Perched over the river
on the overlook
of our recent encounter
an underwater
brightness flows, distorting
the womanly curve
of hills, our faces

Climbing down
before the falls
we wade out
into the cool water
and it wavers, our gestures
cutting away
then appearing,
disappearing,
in this medium that absorbs
every wake, closing over
our passage

We have wept the
last tears and
you have kissed me
goodbye; our once-love
and this rarified air
settling down, down
down, sealing
the sleep of stones

–Jo 2008

Here’s what I did. Ten years ago, after sulking over my soap opera life and everyone in it, I sold everything I owned and moved to Alaska, where real danger lurks around every corner…and the elements are a fierce challenge. Blowing into Anchorage on October 17th with the first snow storm, I found a little efficiency apartment at McDuffy’s Hotel in Eagle River and lived there for a year.

Hibernating and feeling sorry for myself for three months, I finally went out and got a regular job at an engineering firm, walking to work and back home every day in the dark (the sun rose at 10:00 AM and set at 3:00 PM). Eagle River is a small town in the foothills of the Chugach mountains and if I wanted to go 20 miles down to Anchorage I hopped on a bus. Snow that winter was up to my hips.

Here’s what I learned:

You can’t know and appreciate yourself and your strengths until you’ve cut yourself off from all your familiar crutches and you have to depend on your own resources to keep warm, keep safe and feed yourself. When you live in a place, like I did, where you can turn a corner (even downtown) and come face to face with a bear or moose, you learn that much of what you previously feared was horse-hooey and mostly made up in your own head. The first week I was there, a woman in a pink nightgown went out her back door to see why her dog was barking and was killed by a moose, a man was kicked to death by another moose in front of a door at the University of Alaska and a female hiker on the bike trail looping Eagle River was attacked by a coyote who ran out of the woods, bit her on the butt, and ran away. Over the next few weeks, a grandmother was mauled to death by a bear in front of her grandson out on a hiking trail and a man sitting watching TV inside a worker’s lounge up on the North Slope was mauled by a polar bear who looked in through the window, saw him, and broke through the glass.

You come to appreciate what friends and family mean because they are 6000 miles away and you can’t exactly hop a puddle jumper and go home for the weekend…and, much to your chagrin, all those petty grudges and resentments you held against your parents or siblings for forty years seem pretty lame when you realize the damage you’ve done to your own life just to spite them all.

You learn that, while it’s nice to have a soulmate, it’s likely to be much nicer when you finally meet one after you’ve learned how to live and survive alone. You have to go deep inside your own being to find who’s really in there. That true you, the real you, is the one you want to offer to someone else if the occasion arises.

You learn how to say no. No to the leeches who only want to bleed you dry. No to yourself when it’s not in your own best interest. No to the fears you’ve been dragging around all your life. Fear is a funny thing. 99 percent are products of the imagination, yet they cause untold human misery as we numb ourselves down to try and escape them. One thing you learn for sure: no matter how deep it is or how long the self-induced coma lasts, you have to come to sometime. And the baggage is still there unless you ditch it yourself, while you’re awake and have come to see how much you don’t need it. What’s left is the true you, the glorious possibilities for your life, and a deep, soulful thankfulness for all that you have and, indeed, had all along.

In quiet mist before daylight
the wind chime tinkles, a warm
clink with crystal to toast the
bone chilling cold

Bewilderment consumes the
hour as words fallen stonily
between us indicate
we do not know ourselves
or each other
at all

Overwhelmed, its power
weighing around us, we no longer
speak of anything familiar -
and these few lame gestures will
surely be strummed away
like the folly they are

Gusts lift the dried leaves

Thunder rolls in the distance
of our twin discontent

White puffs from the chimney
speak the few scorched moments of
everything we were

First light sketches in
the lonely old lane,
the loblolly pines and
a shadowed shackled visage -

Two faces,two masks, struggling
hard to carve themselves into
a smile

RACISM: THE ONUS IS ON US

A government’s long path of least persistence is the short road to the people’s wit’s end.  Metaphorically, crosses still burn, not to mention our cities.  Is it unrealistic to demand more leadership from the top?  Probably.  Politics is a blood sport in this part of the world; stalking votes and tracking the opponent’s game strategy is no lazy stroll to the Piggly Wiggly, folks.  These people are busy.
 
Glibness aside, it is thanks to the law and stricter standards for public behavior that life for minority racial groups in America has somewhat improved.  But the fine concept of “We the people” hasn’t survived in we, the people.  A dangerous undercurrent of hatred and fear still undermines our nation’s health.  Legislation can’t penetrate intolerant hearts, and nothing has remedied the fact that countless individuals have been “otherized” – in effect, made invisible – by the historical willingness of a few to spread lies and the many to gobble them up.  No one has managed to megaphone home the point that buying into stereotypical myths of any sort – hello – makes about as much sense as seeing a sale ad for prime rib in section C and proceeding to eat the newspaper.

Let’s break it down.  At the core of one form of racial prejudice, strangely enough, is a harmless little element called melanin, the dark pigment found in hair, skin and retina.  This doesn’t exactly let a lot of dark-eyed, dark-haired white folks off the hook, does it?  Not surprisingly, the dictionary has a label for them, too.  Melanochroi.  Things get interesting when you add this to the debate.

If you were born of two melanous parents in the last 500 or so years, it wasn’t your lucky day in the U.S. of A.  If, however, one of the two was relatively pink or whitebread-looking, you might have been perceived as a more exotic version (Americans LOVE exotica).  Even then, though, you were in for a rough go.  To this very day (and few would admit it), too many see diversity as meant only for merry diversion and gossip fodder, certainly not for inclusion.

Emerson had the notion that humanity has an innate tendency toward improvement, “The races meliorate, and man is born.”  “No, no, the Aryan race”, say some Melanachroi and their pale-skinned amigos in mindless megabigotry.  One epidermal cell capable of synthesizing the insidious dark pigment is one cell too many in this, our native land.  Which land, by the way, had native Natives who were doing just fine for thousands of years before we came along.  What happened after that remains a source of sadness for the few indigenous peoples left to cope with the hostile unmelanous who couldn’t care less.  Perhaps this is a good place to note that Native Americans traditionally addressed all forms of life – all – as “thou”, an object of reverence.

Melanin does have some strange properties.  Persons having it feel nothing, but many people without it feel something akin to panic when it’s nearby, unless they are busy panicking because they don’t have it and in a tanning booth paying to get it.  Melanic individuals never think about it until they walk out the front door, only to be reminded by some idiotic quasi-unmelanous who would have all to know that it causes small brains, big thighs and stolen property.  This naturally ticks off the melanous (showing almost the only moral outrage left in town), who know that natural beats store bought any day of the week and the rest is all pig swill.

Middle America has a hard time with these things; nobody ever really paid attention in high school biology.  The world today belongs to the glitterati, celebrities and the mealy-mouthed mythmongers.  Be that as it may, truth is what we seek, and the truth of a matter is not determined by how many believe it.  The melanous are up to the eyeballs with the lobbing back and forth; they already know who loses.

Clearly, it is the lazy racism of habit, a slow absorption of mythological ignorance that over time becomes ingrained as fact and makes seemingly good people say and do appalling things to make others small.  Look at Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder or Al Campanis, who both learned a few years back what should have been the private lessons of unsure youth at smug elder age, in public.

Melanin itself is oblivious to all the lies humanity can conjure up, unaware of its own enigma.  It will solidly endure, shamed, shunned or highly sought, beautifully natural or “wannabe” bought.  And – this is corny – but what the heck did we all think a freckle was?

–Jo 2008

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)