<![CDATA[Two-Bit Bard - General Blog]]>

<![CDATA[Two-Bit Bard - General Blog]]>Tue, 25 Jun 2024 15:12:56 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[October 29th, 2016]]>Sat, 29 Oct 2016 21:38:27 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/is-it-too-late-for-dreaming-the-big-dream-by-jo-king-vonbargen<![CDATA[School by Jo King VonBargen]]>Wed, 05 Oct 2016 17:17:39 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/school-by-jo-king-vonbargen

School is where I learned to brandish the black like a club,

you know, like a blunt object, or cobalt flashes of strobe

dotting damp walls after dusk drops the dark motion

our modern world can't hold. There's a process

by which bodies blend in, or don't, or die, or roll on

past the siren's glow so as not to subpoena the grave.

Mama never said surviving this flesh was a kind

of perverse science, but I've seen the tape,

felt the metal close & lock around my wrists, witnessed

bone bisected by choke hold. A crow turns crimson

against the windshield & who would dare mourn

such clean transition, the hazard of not knowing

you are the wrong kind of alive. But enough

about extinction. Entire towns mad with grief, whole

modes of dreaming gone the way of life before lyric,

all faded into amber & archive, all dead as the VCR,

all buried below the surface where nothing breaks, bleeds.

Jo VonBargen 2016

]]><![CDATA[PATHETIC by @jvonbargen]]>Fri, 30 Sep 2016 07:00:00 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/pathetic-by-jvonbargen

PATHETIC

How, when did I get
to this pitiful state
that I must
crawl for hours
through old
memories

of you

dim now, but
precious still

or reread through
every jot and tittle of
your books to see
for the 50th time
if you had
me
in there

somewhere
anywhere

or click a mouse
til my arm
is dead

to find
again

to touch again
your essence

or hug the old
red jacket
as if it
might somehow
contain
the scent of you

just a whiff
however faint

just when
did this become
my life

I cannot live
if I cannot
see your face
your love

reflected
somewhere

if I cannot
yearn

myself

to the grave

--Jo VonBargen 2016

]]><![CDATA[Let Us Go to the Isle of Mull!! by Jo VonBargen]]>Wed, 28 Sep 2016 21:29:43 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/let-us-go-to-the-isle-of-mull-by-jo-vonbargen

Let Us Go to The Isle of Mull!!

The Isle of Mull and the neighboring Island of Iona lie just off the west coast of Scotland, in the United Kingdom. ...and from where my Mother’s Grandather hails!!

Oh!...,the colored houses of Tobermory!!

The Isle of Mull has attractions for all the family, and offers a holiday where wildlife is around every corner, visitor attractions cater for all ages, and the whole family has a chance to live a lifestyle far removed from the hectic urban pressurized existence.

Accommodation on the island is generally of a good standard and plentiful, however, very busy during school holidays.

Oh. Granddad…what a gorgeous locale!! I shall come someday, I promise!! …and place roses on your well beloved, immaculate grave!!

Ferries cross to the island at three points: Oban, Lochaline and Kilchoan. The Lochaline crossing is a cheaper option and is used regularly by locals.

From Oban, on the mainland, where many visitors arrive on their way to the Isle of Mull and Iona, the seaward view is dominated by the rocky peaks and green slopes of the Mull mountains.
The islands of Mull and Iona can be a wilderness awaiting discovery, a haven of peace and relaxation or simply a charming and beautiful center for a Highland holiday away from the cares and pressures of modern life.
Jo VonBargen 2016

]]><![CDATA[LOVE BONES by @jvonbargen]]>Tue, 27 Sep 2016 05:00:00 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/love-bones-by-jvonbargen

LOVE BONES

star gazing, those lights in the sky
appear to be wholly round...
winking spheres pulling love's
seasons into place,
even hiding its face behind
occasional clouds

and star gazing lovers
grab at everything
to question what they knew,
what they felt, for a thousand years,
unremembering what they were to
one other in each incarnation,
or the depth that can never be
erased by doubt, or seasons,
or distance of place...and
the stars wink back "it was, it is,
and ever shall be"

Forever pondering that concept of
soulful love that reaches out, far,
far out to those cold, clear
distant lights with the warmth
of their fervor and beat
of their hearts,
toward those spheres
which are not above them
or beyond them,
but in their very bones...
before there were even bones
and beyond

--Jo VonBargen 2016

]]><![CDATA[Gyred to Your Orb by Jo VonBargen]]>Mon, 26 Sep 2016 05:00:00 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/prayer-for-my-brother-by-jo-vonbargendo not say how I pierced
and abstracted your
liquid-cherry center.
I seduced you, stupid.

do not ebb to that place
where our gists converged for
additional syncs of lasting import.
Ever hear of the heat of the moment?

do not give more than its worth
to the supposed entelechy
of my affection.
I always look my prey right in the eye.

do not plethora me whys to tuck
you more inward or aggrandize
your space for my essence.
  Don't waste your time on a snake!

I must have time to calibrate your
fragrance, to perch with my
countenance gyred to your orb.
  Ahh, the stench of you, googoo eyes!

I must have time to rote
this aesthetic vulgate you breeze,
to translate this stir in my crux.
  You talk too much, you're giving me gas!

do not finesse my quick acquiesce
for I would burgeon, bloom
prematurely and wither the vine
whence all this joy.
  Yeah, sure, I'll call you...

--Jo VonBargen 2016]]><![CDATA[Taos Mountain by Jo VonBargen]]>Tue, 04 Aug 2015 19:34:53 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/taos-mountain-by-jo-vonbargen

I watch the Indians dancing to help the young corn at Taos pueblo. The old men squat in a ring and make the song, the young women with fat, bare arms and a few shamefaced young men start the dance.

The lean-muscled young men are naked to the narrow loins, their chests and backs daubed with white clay; two eagle feathers plume their black heads. They dance with reluctance, they are growing civilized, the old men persuade then.

Only the drum is confident, it throbs the world has not changed, the beating heart, the simplest of all rhythms, it thinks the world has not changed at all, it is only a dreamer, a beating heart, the drum has no eyes.

Those tourists have eyes, the hundred watching the dance, white Americans, hungrily too, with reverence, not laughter. Pilgrims from civilization, jealously seeking beauty, wisdom, religion, poetry; pilgrims from the vacuum.

People from cities, anxious to be human again, poor show how they suck you empty! The Indians are emptied, and certainly there was never religion enough, nor beauty nor poetry here… to fill Americans.

Only the drum is confident, it thinks the world has not changed, apparently, only myself and the strong tribal drum, and the rockhead of Taos Mountain, remember that civilization is a transient sickness.

--Jo VonBargen 2015

]]><![CDATA[The Pines by Jo VonBargen]]>Tue, 04 Aug 2015 17:39:43 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/the-pines-by-jo-vonbargen
In scornful upright loneliness they stand, counting themselves no kin of anything, whether earth or sky.

Their gnarled roots cling like wasted fingers of a clutching hand in the grim rock. A silent, spectral band they watch the old sky, but hold no communing with anything. Only, when some loan eagle’s wing flaps past above their grey and desolate land, or when the wind pants up a rough-hewn glen, bending them down as with an age of thought, or when ‘mid flying clouds that cannot dull her constant light, the moon shines down silver, then they find a soul, and their dim moan is wrought into a singing sad and beautiful.

--Jo VonBargen 2015

]]><![CDATA[Before Death by Jo VonBargen]]>Thu, 07 May 2015 17:24:22 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/before-death-by-jo-vonbargen

Before Death

It is likely enough that lions and scorpions
Guard the end; life never was bonded to be endurable nor the
act of dying
Unpainful; the brain burning too often
Earns, though it held itself detached from the object, often a
burnt age.
No matter, I shall not shorten it by hand.
Incapable of body or unmoved of brain is no evil, one always
went envying
The quietness of stones. But if the striped blossom
Insanity spread lewd splendors and lightning terrors at the end
of the forest;
Or intolerable pain work its known miracle,
Exile the monarch soul, set a sick monkey in the office . . .
remember me
Entire and balanced when I was younger,
And could lift stones, and comprehend in the praises the cruelties
of life.

--Jo VonBargen

]]><![CDATA[Glad Holiday by Jo VonBargen]]>Tue, 05 May 2015 20:36:04 GMThttp://twobitbard.weebly.com/general-blog/glad-holiday-by-jo-vonbargen

Glad Holiday

When the sun shouts and people abound
One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of
bronze
And the iron age; iron the unstable metal;
Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the towered-up cities
Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster.
Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains
will cure them,
Then nothing will remain of the iron age
And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem
Stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass
In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the
mountain...

--Jo VonBargen

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