Sunday, March 31, 2013

One Can Forget How To Ride A Bike


They diagnosed me with Alzheimer's,
Said I would regress,
And release all the latter things first,
To the point, I guess,
That I would not remember
Many things I'd grown to like.
I’d forget my loving children,
And even how to ride a bike.

I pray the memories of pain dissolve,
And hope old hurts will heal,
And wonder if events so easily erased,
Were ever even real.

 

-jenn long

Friday, March 29, 2013

Dandelion Root


I try to be nice.
I try to be mellow.
It's just not my speed.
It's just not my style.
I'm a little bit sharp,
A little bit acrid,
But they say dandelion bitters
Assist the cardiac cycle.
So if true healing calls
For a kick to the backside,
To bounce you out through the
Wall of your sorrow,
If it's a Beatrice you need,
And not a Pamela,
Call me Scarlett,
And we can give a damn, tomorrow.

 

-jenn long

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Real Perfection

I hope that heaven falls short of perfect,
Where crooked teeth come at a premium,
Where cellulite is optimum,
And stretch marks—the victor's crown.
I hope that “Real” is the password to eternity,
Or, at least, that the next illusion's parameters
Make exclusions for those of us with no trophies
Genetically, or environmentally gained, to lay down.


 -jenn long

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

hmmmmmmmm?

I died in a bed just like that one time,
With the same flannel sheets,
And Rudolph pillow cases,
Right before the eyes
Of a thousand men
Who couldn't lift a finger to help.
I wasted away,
Til one kind soul
Took the trouble to bury me breathing.
He didn't dare put me out of my misery,
So he just put me into my Self.

And face to face in a mirrored coffin,
With myself for eternity,
I realized the torture I'd imposed on others
Who'd been stuck spending time with me.

But little by little,
I understood,
Til I came to myself with glee,
And was thankful for those
Who could bear myself,
And that included me.
 
-jenn long

A Handful


He gave me a handful
And I gave it away
He handed me three and
Someone else took them
Then he brought two
And he kept one
And we ate those there together

And time passed
And eon by eon
We figured
And hustled
And changed keys
And laughed
And rolled down big muddy
To the ocean alone

On a singing, musical raft

And one came to listen
Then two
Then three....
Then a handful
And we gave them away
Traded them for more chocolates


To eat on some other long day

 

-jenn long

Chapter Two

"I'm sorry but I lost your place."

"Oh, I'm on Chapter Two."

"The book mark slid. Do you know the page?"

"Oh, it's always Chapter Two.
For Chapter Two it is that speaks
To me from ancient graves long gone,
And whispers me into the morning of future,
Beckoned to the Great Beyond.
And Chapter Two kindles my fire, night and day,
And enlightens me as to the “How,”
And Chapter Two co-habitates with me, here,
And sings meaning to me, Right Now."

"But will you get to Chapter Three,
Or ever to the conclusion?"

"I've finished it a thousand times
Only to engulf the illusion,
But what I seek, has nothing to say
About anything else that I do,
Like the way I find the love and the life
That abides in Chapter Two."

-jenn long

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Oracle

They’ve chosen wrong—
Yet, they call me “Pythia,”
And set me atop the three-legged stool.
The vapors come.
They trancify me.
And everything goes black.
I open my mouth,
And Apollo’s voice
Comes monotone from the bellows.
He instructs them to conform
And push civilization back,
And forth.
But when I wake to sleep,
The beauty lives as chaos—
Lively night-visions of non-conformity,
Pleasure in day-dream retrograde.
If only someday I couldn’t breathe,
And the vapors could pass with no effect,
Then we could dialogue in the mother tongue,
Words of bliss and acceptance in the vulgate.
 
-jenn long

Penniless in Wonderland

You're the absolute star of my fantasy world.
You take me to the curb of ecstasy and drop me
Without a penny for a taxi ride home,
With no way to return.
And so, there I stand, agape and gawking,
A vagrant beggar,
Judged for my scandalous stares and smiles,
And my hippie, uninhibited ways.
Yet here I am, MiLord, you have sent me,
A spectacle now, charged and guilty,
Yet free, and deliciously so,
Every single day.

-jenn long

Monday, March 25, 2013

Wash Her

There's something about the whir of a load of wash
That purrs of comfort and security.
It walks softly, but carries a big old stick,
And speaks with a bit of bleach on its breath:
"There's an adult in the house,
Someone who sorts, and folds, and embarks
On the journey of sweet, domestic surveillance,
And the search for matchless socks.
And so, you can rest,
For all is well,
For only autonomic agitation exists.
Sleep in sweet peace, Child,
And if you're lucky,
The second rinse will soften your dreams."

-jenn long

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Fire Is The Answer


I love questions,
And I love answers.
The answer is usually carbon,
Or oxygen, or hydrogen,
Or something like that.
But sometimes, the solution is fire—
The classic melt away
In a purifying burn.
Then you can classify the nature of the problem
By the color of the flame,
And whether it liquefied,
Or simply vanished
In a transient puff of steam.

 

-jenn long

Let False Wisdom Fall From Grace

Let false wisdom fall from grace.
Let every man be brother.
Love will be your intellect,
Your father and your mother.

Will you stand upon the shores
Of the bright and of the brilliance?
Will you wade out in the waters of the lightning?
Embrace the sweetest drippings of the essence of the truth?
Surrender to the love of the living?

Let false wisdom fall from grace.
Let the stone cold truth remain.
Seek the glory of the light in full regale.
Let false wisdom fall from grace,
Dropping every creed and dogma.
As the Spirit breathes it's life on you,
Inhale.


-jenn long

A Square + B Square = C Square

The great equation
Of humanity's love angle
Is Pythagoreanly fair.
(A Square) is the one that you don't want.
(C Square)’s the one who doesn't want you,
And you, my friend, (B Square.)


 -jenn long

Saturday, March 23, 2013

A Saint in the Night

I lie awake all night,
Intense,
Waiting for the Sun to come
And shine its light
In the prison of my heart.
The Truth is coming,
Marching on,
Like a Mercenary,
Sent to fight,
To liberate,
But who has paid the fee?
An who is it
Who believes our report,
The message from the dungeons?
And who will come,
Like a Saint in the night,
And rescue me from me?

-jenn long

Life

A ligand gated monument lives
In honor of the Realness,
That was and is—
The kind, encouraging words remain

And brood within my soul.

Vesicles catalyze within.
They pop with life and meaning,
Metabolize, and nourish me,
Force me, now to breathe again,
And be whole.
 
-jenn long

Monday, March 18, 2013

The Hornets' Buzz

The hornets buzz at 76 megahertz,
Mutter their mantra,
Anticipate June,
Hover in hollows
Amid the dark Cottonwood,
Awaiting the Lady Banks
And her blooms.

But spring has come early.
The blossoms awaken,
Rise before dawn,
And stop for the Sun.
They take his rose fingers,
And clasp to their bosoms
Debutant hopes
To blossom as one.

But now the golden chariot must
Rise for appointments
And be on his way.
Drawn to his duties,
He loosens the reins,
And hurries the day
With his carrying on.
While from somewhere unseen,
A stir! A yawn!
A transcendent "ommmm,"
Sings on
In a stingless drone.


 

-jenn long

Chordae Tendineae


I come to see you just before noon.
I thought about
Cancelling my other date,
But you’d moved
Into another room.
You’re cold and distant
And can’t be late
For something you seem
More excited about
Than me.
 
My bedspread is laid
Across your king,
And I sprawl out
And try to sing for you,
A love song sweet and true.
 
But the chords won’t come
To those who are dumb
And blind to the source of their love.
 
And so I wonder
About subs and steam,
And about the one who has been second string,
And if I should put him in, Coach,
B team, ready to play?
 
But how will we ever be desperate enough
To hang in there when the times get rough
If there’s always another waiting somewhere in the wings?
If even there, in the nursing home,
You’re expecting another to come along—
Just another notch on the old heartstrings?
 
 
-jenn long

The Woman In Scollops

Ah, she’s resting on the laurels
Of the Great Beast as he glides the sea,
Bathed in Lavender, dressed in Scollops,
Searching ever for me.
 
Her eyes scavenge like a nursing wolf
With six hungry pups and winter knocking,
Ever empty, no time for worship,
But searching ever for me.
 
She has obtained the Pleiades’ daughters
By blackmailing the night and teasing the Moon,
Telling him all his light is borrowed.
Cruel eyes are blind to the near and the soon.
 
And I am here.
I stand before her,
Unashamed and unafraid.
But she can’t see me,
And is doomed,
Searching ever for me.
 
-jenn long

If I Tell You That I Love You


If I tell you that I love you,
It's not to clap a jar
Around your beaming firefly butt
And put you in my room.

If I tell you that I love you,
It's not to pin you down
On my waxy cork-board
To classify your wings.

If I tell you that I love you,
It's not a precious gift
For which I'll want a tax receipt
Or something in return.

But if I tell you that I love you,
It's only that I do.
It's only that I feel a warmth
From one and only you.

And so, please, don't run too far,
For I would never chase,
Or try to snare you in a net,
So, forgive me just in case

I might forget

And tell you that I love you.

 

-jenn long

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Accidental Passengers

I'd always wanted to run into him,
But maybe not quite in that way—
The day we met on the double blind curve.



Both had veered out
A bit over the middle,
Into each other’s lane.
We shared an ambulance

To the neighboring town—
45 miles of quiet stares—
Strangely reached for each other’s hand,
Until I lost consciousness
And his voice was faint,
“You are beautiful when you bleed.”


 -jenn long

Bare Fields

There's something to be said for a bare field,
Standing in the shadow of the seven mountains—
No grapes to press,
No hay to mow,
No wheat to reap or plow.
The mind threshes past
The roots of absurdity,
Reduces to the ridiculous
The idea of death,
Headlong past abstract notions of starvation
To a realm, somehow here, and now.

And yet it is to be, to come.
And yet it has happened all before.
And we rejoice to know those seeds
Sown in sorrow are gone, forevermore.


 

-jenn long

Over-simplified

He thought me a vegetarian,
Which I took as a compliment,
Although I'm really an omnivore
With a bit if a scavenger bent.
Then he told me I seemed
Mysteriously ambidextrous,


Which just isn’t true. I’m a clutz with my left,
But I knew what he meant.
It was then I realized,
I’m far too simple for his liking,
And he could never learn to cope.
I'm uncomplicated as waxed thread,
And plain as homemade soap.

 

-jenn long

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Wuchereria Bancrofti

I'm tired of the cold.
I'm going south.
I'll take my chances with
Elephantiasis.
But I need warm.
I want willing
I crave deep kindness
To distend my self-consciousness.


I want to feel like myself again—
A spiritual shot of milk of magnesia,
Or maybe the truth is
I've barely evolved.
I still crave to squirm
In tropical climates
Like a parasitic worm.

 
-jenn long

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Amoeba Love

O my Beauty,
Let us live
Wild and free,
Like two love-locked amoebae
Who found each other lippy,

And anciently sexual,
In the great pond
By the sweet gum tree
In Alabama
In 1942.



Let us love
With wild abandon
On the peaks
And in the canyons
Of the nodes
And creases
Of the blue Lillypad
The rest of our entire, natural-born lifespan—
The full, eternal, binary-fissionistic, fantastical 22 days.

-jenn long

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Lucky

Sometimes I'd see him casting a glance,
All squint-eyed and Clint Eastwood,
Waiting for me to mess up, the mask to fall,

Or the other shoe to drop.

But Honey,
I didn't come thru your door
With a mask on,
And anyone who knows me knows,
I always go barefoot.

-jenn long

Monday, March 11, 2013

How Love Goes


Well I guess that's how love goes.
First, your money,
And then your clothes.
Then it's easy come
And easy go,
And where it stops, nobody knows,
But the big wheel keeps on spinning.

Then the morning comes,
And you wake up late,
While the milk man loiters
At the garden gate,
And a string of non sequiturs
Seals your fate
By the tell
Of uncontrollable grinning,

At the fact that you forgot completely
To put your pants on this morning,
So go figure.

 

-jenn long

The Salmon Test


I told him if he really loved me,
He'd try one of my salmon patties.
I saw the trepid look of fear
Seize his eyes and jowls.
But how else in the world can a girl discern
If a man and his words are symbiotic?
Besides, it's an heirloom recipe,
Handed down thru generations of howls.

-Jenn long

Over Retail

I’ve taken myself off the bargain table—
No longer subject to speculation,
For I have learned that you get what you pay for,
And I am no longer half-off.
I always thought myself cheap, but not easy,
But Today, the Commodity’s value has risen.
A rare thing and precious in this world,
To estimate one’s own worth, and rightly.
And so in a flash of fresh enlightenment,
I find myself expensive— costly as diamonds,
And hard as a rubric stone.
 
-jenn long

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Getting the Lead Out


Oh, I have a dangerously sharp pencil here,
But if you'll let me,
I have surgically precise skills.
May I stick it in your eye?
Oh, have no fear!
For I have removed the log out of my own,
And, quite the hard way, I might add.
I sit before you Today,
A shattered persona,
Whose only remaining vices—
Mere compulsions really,
Are: Grinding pencils down to their nubs,
Tossing the shavings like chaff to the winds,
And skewering motes from cataracted eye lands.

 

-jenn long

Friday, March 8, 2013

Perfect Petey


There's something about that

Elementary black circle
Smudged innocently
Around Petey's left eye,
That forces us to realize
That even a Little Rascal
From the back side of nowhere
Can have a dream—
A presence of mind
That conjures an idea of some
Satisfying righteousness—
Some utopic, ancient pattern, somewhere,
Of absolute perfection.
And so, in childlike hopefulness,
We take our sharpies, too,
And scrawl our longings like graffiti
On the canvasses of life that we find.

But Petey, you are perfect to me,
With or without the artifice.
I love your sweet face,
And your abundant personality.
Your loyal friendship
And sweet companion
Attentively abide in Presence Sublime,
And there is nothing more beautiful
 Or ideal than that to me.

 

-jenn long

Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Cleft of the Palate


Hide me in your mouth today,
So I can stay close to the source of your Words.
Lozenge me around from side to side
Like honey on the tip of your tongue.
Rest me, as dead, for three still days,
Deep in the belly of your great whale,
Until the earth is moved a right,
And full resurrection is done.

 

-jenn long

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

I Die Nightly

I had a chance to die last night,
A little like being kicked in the gut.
Life roughs you up,
Then messes you around.
Because, like a phony, sub-cultured plot,
Life isn't what it seems to be,
And even when it's poorly written,
There's a twist in every end.

 
-jenn long

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Play It Backwards

The best song I ever overheard
Was choreographed, not written.
It's composure taken
And made to fit the video
Of a hopping jay on a wire.
Then someone came and understood,

And deftly measured in the words.

Subtly, playing it backwards, now,
I hear the crackled, giant leaps.
Their awkward cadence stirs me
To the unleavened bread
And the old, old wine
Of my own 33rd parallel.
 
-jenn long

Dark Shock


The whispers sent me into shock,
Dilated all my veins at once,
Unhinged me at every joint.
My own question shoved me to a chute,
Where the dark answer cemented me—
Permanently stilled
In a suspended state
If semi-animation.

But what I have heard in the blackness,
I will shout out from the rooftops,
To dilute the anaphylactic initiates
That might come after me.

 

-jenn long

Night Dilemma


Night always brings the dilemma,
But lies hatch at the break of day.
Morning reveals the inner beauty
Of complexity and true love.
And as the day turns brightly,
So does the screw,
As it tightens the grip it has
On reality,
Shattering idealism
into something  more useful,
And prettier.

-jenn long