The Awake Mind

10/29/2011

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Nothing so far has worked.
Shall we go within, you and I?
It's an intriguing place, within.
Somewhere we rarely visit.

Let's look at this wonderful Earth
with new eyes, free of
the surly bonds of war
and polarization, ignoring man-made
boundaries, purely from within 
the pulse of our unbounded selves
and be aware, really see,
the preciousness of all life, 
the wonders and gifts
of rivers and land,
mountains and trees,  
all forms of wildlife,
humanity...

with our inner sight,
we gently sense the Awake mind,
we see the life force,
the entire body of that life force
...resonating...glowing...
from this cradle called Earth,
with its wellspring of 
infinite energy

we perceive thoughts of
our own individuality and see
that these are sparked
by the silent, pure Mind,
the life consciousness within

we rise, with joy, with freedom,
into this vast ocean of
boundless pure consciousness
which is fathomless,
silent, infinite

and in the depth of this pure
consciousness, with this
inner sight, we see that every
creature, every person, is
uniquely beautiful, 
illuminated by the light of
this same Sun, 
The One Conscious Mind,
of which we are all
a part

we sink more deeply into this
silent awareness and sense that
it is omnipresent, and we soar
on the wings of this Infinite
Mind, entirely free...
and we can see the whole
of creation emanating, resonating,
phasing from the light of
Pure Consciousness,
which manifests Earth, space,
air...and us

and as the heart of this great Mind
wakens within us, we sense 
the unconditional love of the Divine,
and we see Earth, indeed ourselves,
as a palpable manifestation
of this eternal love

rising on wings of this Pure Mind
way, way above mountains
into the sky, we gaze back upon
this beautiful, blue planet
shining in a sea of
unbounded Being, and we see
that she is Awake, alive with
all the glorious possibilities of
the Universe

looking past Earth into stretches
of starry, galactic space, we
see that this perfect pulse of
the Unbounded Mind has
manifested the wonder
and fullness of a vast cosmos,
stretching forever without
end or beginning, and all of
this is alive and Awake
as well

and with this inner sight,
in the silence, 
we begin to perceive that each
created thing is a perfect
astral light from which it becomes
solidified, resonating from 
the finest, purest celestial to 
the fully physical form of
differentiated life, and from
that astral intelligent life
comes the magnetic field, 
electricity, subatomic particles,
atoms, molecules, matter,
space, our own beings

and within each created object
the perfect tone, sweetly
harmonic, resonating, each tone
pure, each tone unique, each thing
imbued with all tones, all thoughts,
all knowledge, and so even 
a blade of grass is
a doorway to the Infinite
Being, the Unbounded Mind.

as we gaze upon her with
this inner sight, let us
decide that Earth be
made whole, her burden lifted, 
so that we honor the potential 
in each created being, each soul, 
and determine that we 
will all, to the last person, be
awakened, enlightened. 

let there be joy once again! 
the perfect light of peace and
knowledge! 
where suffering lingers, let 
our common humanity work 
to provide healing and peace.

let us see, finally, that 
the answers are not "out there"
or "up there"
but within our own inner
light, which is part and parcel
of the abundant Whole.

and all we have to do
is go inward and connect with
that perfect energy...
and each other...and
make it so

-- Jo VonBargen 2011

"Beautifully written!" A time capsule for future generations. FROM THIS FAR TIME (The Human Saga) Fierce, taut poetry! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KJLCLC

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Whichever Body

10/28/2011

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I think of you, Sarasvati, and imagine
steps to the temple where you 
sit, and now I know a ray of sunlight 
can also be flesh and blood
if here on my own steps thinking
of you, I feel eternity's face on mine and 
your hand holding my pen

Opening, I yield to what
you knew was waiting to be
brought forth into living, breathing
form, yet I am barred from
knowing any god that knows that, or 
can a god not be known? 

I think not, except for that
spark in us that is a mere
cup of the ocean we call God, that is 
beyond thinking, both all and nothing,
neither is or is not, outside
of time and space, wholly
transcendent

You must laugh at my 
writhing around
to tap into that elusive divine
energy and grace but Lord knows it
will be be my quest til they throw
me on the pyre and you and all
the thunderbolts fate has tossed me
cannot stem what is loosed

I have assumed a body both
male and female; I have become Love
and Hate, Thanatos and Eros, I am You
the Past and You the Future, good
and evil, right and wrong, and
whichever body I assume today, through
that body I am served, World
without end.

In this short time, my muse, 
have you told me
anything I was not ready to hear?
On surface, yes. But I threw myself
on your mercy and the appetite
for creating has returned, full 
measure, affirmed, and I stand again
at the portal of 
~everything~

--Jo VonBargen 2011

"Beautifully written!" A time capsule for future generations. FROM THIS FAR TIME (The Human Saga) Fierce, taut poetry! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KJLCLC


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Umbilicus

10/27/2011

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as if it were
something     the wind
flapping

rainwater
braiding
down
down

dripping
tinkle on tin

the smell of it
ozone thick

the lowering womb

no blue shot
of sky
to disturb or
disclose

the way it was
then
those billion years
forming
some thought
of a
thought

ancestral
lap-lapping

the flooded grave

bud
stem
blood
bone
a hay-gone
hank
of hair

the roiling seas
inviolate

the dunes
...a sigh

--Jo VonBargen 2011

"Beautifully written!" A time capsule for future generations. FROM THIS FAR TIME (The Human Saga) Fierce, taut poetry! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KJLCLC

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Burning Quest

10/27/2011

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beyond the wide Albuquerque
valley below the Sandias
the flatness pleats
into humps, ravines,
tortured piñon trees,
then a violence of rock
crowns them all

ranchlands play out
and the majesty of mountains
gather the blue air of their
height about them

at the foot of Sandia Pass
one can envision days
of old, harsh men with eagles'
hunger gathered among
tossing horns, eyes
glazed in torchlight,
whiskeyed out, boots
in the embers of dying
campfires

and long
before them, the piñon nut
eaters, red paint on
their cheeks, harmless 
as deer

in full sun at the top
of Sandia Crest, on the precipice
of life I look out on a million
blue-hazed tomorrows,
frozen in awe...
transformed.

there is no bitter music
or primal sorrow left
in me as I make a bond with
the future

the burning quest
is what it is, and my
heart will recognize that
mystery when found

--Jo VonBargen 2011

"Beautifully written!" A time capsule for future generations. FROM THIS FAR TIME (The Human Saga) Fierce, taut poetry! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KJLCLC

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His Lame To Your Blind

10/26/2011

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you're out the patio door
sideswiped by a whoosh of beating wings

the barn swallow warns, firmly confident
of her squatter's rights
despite a plastic snake
and her house leveled weekly

raking the circle drive rimmed by woods
you check out every
gleam/odd shape in the river rock,
looking for arrowheads
that still slowly churn to the surface

this is great exercise you tell yourself
in the good, fresh air
not stale, not weighing you down
like the critical air
in there

what does he think?
squinting, suspicious,
watching for you to come around
your eyes to the ground
in deep thought

impulsive, you kneel to pick daisies
this one got you here
this one drew him here
this one shone through the fog
like a beacon 
to the lost, the wounded,
the helpless

you smile at your sturdy oakness
his clutching mistletoeness
your infinite patience
his brazen sense of  entitlement

his lame to your blind
his blotto-Wavy-Gravy
to your Joan-of-Arc-Baez

--Jo VonBargen 2011

"POWERFUL" "I calculate if I can afford all those years in the slammer if I go ahead and made your day" YOUR THIN BONES Letters I Never Sent You - on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LKBR6A

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Winging It In Eagle River

10/24/2011

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what's a girl like you doing
at McDuffy's Hotel all
alone in Alaska, for
God's sake, asked
the plumber

I'm having
an adventure, said I, not
even sure that was
why, gazing out at the loneliness
of black crows against
the snow

this is no place for
weak and inquisitive
girls, barked the grizzled old
fart, snake in gnarled
hand, voice all whiskey
and piss

what makes you
think I'm either, I sniffed,
righteously
miffed

well, I'm not
sure about the one, but you've
got that curiosity
in those
green, green
eyes, said he with
a wink

hmmph, I snorted, with
total disdain, I'm curious
about that little tinge
of misogyny in
your blue ones

shaking his head,
he deftly unplugged
the pipe, in a hurry
to get home and look that
one up
...and smoke it

--Jo VonBargen 2011
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Land Of Enchantment

10/23/2011

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A perfectly reasonable time back then, 
not tied in this Gordian knot of now,
no googolplex of gambles and 
choice, a time white and bleached 
like skulls in O'Keefe

The old Rio Grande...

Old Town, the adobe mission, La Placita
and hot sopaipillas, long linened
tables, dark blue glass, terra cotta.
On the wall, my beloved Ojo de Dios, and a 
standard wooden cross, its Christ

Pinon nuts and Hatch peppers...

Stands of thick cottonwoods, the lone
Russian Olive I climbed as a pup 
to watch the sun go down in a New Mexican
blaze, the river bottom where we
smoked and kissed boys

Rock candy and cactus...

Yanamoto's, shelves of ginger, green tea,
fuzzballs called kiwi...who knew what
those were? Lotus bowls, rice paper fans,
all graceful exotica to the unJapanese,
the well-tended fields of their produce

Luminarias. Well defined seasons...

The place of self. Of definition.
These ever increasing levels of limbo
crave dry air, Sandia mountains, 
crisp Halloweens

Give me pueblos, pigeons in the courtyard, 
painted saints, the nuns, 
caroling in the cold at Christmas

Albuquerque, my beloved 
tri-cultural Eden

--Jo VonBargen 2011


"Beautifully written!" A time capsule for future generations. FROM THIS FAR TIME (The Human Saga) Fierce, taut poetry! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KJLCLC

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Where Is God

10/20/2011

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I absorbed your lovespeak
and woke from the dead
for a year, then
poof, you were gone

the great bridge of skies didn't
take me to you...
I would have come, though,
had it meant sailing the sewers

my strength, when you vanished, 
faded fast, like last
light on the veranda windows

a man preaching on the corner
asked me, "¿Dónde está Dios?" 
"Where is God?"
I knew, and told him

he shook his head, disappearing
...like you, into the great
whirlwind that snatches men and houses,
hurls them up, up, up to
the pitch-black sky

--Jo VonBargen 2011
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Simply There

10/18/2011

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in the lull after our fray
I wait for a sign
I'm ready for it now
the penitence already beginning
in the hollow sobbing
of the valleys and ravines
where you swept away my last
shred of pride

there are mountains with
still, peaceful air but not for me,
where, buried like Jonah in
a fish belly, I see myself
no longer the same, changed
from the supposed beloved to
the simply there

while your eyes of Belial
flutter twisted dreams
I would take from
your Satan's hoard
vials of morphine
to close up my throat
and find semblance of strange,
fitful sleep, but that
wouldn't be enough to force
shut the door which, on opening,
unfolds the altar awash
in my blood

I turn my ear to your profane
rasp breaking into my
dawn, feel the enormous
presence of these like me
in your wake, and the howl of
the wolf is mine...eloquent, silent,
Munch's Scream

--Jo VonBargen 2011

"POWERFUL" "I calculate if I can afford all those years in the slammer if I went ahead and made your day" YOUR THIN BONES Letters I Never Sent You - on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LKBR6A

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Summers Gone To Ghosts

10/18/2011

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The brown warbler's song burbles,
curving into this room where
I hide from the heat.
It flutes like a gurgling stream
through the screen
on the honeysuckle breeze
and carries me along to long ago,
up on the mountain where I sat
cracking pinon nuts,
counting steeples and smokestacks
in the city below.
I wondered what caused 
clouds and what to make
of the swift slip of hours.

The brown warbler's song
trilled from a clover field
where Grandpa in overalls
and a cheek full of tobacco
stooped and tried to teach me
how to swing a scythe,
where Stranger the dog,
wearied by faster jackrabbits,
slept nearby in the dust.

Today I see the warping wood
of the haybarn and the green
John Deere tractor with cobwebs
whiffling in its wheels.
The bird's song carries
the buzz of bothering flies
and Black Angus cows across
the road flicking their tails.
These cows always know just when
to graze and when to slog
home to the barn.

Oh, there are other birds:
swallowtails trying to nest on
our porch, hummingbirds
flitting around the red 
sugar water feeders, 
Carolina wrens
dressed like squat brown
friars caring neither to
spin nor reap, jays
in bully-blue screeching
and taunting, robins peeping
night into day.

But only the brown warbler
trills a watery song
from summers gone to ghosts.
Only the brown warbler
can lump a song with the ripples
of times I let leave, to haunt me
in the shadow of my room.

--Jo VonBargen 2011
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