Wednesday, January 25, 2017

I sat in the hot spring
With monkeys in Japan.
Reduced by their wisdom,
I sank down in the water
and thought about Mankind.

The order of the jungle
Holds like gravity.
For the monkeys there
Have no confusion,
No delusions of grandeur
Or inferiority complexes.

They are perfect without trying
Or training,
And at peace,
Unless they are caught
And put in a cage
Or a circus.

-jenn

Monday, January 23, 2017

As I go through life
Wondering what I should be
When I grow up,
I realize,
I'm being it--
Loving you,
Loving those given to
Me to love,
And leaving my little handkerchiefs,
My poems etched in stone
And sand and napkins on the nightstand,
And waiting for you
To come and pick them up
And hand them
Back to me.

-jenn
Why do I feel I keep a secret from myself,
As if some part of me hides my greater good!
Is there a lock folded in my true essence
For which I may, or may not, hold a key?

But if I could but eat the proper food?
Maybe some apple forbidden me to know?
Would my whole self open to myself?
And would my heart and consciousness grow
Into the thing that I am destined for ?

The giant could arise within the dwarf,
And I could suddenly see the hidden things,
And even watch to see the scales fall off
My blurry eyes. Is there a magic prayer?
Or maybe just a pill that I could take?
How can I deceive myself with
A surprise ending to my own dream,
And then awake?

-jenn
I followed a light through
A dark, night forest
To a fire where an eerie blaze
Burned with intriguing colors,
First one, and then another,
As if a page had turned.

And as I gazed
Deeply into the flame
And meditated on it,
I began to see
The ancient libraries burning there--
Alexandria, Sarajevo,
And even scrolls from Tibetan caves.

And so I stood and cried beside the fire,
Until its song called to me,
The way a child leans A, B, C's,
And it moved me to walk into
The gnostic bonfire,
To feel the forgotten knowledge
Burn inside of me.

"Is this how Giordano Bruni felt?"
I ask myself as I wonder
Why we burn our books
And our geniuses?

-jenn

Rainbows are proof
That our world has turned
And now spins upside down
On its axis.
For why would a rainbow frown?

But we know the rainbow is a smile,
And instinctively, we gaze
A while at it, and feel within
The wonders of
Contagious grins worldwide.

And so we must conclude,
In truth, that it is we, who've convoluted
To this point, and yet we recognize
Deep inside, the feelings that rainbows cannot hide
The whole world round.

For why would a rainbow frown?

-jenn


Sunday, January 22, 2017

When I do complex computations in my head,
And try to reverse engineer my way
Through obstacles that others said
Exist between the problem and its solution,
I arrive at a singular peace,
And rest in the diffuse sea  of possibility---
Having come through the beautiful place,
Where One plus One Equals One,
In theory and indeed.

-jenn
Then would I vanish as a star
In morning's light,
And still be there but turned away
So you could have your privacy
To dress and think and have your way
In everything, everything your day requires?

And would you think that I was gone,
When secretly I turned again,
And hidden in the light,
I watched you,
And shined my light upon you, too?

-jenn

Sunday, January 15, 2017

She finally pulled the car over
Like she'd been threatening to for years,
But she didn't bust their butts like she said she would.
She just got out of the car and walked off,
Because spanking them would hurt her
Much worse than it would hurt them.

But that's what 'children' means in Latin:
"No one could ever hurt you worse,
Or make you any happier."
That is the unexpected curse
Behind the expected blessing,
Knowing someone as well as you can
And still not understanding,
And them believing they know you
And not having a clue
Who you really are.

You can share a name and DNA
And take for granted,
In a much too familiar way,
Every other thing unexplained on the planet,
Except love.

-jenn

Kitties don't like rain,
But kitties know
That rain must come
For mousies to grow
On mousy trees where pink nosed
Blossoms bloom.

So kitties mew
And patty paw
Across the grass
When it is wet.
Their green eyes squint,
And kitty lips purse,
But they put up with it,
Because kitties believe
In the greater good
And in delayed catification.

-jenn

Serapis drives his chariot alone.
He always looks into eyes that have just opened.
He knows that his light will shine
On deeds that matter and that don't,
And prays for those who have truly awoken,
That they may know the difference,
And, in time,
Make one---
For the rest of humanity
Still asleep, but waking.

-jenn
If I were an elephant,
And six blind men
Stood around me in vain,
Inadeptly guessing
At what I might be,
I'd put them out of their misery,
And trample anything else
That stood between me and my jungle.

For I am not worried in the least
About what I am.
If anyone can define me
With even a name,
Like pachyderm,
I'd be surprised.

For mostly, I'm just hungry.

-jenn

Friday, January 13, 2017

I went to a wedding at the county jail.
It smelled like school cafeteria food.
A few angry bridesmaids stood at the front,
With a gap for the bride, then the groom.
He had a blank look across his face,
Not even a glimmer of 'why' in his eyes.
No love lost, but certainly non had been found.
The warden walked the bride down the aisle,
And someone told them what to say.
I decided to stay for the reception,
But even the cake was bad.

-jenn

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

One object's moving.
The other is not.
The flag waves behind them
As a backdrop.
I hear a complex melody
Bouncing off the leaves
That cling through winter to the dormant trees.
The song is called, "Relative Velocity."

I see a line move across your face,
A smile, a dance, a mystery,
A curvature of space,
Upturned,
But causing gravity.

And how do I love thee?
There's no counting.
There's no doubting.
There's no telling.
There's only the x's,
The oh's, the why 's,
The zzzzzzzzzz's,
And the exponential lift
Into infinity.

-jenn

Sunday, January 8, 2017

If he wants to lick me up
Or eat me like a Popsicle,
That's his business.
I came from his freezer after all.

He bought me on sale
And brought me home,
Put me in his ice box cooler
Before I melted.

So whether I dissolved otherwise,
Or disappeared in the frost free compartment,
Or he larrupped me up,

I was designed to be consumed.
And it is finished.

-jenn
Sometimes I worry
When my
Farts don't stink.
I start to think maybe
I'm eating too much raspberry jam
Or peach preserves,
Rather than omega three fatty acids.
Maybe I need salmon or broccoli?
What about you?
I know it's taboo to tell,
And some of you think you'll go to hell for
Saying anything.
But don't you worry, too,
If your farts don't stink?

-jenn
A giant boulder sits precipitously,
Doomed to fall,
Just above the trail that heads
From our village into the market town.
And we all worried that when it went,
It's force would be catastrophic.

A committee was formed,
And everyday, at least a few of us were scheduled
To appear above the boulder and push it down,
At times when no one was coming.

And this we did for seven years
Without the boulder budging.
A corp of engineers decided
That someone was going to have to get under the boulder and pull,
And that's when we thought of the old lady.

There was an old lady,
Doomed to age, and we convinced her to come
To see the problem we young folks had
With the aforementioned boulder.

We got her in front of it
And asked her to pull,
But just as she saw our trickery,
With all her strength,
She pushed the boulder up by herself,
Up onto us, killing us all profusely.

The boulder still sits on the mountainside,
Unbothered by the tremendous slope.
And there may be a moral to this story,
And if there is, I hope that you will tell it.

-jenn

In dreams, the endless days
Are strung together by endless knights
With Templar crosses splayed
Across their chests.
And one chest is the true chest
Hidden among them all,
And only the king can pull
The treasure from the locked embrace,
And only the true queen can live to say
That happiness makes the squeaky wheel
Go silent in every season,
And only true love can make the heart believe that every day.

-jenn

The mother gazelle does not smile at her young.
The mother cat barely yawns.
The mother chimp, with eyes as old as rocks,
Looks down on the newborn at her breast
With a look of deep grief,
Almost close to knowing
That the survival of her kind
Requires that this one will take her place.

And yet, we humans can't see the herd
For the mass confusion on the face of each individual.
We think we have style because
We've covered our nakedness
And we've covered our tracks.

We've invented money and status
And great bureaucracies,
Pyramid scams that we consider institutions.
They distract us from the natural part of our nature
And from considering all the implications
Of the survival of our species.

-jenn

Friday, January 6, 2017

In a pixelated pixel of myself,
I see a million me's from
Bee-like eyes.
The three-way mirror shows me
All my sides,
A me within a me within a me.

I stop to watch the tiniest,
Most distant version
As she stops to look back
And ponder me.
And then she goes on,
Returns about her business,
As I wonder if her day
Will be more int'resting than mine.

-jenn
How did I get by back then
Not knowing myself as I do now?
The simple things that I require?
Yet there were long stretches
When I didn't have those things,
Like good drinking water, or food I wasn't allergic to.
And what did I do for that whole year
When I only had a shower in a stall,
When so often now all I need in life
To push restart is a good hot bath.

And in another year or ten,
I'll look back at 'now' as 'then'
And what will I see as missing?
For I'm sure by that 'then' I'll think
That I'm really living.

-jenn

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Deep inside my egg yolk
I'm aware
Of all the prescripted features
I shall have.
The program of my life
I analyze,
To see what color hair,
What color eyes,
What predisposed conditions
May exist
Along my way.
Is it written what type may be best
For me to love,
For me to stay away from?

And how could I forget
All that I knew
From seeing one cell divide
Right into two?
Will it be a touch, a word, a kiss
That makes me wonder,
Or recall?
What will happen if there is a glitch
In my DNA,
And I fall in love with you ?

-jenn

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

The sacred crush I have on you
Goes down, like the minute hand to six,
And up, like the second hand to twelve,
And vascillates between
The secret love I hold so dear
And the devotion known so well to only you.

And while the pendulums all swing
And the golden chains are pulled
And one goes up and one goes down
And silent clicks and ticks are felt,
The talks are timeless and not bound
To anything that space or time might hold,
But only to the velvet ties unbound
And flying out behind
The wake of Love's unbroken rounds
Of firsts and lasts to come.

-jenn


On the desert beach at night,
Where the ancient ocean ebbed,
I sit and watch eternally
As now the only waves are formed
By wind along more sand.

And up from the horizon dark,
A distant love with midnight blue
Winks through chilly stars that blink
From an open face as big
As the night sky.

And I'm not cold, and I'm not hot,
Not too warm, or anything but happy
To see the true reality
Of the night that comes before the day,
And the love that is
Forever.

-jenn

Sunday, January 1, 2017

I packed a few of my favorite things
In an old leather suitcase,
Got in my car with my seatbelt off
And the ragtop down,
Fully intending to go of a cliff
And kill myself.
I turned the radio on.

I heard my favorite song on the radio,
And another one I like
Came on after that,
So I drove all night,
Singing along to the oldies,
And was still driving when the first light
Of the dawn burst up in the east.

I don't know the name of this town I've come to.
I don't know anyone who lives here.
But I got a job at the car wash yesterday,
And the dirty cars keep comin' through clean,
And the music never stops,
And someone always brings me
A warm dry towel
Just when I need one.

And did I say, the music never stops,
And I feel like I'm really getting somewhere, now.

-jenn