beyond the wide Albuquerque
valley below the Sandias
the flatness pleats
into humps, ravines
and tortured piñon trees;
a violence of rock crowns
them all
ranchlands play out;
the pure 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
the tossing horns,
eyes glazed in
torchlight, whiskeyed out,
crusted boots nearly
touching embers of
dying campfires
long before them lived
a people blissfully unaware
of their cruel destiny:
the piñon nut eaters,
cheeks painted red,
feathered, leathered and
harmless as deer
in full sun at the top
of Sandia Crest,
on the precipice of life,
I looked out on a million
blue-hazed tomorrows,
frozen in awe -
transformed
in spite of all the world's
ills, in that moment
there could be no bitter music
or primal sorrow left
in me as I made a bond with
the future
the burning quest
was then what it is now, and my
heart will recognize that
golden mystery when found
--Jo VonBargen 2012
like golden eagles that
emerge from black sky
then scatter and melt away in
a corridor of skeletal
trees, how did we become
separate persons, the "they"
so often spoken here
speech, once a small thing
has become 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,
a memory of fresh-cut trunks
in the clearings and hollow
stumps on the ground where
we used to gather
but this human forest is
torn, unrecognizable, rotting,
the everlasting thrum
making us deaf, too fretful to
gather hearts and
bring all to the table
perhaps there is some
distant shore where blood and
lime seethe in the print
of a another lost human foot
and we can begin anew
...for all have passed
this way, paused at the clearing
and dissolved like
a sigh all around, and no
horror is even in it anymore,
now that at daybreak it's already
almost night
--Jo VonBargen 2012
Midnight, alone on earth's verge. The long, desert road darkly explained to a gleam-sweetened sky, fistfuls of sugar tossed there at random, caught by the gods for night candy.
Monotone neon daubed on black tar flows under the hood like my years on this vast prairie canvas shrunk by the night to a hundred-yard circle recasting its quadrants each spin of the wheel. Tumbleweeds...furry things scurrying fast. Fence posts and signs all harass a clear glimpse, my eyelids heavy, too slow for this spin in a Kafkaesque blender.
Two eyes, copper-glowing, flash Morse code warning. I speed on past, like a shiny chimera daring to howl down its long stretch of turf in this land of glad beasts, some of us human, not very tuned into the rest.
A fine juxtaposition: happy-foot jazz, the highway's low drone. Fused with resonance, I soar on glib wings down an infinite span of enigma, power poles question marks at tall, naive wondering what lies beyond all those incredible stars. Uncountable miles between me and the drowsy DJ spinning out mercy to midnight prowlers on this bogus oasis traveling 70. No blowout disquiet; I've been in deep shit before.
Solitude. Prime time of the soul. The FM effectively brasses the silence; no keen, profound whisper gets through. Historically clever at dodging good sense, I draw deep on a Marlboro Light, cool as a cuke in the slow, night heat, cats blowing a wail all the way to the moon and back, just for me.
The funky bass line boomshackalacks my own pumper's rhythm, quells quantum drowse, the inevitable nod and eternity's head-on hello. A mellifluous voice slides over me, drips down my sides, then back to the spin: jazzy flute skimming a good, primal beat, the kind for a partner, slow, dance-floor grinding, nothing mattering much but that moment in time.
Funny. Back in the day, play me that music, I was not who I am, but one of two birds, lost and wild in the middle of town, locked in a sensual pre-mating strut, oblivious to censure, the world.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
Beats the hell outta me, Jack
why they couldn't stand the beat,
that listen to the heart beat
off the beaten path
Beat the bastard down, he ain't
marchin' to the beat! You can't say
God is Pooh Bear and spend
Octobers in the railroad earth
You beat a different drum, Jack
and they said, Beat it, y'bum, they
beat you up for that down to
the bone of humantime beat
And you...you beat 'em to the punch
y'beat your head against a damn wall
y'beat the rap in a tall bottle
y' didn't beat back, Jack
Y'beat existence in a dead heat
Didn't you know...didn't you know
that on these achy joint, swollen eye
hit the buzzer twenty times mornings
I would only think of you?
That
is what is known as
acceptance
Note: Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. He drank himself to death.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
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 2012
_
We were young, out on shore in the starry silence, my beloved parchment moon hanging like a sigh. Arm in arm, we watched the sea whip and sing the whole night, enchanted by silvery leaps from the waves and buoys like sentinels weeping.
Little conch shells in the sand guarded the gypsies of the water, keeping their pleasure erect, and we almost heard bells...or so we thought.
Venturing out onto the tall sea wall, a virile gale came up, pursuing us with his breathing, burning sword, and suddenly the sea darkened and roared, bells gone in the din. We turned pale in the night at how fast he came, this wind satyr of low-born stars with his sharp, glistening tongue howling with glee at our alarm.
Racing up the path, a stone shelter loomed and we knelt down inside and yanked Jack Daniels from our bag for a quick, calming swig, ears perked to the wind's furious gnashing on the low roof's slate tiles.
Teeth chattering, shivering, we drew our coats around tight as we hunkered down, inhaled the life-giving scare...and made terrorized love until dawn.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
 _ Reading Bert Carson's blog, The Class of 1960, reminded me of a poem I wrote long ago about the high school years. I think it was the flat-top that triggered it! The girls looked a lot like the pic up top.
_
VALLEY HIGH 1964
rock-n-roll, flat-top, jelly roll,
tick-tock, Mr Green Jeans,
jelly beans, bobby sox, pet rocks,
getcha RC right here, slow grind,
Near Beer, little joint
near here, hallelujah, genuflect!
oh, yeah? Whattzit tooya?
get down, two licks: first jaw,
then ground, wanna go downtown,
mill around, close encounter
Woolworth counter, after school
we cool, get back, ball and jack,
jock-drool, girl fool, mop-top,
walk to school, bus uncool,
A club, make the grade,
sing a perfect serenade,
boys, booze, lick your lips,
giggle loud, draw attention,
get a mad-Dad house detention,
wait for snore, sneak out door,
back street, back seat,
mussed hair, fog a window,
what a pair
--Jo VonBargen 2012
_who will lay down songs
on these cold stones and canyons
etched with the furies
of time?
who will sing like the rock
and be like the rock
and endure?
who will listen at dawn
ear to the ground
for the sound of thundering
hooves?
who will moan with the wind
in the cool of the night
whisking waves in rippling grass?
who will rise with the sun
and fall silent,
the dust of red hills
settling like calm?
who will hear me here,
the cry of my heart to the mountain,
song of a soul to its kin?
who will smile sadly, remembering
wild, free land and dreams
the ancient ones
harbored?
who will cradle their dreams,
croon lullabies softly
as shadows creep onward
and daylight fades?
who will hear the lone cry of wolf,
face upturned toward heaven,
gravely beseeching God?
who will fall silent and mourn,
dry the last tear and look back,
the red dust billowing
departure?
--Jo VonBargen 2012
__
A brown warbler's song burbles,
curving into this room where
I hide from the heat.
It flutes a gurgling stream
through the screen
on a honeysuckle breeze,
carrying me to long ago
on the mountain where
I daydreamed,
cracking piñon nuts,
counting steeples and smokestacks
in the city below.
I wondered what caused
clouds, what to make
of the swift slip of hours.
A brown warbler trilled
from the clover field
where Grandpa in overalls,
cheek full of tobacco,
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 no mountain on
the horizon, but only warped wood
of the hay barn and the green
John Deere, cobwebs whiffling
in its wheels.
The bird's song carries
on a buzz of bothering flies
to Black Angus cows across
the road flicking their tails.
These cows always know
just when it's time to slog
home to the barn.
Oh, there are other birds:
swallowtails seeking to nest on
our porch, hummingbirds
flitting around feeders,
Carolina wrens, squat brown
friars caring neither to
spin nor reap,
jays in bully-blue
screeching, taunting,
robins peeping night
into day.
Across the back pond,
a red-tail dead-eye hawk
on a bare limb eyes
the little scaups (ducks)
paddling, splashing merrily...
unaware of impending doom
Always one flashy male
and two dull females,
or two males and one femme,
or even a raucous group of
twenty, and each cavorts equally
with either. Not only are they
apparently polygamous, but
also AC/DC.
They're all enchanting,
but only the brown warbler
trills a watery song
from summers gone to ghosts.
Only the brown warbler
can lump a song with ripples
of times I let leave, to haunt me
in the shadow of my room.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
_
before day, in the fog,
the wind chime tinkles, a warm
crystal clink to belie the
bone chilling cold
first light sketches in
the lonely old lane,
tall loblolly pines,
the blue heron already alert on
the front pond
bewilderment consumes
the hour as words fallen
stonily
between us say
we are overwhelmed
by the power
of what has changed
red cardinals hop about,
peck under the pines for seed
as I search your face and my
heart - neither speaks
of anything familiar
it is done -
these lame gestures will
surely be strummed away
like the folly they are
gusts lift dried leaves
and thunder rolls in the
distance of our twin discontent
white puffs from the chimney
mirror scorched moments of
everything we are
but duty calls, the day begins
we assume the
shadowed, shackled visage -
two faces, two masks, struggling
hard to carve themselves into
a smile
--Jo VonBargen 2012
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