_ when I dreamed down from the sparkling sky over palms and bright gateways a fingernail at my throat warned I was about to be rapt away
I saw, mile after mile, baskets of pumice and jasper in sand, even mud from the Maker's clay, and wondered if this was some new dawn of an icy museum stuffed with mummies and scarabs
I am daughter of the sun and fly bold - I soar on pollen and silk - but felt a hard sawing of fangs on my quivering heart, and in the upward flaring spark, was made new, burnt to ashes
--Jo VonBargen 2012
_ Kisses, my lovely child, for loving me in spite of my limitations, my absence, my preoccupation, my lack
We have adored one another from afar, inwardly, in silence, in secret, when really it should have been otherwise, like my childhood when we were all one giant teeming mass of humanity who could never seem to escape each other on holidays
Who knows why or how it came to be the way it is in spite of our wishing and wanting; I have never loved you any less or let a day go by without thinking of you
Perhaps this is the ideal; you are perfect in my opinion of you, not ridden with faults gleaned from too much togetherness, though I often feel I don't know you the way my heart wishes to know you, living so far apart as we do
That our visits are rare is a family imperfection and my lifelong regret, and I am humbled that you hold me in high esteem in spite of it
You are so loved... beyond words
-- Jo VonBargen 2011
Happy Birthday, my lovely daughter, Charity Noelle!!
_ CAROLING IN THE COLD
Ah, the evening tastes like Christmas...wonder and awe settling on the face like dew
Through shadowy trees a dying fleck of sunlight winks and cold air tweaks the cheeks
Shivering, puffs of breath surround, coats and muffs pulled tight, feet numb in the powdery snow
Yes! Caroling in the cold, sniffing woodsmoke on the drift while joys to the world spill heartily into the night
~~~
May that singular joy be yours this beautiful holiday season...
Peace and love to all of you and safe journeys always....Jo
--Jo VonBargen 2011
_I'm disgusted with my hands, my non-earning poverty level hands When at dinner they ask, "How did your work go today?" I'll be thinking, "Oh, I just pissed into the wind. How was yours?"
When people ask what I do, "What is it you do?" I should say "I'm a poetbird. Being a damned bird is my job. Superbird."
If there's a window I'll fly into it. If there's a head I'll crap on it.
I'll zoom in and clip close to the pathetic forest of human heads and whisper aeronautic secrets
Yeah, I'm on a whole different planet from these people, I'll be thinking.
They can't classify me, I'm an airborne fright!
I'll terrorize cats and old men in ugly pants
At parties I'll say I'm a poetbird and see how men react. "What do you do?" they'll ask. "Nothing worth a red cent" I'll say "and it's really, really hard because I'm so damned good at it"
It's a real job, having no poet job. Even a poet's dog has a job, for god's sake, licking faces and his balls, whacking his tail twice and running off in the damned yellow dust
--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
_ all the usual stuff at a fair, blue ribbon jars of everything good tho' slightly less good with odor of cows and their dung pervading
a longhouse of the latest in sleek, new cars, where Daddy got the idea for a bright red Plymouth station wagon that could hold six kids and a dog
the massive sow in repose on a smelly bed of straw, ten precious piglets jostling, elbowing, to reach the best teat
best show of the day was after we left, Dad stopping at Furr's for a quick load of groceries to fill a pantry quick-emptied by that many young'uns
In the parking lot, Glen Campbell and his Sandia Mountain Boys singing down love from high on the back of a long-bed trailer, that boy sure was fine
--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
In the rose garden, protecting the faucets from freezing, I spy in the beam of the flashlight a skittering trail `;`;`;`;`; of mole paws
Garden tools ((glisten)) with cold, cautious beads
Blazing among the barren canes are puffed, hard hips, swollen red with promise of Spring and new roses
Rapt, I listen, holding my breath as kindred souls {fuse} with mine in the dark
The idea of connection, of some vast oneness, descends
♪ ♫ ♬ music surrounds ♪ ♫ ♬
poets *whisper* cherubic odes, writers expound
puffs of lone heart songs ~ wafting ~
beckoning me to share begging me to hear
yearning only to give and receive small comforts
and I feel the warm mist of Spirit ~ hovering ~
blanketing me, us, the roses
--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
no more shade from the skeletal red buds in the yard, no tree frogs, no trills of the poor short-lived cicada
no longer the Spring of your life, no longer time for the heat-seeking satyrs who devour up the lonely grasping hard at some breath of heaven
you, deep-rooted, yet consumed by the sun, are fragile, lost... you, to whom zenith, nadir, and zodiac are all one big blur, have changed...turned with the leaves
eventually all faun gods save one returned to their unbounded heaven that transmutes all, but your breath still catches, fastening onto those youthful images and words
the war was inside you, only child's play at first, but from then on, with the faun you chose, the going was harder; now your friends are all tired of your tears and who more than you hates whining
you have made your peace, but what lies beyond the horizon lures you still, and you will eventually hurl yourself up, up out of the mire at the glimpse of a whole, orange moon rising, beckoning tide and love like the Sirens to lap, lap away at your heart
--Jo VonBargen 2011"POWERFUL" "I cannot escape the tearing crash, scrape and rustle of your blind gropings & janglings" YOUR THIN BONES: Letters I Never Sent You http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LKBR6A
not carnal, it is more than primal, not of this realm finessed beyond flesh, beyond a veil of sizzle and smolder softly spilled onto a smooth plane of shimmer...silken, serene, textured of starlight, enfolded tenderly in my forever dreams
it is hidden here, in infinite secret, because you are
innocent
of even knowing my name
this dreaming of a normal life is still mine and that streak lifting from the sea into clouds, wounding heaven, is mine also
you could lead me by the hand if you made believe you're with me, if I were fool enough to follow after, and if what held me, if what you said, rang true and lay in your power
I wish what held me here at the threshold was our true selves, and I could lend you a face, conjure up your form. But it's not, it's not like that
The sea horse hiding between rocks and sliding between mates knows how to use us. We belong to him but don't know it
No. We are him and we think we're us
--Jo VonBargen 2011
"POWERFUL" "I cannot escape the tearing crash, scrape and rustle of your blind gropings & janglings" YOUR THIN BONES http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LKBR6A
In the prison of my youth there was no telling dawn from night Crows flew over the watchtower, my only wings Comfort? A thread of cold air Guard's eye at the peephole my only companion
The sentence unending, no reasons given
Pricking hands with sharp stones to simply feel alive, I sniffed the burning pyre and fused with a soaring moth diving to flame
I stood unrepentant
At daybreak, shimmering silks of light teased my walls and I rose, only to fall back to blackness
There, a second was a century, a long wait for the dream of freedom to be over
What got me to this place? My words
Words swept with calm rage Words straight in their coil Words old in young age
They said my words would make heaven roil, plunging us all straight to Hell
Shoot her at dawn, they said, but my muse bound their intent in primordial ooze
Their twisted lies, their bitter eyes, bore me terror and fear, the gloom of a slave
But I stood unrepentant
Break her spirit, they said, then the sky carried me to sanctuary of holy stars
I climbed til the blackness fell away like a scab and I reached my spirit elders on the old sky road
Taking my pen in hand they blessed it, kissed my raw wounds, emboldened my resolve
Risen and healed, I committed new lines to trust, as I do now:
Holy words, lasting words, to baptize in slobber, offer up like a lamb
--Jo VonBargen 2011"Beautifully written!" A time capsule for future generations. FROM THIS FAR TIME (The Human Saga) Fierce, taut writing! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KJLCLC
of course we're not equally guilty but we're damned equally responsible
we talk the talk don't walk the walk so how do we get to work and leave out the lame gestures, the empty effin rhetoric
and...oh, this ridiculous, ridiculous eggshell-walking pantomime
humility I'm lookin' for humility here, and dreamers
need the dreamers back, people, unafraid to be saints, not merely holy shyte good
can we: speak honestly hear with sympathy act humbly
I am sorrowful
someone please leave crumbs for the lost to follow the path to Kindness we seem to only circle back to square zero
we do dialogue, we do dialogue to freaking death and have zero point crap to show for it
when we find what is actually required to serve the hurting, it's too high a price
and beautiful excuses are available, darlings, in such ugly abundance
--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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