FLOYD and life

***************************
shipwrecks?
I’ve known a few
and the pirates, too, whose
jiggery and puffery sunk ‘em

they say I use down,
down, down a lot in my
work…yes I do…
it would be natural to say
where my paths always
lead, wouldn’t you?

I live on an ark; it rocks
in the storm but won’t
tip, and though lightening
cracks and waves batter,
all the gusting hurled my
way is mere howling.
I’ll eventually land on some
distant shore where blood and
lime seethe in the print
of a another lost human foot
and be sweetly home

–Jo 2008

How oceans will say it, in
billowing terms, is
one thing. How wind blows far
is another

Arcs of the ages finely
supposing old vintage blood
scream numberless
faces, streams of existence
carved on a tree…
I WAS HERE

Nakedness, meshed with the night.

Stars caught fast in a net
of dimensions…raging, seething,
fast computing fine ringlets
of darkness and fable,
hyperbole, long empty shadow,
all logged on a helix of
parchment, white.

Til the axial pole of the moon.

How pure it was lain,
far out of range, heaven itself
bestowed. No animal trace
covered that place
with dark blood.

Forsaking the ether, a slumbering
body approached in a
trice, trailing dead ice
and live pandemonium. Clouds
disembarked reclaimable
turf, swooping to earth like
a plague.

Appalling, the crystalline ruin.

Rancors demurred in
humanity’s shame, pointing
the blame at time and tide, that
refuge of cowering fools.

At last, Silence.

A solitude, rimmed. Dreams, dead
in a heap, like ants.
No widow’s weeds, no plea for
mercy, no banished Winter
vanished to Spring…but
a gossamer shroud, blue haze of
smoke, curling the last
global pall.

The traitor betrayed, on a deadline verge.

And on the periphery, pitch.

–Jo (early nineties)

The night of that day was perfect, the moon
beaming on every US city and on all
the bookshelves and all the silverfish
slipping into the bookbindings to eat
the starch….oh, perfect night…
perfect night of the worst, worst, worst
day of my life.

Sitting in the dark, the moon lit my hands,
like his hands minus the liver spots,
soft bruising and rootlike veins
texturing the surfaces. Much more
like him than my Mother, we butted heads
all my life yet loved each other
just as fiercely.

Funny thing about high intelligence…in
his case, at least. There is no ability to hold
opposing ideas in his mind and yet
retain the ability to function. A retired
engineer, tops in his field at the height of
his career, his ego would not allow him
the fact that he is now only an old man
in a retirement home, so he cracked up.

Really.

No longer mobile, except for his
wheelchair, he had planted himself at
the East Wing nurses station and
prepared for the siege. World War III
was upon us. The potted plants were wired
with explosives, any strangers walking
by were spies, and the north wall
was going to come crashing down
any second.

He built little piles of paper
trash all over the room and begged
people to set them afire so he could guide
the planes in. He wore all his hats at
once as a makeshift helmet.
Somehow the sight of his tall, tall head
was not at that moment amusing.

Earlier, he had used his manicure
scissors to cut off his 24 hour heart
monitor, had sprayed his whole can of
shaving cream all over himself
and his shoes and cut up a tube
of denture cream. Camouflage, I
suppose.

I held his old, bruised hands in mine
and softly tried to bring him
back to the now, but he wasn’t having
any of it. He wanted me to leave
before the bombing started. I tried
to wheel him toward his room and
he plunked down his foot,
refusing to let us move.

He was a canary in a cage, not
willing to let me cover it with
dark cloth. He wanted to rant,
to cry and husk seeds and toss
them on the floor. And in spite of
his madness, he wanted to
protect me.

The doctor eventually called with
med orders. The good stuff, the hard
zombie-making, drooling-mouth
problem-fixer. And so he sits, day
after day, too feeble to stay
awake more than 1.5 minutes,
hunched over in his chair,
a problem to no one.

Sleeping fitfully, I awake to find
myself trying to hold his
dream-hands, as if to somehow
help him find his way out
of the cold and foggy drear.

Sleep will not return
even though this night is perfect,
like that perfect night of
the perfect moon, of the day his
perfect shadow passed out
of sight into that dark, dark place
where engineers, one
supposes, must sadly go,
when they can no longer
engineer or navigate or accept
that it is so, but simply wait
and wait til breath runs

out

Jo-2008

(Written listening to “Interstellar Overdrive” by Pink Floyd)

clanging sensation in the sky…
tell me the source!
planes unfamiliar
onslaught of haze
intensity fierce
a great wail of whorling
strange music of water
tattered wind
way out of this corrupt orbit?
I’m packed. Let’s go

light and mineral
and liquid to reflect them
are these our lands
these analogues of death?
must go further still
to the extreme end of it all
like the poles of earth
where sun strikes obliquely
and the slow exchange
between light and dark
is monotonous
but the aurora reflects surely
the fireworks of Hell

the door!
a door we must enter
sentinels charged with mystery
no gardens here
phantoms in twilight
are they Borg?
tearing their shrouds
the clanging of souls
children playing
bouncing metal balls on
our heads
what are you hiding midst
tin and brass? Where is
the starscape?
where are the ships?
things move with impudence
defective drums leaden
and brusque

something ethereal
mysterious and delicate
a buzz of lightning
softer than webs and passing
like breath
silent as stones
then leaps to luminous
voices chirping, interrupting
like crickets along
the baseboard of eternal design
sonar pings yo-yo-ing
this is not Star Trek!

asian music steams over
a thousand mazes, exotic
and rolling from age to age
elbowing in the marketplace
the madness of desire
a twirling ball
divine opium and cool decor
the thumping slows to
signal drums

a peaceful interlude
by the acid pond
blue clouds yellow skies
occasional death missiles
whistling past
harridans in the mirror
their tinkling waist chains
we hear water on tin!
look, writhing bodies of every
wrong size, radiant
ancients, faces gnawing
nourishment from bold
debauchery, see the backward
muses! their morbid use

where is fearless Kirk in all
this?

a falling
into misunderstanding
a rumbling in the ranks
curses and blasphemies
war drums in the distance
a thousand sentinels
a thousand citadels
crackling corpses
growing discord with
our impoverished muse
eyes stocked with nocturnal
visions of space,
insanity and horror
forming instead

war looming, smoke signals
factories, bombs of
heaviness, thumping toward doom
spiraling into the cauldron
discordant cacophony,
plummeting down, down
downward

we have not made it out
we have not escaped

screaming shrill, our hazy
caravan to the stars
floats past with blood-
blurred vision and tastes
naught, no milk
of human kindness
only the inevitable
slowing, the burnt-out
embers of wreckage smoking
our lovely hopes only
the decayed remains of
this day

–Jo 2008

come dance with words
and pry the labyrinth of
that secret place apart
to give your heart wings
like you know you should do
or is it avoidance?
another something else for you?
deep are these solaces
buried in the darkened heart
and only revealed so
that new stars may shine
across the endless universe

what are you waiting for?
don’t just stand there
crying the tears but keeping
all the pain in.
whatever in the world
are you thinking that you
could handle it alone?
good grief already.
painting life with words
is what got you this far
and together these crazy dreams
keep you in one piece.

catching the poet
in a moment of tragedy
or a blinding rage is but
words on a page
but we meet together on our
silent roads to watch
the marching of our dreams
toward doom or bright
reality.

and if we ask
what is this? then I must
say let the pipers play
for they are paying
for our dance and should we
vanish into the woodwork
they will know we were
here, the best of every season
in a lifetime of poets, our
life in a virtual coffee shop
stealing glances at “them”
but really ourselves, and all
those things “they” say
are but moments we missed

let us view
the self portrait of a species,
the long-suffering poets,
glittery little things, aren’t
they? in an eternity of
stars, with their
frozen words on fire, their
bleeding pens and retractable hearts
that cannot trust
words to be left to play alone
which is virtually how
I found myself right now

–Jo 2008

absorbed and pale, you
sit beside burning
walls and ponder

I see you breathe
without body or voice, betrayed
by reflection

look how you’ve gnawed
and swallowed memories, how
the rust is so
bitter

you are travail
and sun going down

someone has hung their gasps
in your eyes, and brushes
your hair with stony
silence

for evil you see
the strangled brook, still
gurgling, the curling
of the shriveled leaf,
the fallen deer

for good there is only divine
indifference, the drowse
at noon, the cloud,
the soaring wren

you are a benediction, a
destruction, gone mad
in the light

–Jo 2008