Oil and water do mix
If you add a cup of sugar,
One egg,
Some flour and some baking soda.
Cinnamon is always good,
And vanilla is especially nice this time of year.
Then you can have your cake
And eat it too.

-jenn

I'm just a little garnishette
On a silver tray,
An angel made from frilly winter kale
And garlic.
My halo is a frozen shallot
Gone limp from all the jostling
And the languid temperature of the room.

And just as all my components pull
Away from the toothpick underpin,
A brilliant gleam admires my raisin eyes.

The light bent from the snow outside
And off a diamond earring
Stuck to the oily jaw of a feaster here.

And though every furbelow dreams
Of being consumed,
This wasn't what I had in mind.
But I guess beggars can't be choosers.

-jenn

Your smile put its feet up on my bench.
The twinkle in your eyes took off its gloves,
And the comfortable gaze we shared
Inspired me.
But when I looked back,
And you looked down,
My heart put it's coat back on
And stammered it's confessions
Outside in the falling snow.

Come great heart of expectation.
Come and look me in the eye.
Be my sparring double.
Let us joust in friendly air
And make each other better.
Grapple with me in the sky,
On my couch, and in the shadow
Of love's center ring
Until the bell rings,
And we have our true turn.

-jenn

We are just alike you and me,
Except you're better than me in bad ways
And worse than me in good.
Or do I have that the other way around?
I tend to think you're too good for me.
And that kind of thinking makes me wonder
If I'm too good for myself.

It also makes me wonder if I'm healthy enough for sex,
Or sexy enough for health,
Or if me and my cat are just too curious for our own good.

But somehow I think
Maybe we really do deserve each other.

-jenn

I'd sue someone if I weren't dead!
I choked on a Chinese hundred year egg!
But the one who prepared it so
Also died a long time ago.
So what's a girl to do ?

And now, too late, I think of it,
Arguments and hairs I split
With others now passed and gone.
And if this message finds you alive
My advice would be that you only strive
With your brothers and sisters
In cases of extreme importance and need,
For all of them and us must die.

And what will be so critical then?

-jenn

Love has struck!
The big hand on one,
The little hand runs amuck.
Did I hear ten bells or none?
Have the minutes come
Or gone,
And will sweet time return for me
If I miss my train again
As minutes into hours glow,
And hours turn,
And teeth and tongue
Begin to show,
And kisses melt
In undrunk glasses of wine?
Now twelve bells ring
And sing of morning time
And more sweet trains to come.

-jenn

I pretend to sleep at night.
Sometimes it's because
I don't want the world to come
And interrupt my dreams.
Sometimes it's because I hear you
Mumbling sweet convincings
In my other ear,
And I want to hear them again.

Your little ways make me smile.
Your big ways drive me wild.
So come, tell me again
Why we should.

-jenn

I miss my delusions.
They were grand.
They took me out to dinner.
They took me for a ride
Into the dazzling sunset
And the silent countryside,
And sometimes if the moon was right,
We would 'run out of gas,'
Kiss until the stars came up,
Make love til night had passed
And another day had dawned.

And it really did seem like the sun came up.
It seemed that the sky was blue.
It almost seemed to matter
That I showed up to work with you.
Who knew that the earth was turning?
Who knew the market would crash?
That interest rates and Father Time would repossess all that trash?

But as I sit and watch the waves
Roll over all this sand,
I miss you
And my delusions,
Oh,so grand.

-jenn

He threw his hairbrush in the trash
Because the dog slobbered on it.
But I have seen the dog muck other things
That didn't get thrown away.
And I thought, "Now that's all I've ever wanted,"
To be worth something to somebody,
To be handled like a Love Goddess
Instead of a lovesick cow.
It's easy to idolize people from afar,
But in real life you just have to love them anyway,
And sometimes that involves digging them out of life's garbage heap
And wiping them clean with love.
And sometimes that involves
Not judging them from the other side of the fence,
Where the grass is oh, so greener,
But just sidling up beside them
And bellaring the love sick blues
By their side.

-jenn

As the world turns to the sun,
I turn to you this morning,
My Light,
My Warmth,
My Yang.
Do me this way.
Do me that,
And I will turn again.
I will live and die
And sleep
And wake again
To you.

-jenn

A little water in my cup,
Stale at best,
And I'd drunk up
Most of it anyway
Because of a deep thirst.
I took it out beyond the steps
With me and stared into
The blue sky reflected in a pond
Where lilies grew and dragonflies
Zipped and darted, and surmised
That this water held a life its own.
And so I bent to dip
My cup into the mirrored pool.
My hand went through the cattail
And the lily vines,
And water poured in
And overflowed,
And blessed am I,
For no one has told me this,
But I have tasted the best
That was saved for last,
Water, turned to wine.
Cheers.

- jenn

In Santo

I eat the DNA of troubled corn.
Its chromosomes divide
And are reborn.
I feel the burden of its pedigree
Recombine and try to replicate
Within me,
But the hybrid nature of it's seed
And the patent held by law degrees
Won't let it multiply or divide,
And so it keeps its secret kerneled up inside.
It's not nutritional or digestible,
Just institutional,
Not re-growable
In the native soil from which it sprang.

Its sadness starves me
And makes me want to eat
Anything and everything I see,
But wheat has already died within my soul,
And something deep within me
Bids me, stop, and eat the the scroll.
But as I stop to try to digest the corn,
The only thing I glean
From it is abortion.

-jenn

Gray Eyed Athena

Athena's eyes were blue
Until she saw the world
And knew how it worked,
And then she cried
For one eternal night
And one eternal day,
And then blue ran out
Of her eyes til they were gray.

Pallas Athena, you are wise,
But there's no joy,
For you know
That you weren't born a boy.
Yet, you sprang, full grown,
Right from Zeus' thigh,
And so you are a god
And will never die.
Then again, you may.

And so her eyes are gray.

-jenn

I was crying
'Cause I was feeling
Like I always let everyone down.
So I went into the bathroom
In the barbecue joint down town.
And I saw a picture of Elvis
Hanging there on the wall,
And I knew
Why he ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches,
Why he sang the blues.

I'll be sitting in the wintergrass
When they come for me.
Maybe I'll still be crying,
Maybe I'll just be dancing
With a wry smile in the rows of grain,
Clutching the image of Elvis I stole
And set free from the picture frame.

-jenn

So I'm explaining how 'heat' works
When a dog goes into it,
And how the blood shows that she's ready to get pregnant
And have puppies.
And my son,
Who has seen a pad in the trash
Asks me
If I'm in heat too?

"Ummmmmm,
It's a little more complicated
In humans,"
I admit,

And shake my head,
And hope
That the child
Finds a lovely woman
To have babies with him some day,
Because the world really does need
A lot more kids just like him.

-jenn

I woke up with glass in my eye.
The sandman's sand had vitrified
By the flow of my hot tears.
And the clay that had been my skin
Was hard and cold as porcelain,
Frozen by fears come true.

And it's too late for me,
But maybe
Someone a little back in the pack
Of time and moving forward
Can see and be set free.
Don't look back.

Back is here.
The future is too,
Staring into time
Will blind you.
Just look at the people you love.
Don't get down.
Don't get above your raising,
But let your fate carry you,
Sweep you into a place you don't strive,
A place where love makes you feel alive.
Stay supple and green,
Like bamboo,
Then your glassy eye can see
What to do now,
And not the stack
Of should've beens.
Don't look back.

- jenn

My time in Minske

The first day I followed subject for one block,
And when he turned left, I turned right.
The next day I met him at that block
And followed him til he turned left again.
The third day I met him at that point,
But I can already see where this was going.
So fourth day, I didn't bother getting out of bed.

And when my supervisor asked
How the surveillance was going,
I bribed him with cheap cigars and vodka,
And invited him to come to bed with me,
And he accepted.

-jenn

So I've got a mere 50 pounds on the leg press machine,
And I'm pushing, pushing.
And I lean my head back on the rest
And I close my eyes,
And instantly I'm in a place
Of pain and joy mingled together.
I'm very present suddenly,
And I relive the birth of my second son.

I remember then how the pain
Forced my mind to go somewhere else,
How I thought of mountains I'd climbed
And rivers where I'd swam.
Sweat beaded from my brow and dripped
Until my cotton hospital gown
Stuck to me
The way you used to do.

Eleven years has come and gone,
And finally, the pain I thought I'd forgotten
Revisits me.
It chuckles at me,
Pushing a mere fifty
To lose a mere ten.

And I wonder where I'll be
When now catches up to me.
I'm sure I'll be trying to forget this.

-jenn

I was terrified to tell her how beautiful she was,
But it was something she desperately needed to know,
And it was a smooth stone dropped
In the ripples of the still water,
Caused by the smattering of other rough rocks thrown in hard.
But this one, dropped gently,
From a high place,
Ordered the chaos to quit
And sent out a message
To remind her of her original mission here.
And some of the ripples splashed up on my skin
And reminded me of mine,
Of my own beauty and strength and divinity.

And so you see that even though I was terrified,
And didn't say the words at the time,
How important it is that I sit by this river
That flows backwards into the past,
Back into life,
To utter quietly the powerful prophecies of de javu,
So that I myself may live again.

-jenn