Sunday, September 18, 2016

And this is why one shouldn't stand under a tree in a thunderstorm:
Because the thunderpeal will release one thousand acorns
From their shells and they will fall upon your head,
And then the squirrels will come and make a nest up in your hair,
And being the kind and passive soul you are,
You will stand a lifetime there,
So as not to disturb the squirrels,
And people will mistake you for statue.
You will live your life ignored as part of the beautiful scenery.

Better just keep walking through the rain.
Getting soaked and being cold might be worth the pain
Of pneumonia, or defy the odds
And get yourself lightning struck.
"Might be worth it," I can hear you say
In your sweet self deprecating way.
You can tell yourself that lead doesn't attract it.
Or maybe knowing you,
You're much like me, and
You'd rather be remembered as a statue.

-jenn

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

The screen door has popped ajar
And saws back and forth like a rosined bow
Droning on and on and over again
Slow across that one string.
I guess the other strings are broken,
Or maybe one is out of tune,
But someone has given the night a fiddle
And three lessons to get back at me.

I'm not sure what I did this time
To warrant such a nasty revenge,
And such a creepy one,
But as I lie here in the night,
The dark has been supplied a soundtrack,
A song of witches mocking me
And the pain in my achin back.

They say that even Jimi Hendrix
Started out on a ukele that only had one string.
So why should I begrudge the night
Its practice times, it's small beginnings?
Who knows, in time, what tunes the night may sing?
If I only could, I would, buy the night a second hand guitar,
And a tuner and see what he might do with that?

Ah but a cosmic amp awaits me somewhere,
A distorted moonbeam plied with reverb,
A little sleep between the sawing,
Maybe time for one dream.
The night dreams too while wide awake,
A hot fiddle breakdown,
Taking the stage at the grand old opry,
Taking the grand applause,
Taking a bow and pointing his bow
Out into the audience,
Acknowledging that one special person
Who made it all possible.


Who knows?
Maybe I'm the one?
Maybe when he gets real good,
We could sit out there on the back porch
With that old screen door blowing,
And he could play me a little Bonaparte 'a Retreat?

-jenn




Monday, September 12, 2016

Don't try to walk with the rock in your shoe.
Stop for a minute and try to understand
What the rock is doing to you
And why.
Justify yourself to the rock
And try to walk a little further.

Tell yourself it's just a pebble
And that you're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Walk on through your pain.
Justify yourself again to the rock.
Tell it all the reasons why you're out walking.
See if it makes any sense to the pebble.

Tomorrow all your reasons will be in vain,
For you won't bother to take your walk.
You'll be in pain.
Stone bruise on the heel of your heart and the heart of your heel.
You will feel so strange
And won't know why.
Is it just your foot that wants to die
Or is it your soul,
Your whole way of being?

Or you could stop and take that rock out of your shoe,
Throw it as far away from you as you possibly can.

-jenn

Monday, September 5, 2016

What is there to talk about?
Nothing exists except this moment,
Milliseconds strung together like pearls
On a rope of sand.
They stream behind me now,
Flying back like my hair
As I breeze into the great unknown,
The last and only frontier--
The future.

-jenn