Tuesday, April 30, 2019

I've been here so long
In this stall at Walmart,
Crying, trying to be alone,
I forgot 
I have things in my cart.
I still have to pay.

So still, so quietly I sob,
The motion sensors do not detect me,
And now the automatic lights turn off,
Leaving me all by myself
In the pitch black bathroom.

And if I try to find my heart
Or the door,

It will be only by sheer luck.


-jenn
Galveston beach is covered with trash.
They say the water in the bay is contaminated.
But I still go there and feel the beautiful memories
Of drinking cherry slurpees,
And eating brown cookies from the Mexican bakery,
And lying flat in the sand,
Looking straight up into the sky 
At the sea gulls with you.
We, too, littered the beach,
And maybe it is we, 
Who polluted the sea
With our incomplete Love.


-jenn

Monday, April 29, 2019

When I forgot to
Change the thermostat
In my room,
I woke up in a strange bed,
Thinking that winter had returned.


-jenn 
I lie in my bed
With a flashlight
And read
The leaves, the petals trampled 
By the ancient victors
Whose poetry
Stands the test of time.

I taste the pungency 
Of the laurel.
I smell the rose buds
Bruised by their feet,
As they left their little books behind
And walked through the triumphant arches.

In this state,
I turn off my flashlight.
I hope to dream
Of poetry,
But my fitful sleep produces
Memories of my last meeting with you.


-jenn

Trail of Tears

They don't have the Maypop
Like we did in Alabama.
Neither does the Toothwort bloom.
Oklahoma is too far west.
The only thing it has in common
With our old home is briars.
We eat the tops. They are edible,
But everything else our grandmother taught us is wrong now.
No familiar plants, we don't know now
What is poisonous.
We have walked, the forced march,
And they say soon
We will arrive at the settlement Talequah.
Nothing we were ever taught
Will help us now in this new place.
Nothing about the plants.
Nothing about the way to live.
They say we will not be able to tell our stories anymore,
But maybe they don't matter anyway,
And even using our native language
May be considered a crime.

Grandmother told us that as women,
We owned the home,
We owned the children,
But now there is no security for women,
Except being nice, being coy
To the soldiers for favor,
And we can't even wander out into the wilds by ourselves,
And know what to eat to survive on our own anymore.


-jenn

Sunday, April 28, 2019

I see Mukwa once a year now.
He's my cousin,
And I love him.
We both seem to wind up at the barrens
About the time that the sandcherries ripen.
Across the meadow I see him,
He raises his head in half a nod.

He doesn't speak words anymore,
But I understand the meaning.
He acknowledges me,
But doesn't want me to come any closer.

The Cherokee tell the story
Of how the bear became the bear.
Some of the antisocial men
Took to living in the forest by themselves,

And slowly they evolved,
But the Cherokee still consider 
The Mukwa to be their distant cousins.

Mukwa, you are not so distant to me,
For I, too, have moved,
Far away from the backside of humanity.
I have not evolved like you
With fur and better teeth.
You are smarter than I am.

But I do the best I can,
Bumming the corners
And playing music.
And, my fellow gypsy band
Does not call me Ursa Major,
But because they know I know
Where to find the sweet sandcherries
And the bitter persimmons,
They say I'm a cousin to the bear
And a second cousin to the Cherokee,
And so they have dubbed me Hobo Sapiens.


-jenn

I know I'm counting my chickens before they hatch,
But I'm depending on these Magnolia blossoms to bloom.
I'm planning to concoct a special love potion,
And no other fragrance will do.

And I know how hard to get you play,
So don't think I'm above it.
I'll use magic, moonshine, and even Love, if I have to.
I'm gonna need a lot of it!
So blooom, Magnolias, bloooom!
Bloom for me, please!


-jenn
I can't help it
If I like you,
And I do.
And if the world can see,
I wonder if you know it too?
I like you.

If a sail
Can cross a sea,
And a snail can cross a room,
I could take a broom and sweep
The corners of my dusty mind,
And take some time,
And get behind you,
And watch you look ahead to see
If you could find me.
And all the while I'll smile
And shake my head,
And fight the urge to tap you on the shoulder.
My love smolders so near.
The smoke is curling in your hair
And rising out above you.

It sends a signal to the world
A fire of love still burns
Somewhere,
And I am burning with it.
I like you.
And I can't help it.

-jenn


Friday, April 26, 2019

The funeral directors lay the day to rest
With a toast to the sunset
And a ritualistic sigh,
But I am an obstetrician.
I pay no mind to the end of day.
I rise at dawn and celebrate 
The birth of something new,
Spank the morning,
And cry with joy,
Breathe my first deep draw 
Of love and say,
"Good morning to you Love!
Good morning to you... again."


-jenn

Thursday, April 25, 2019

I walk down the alley
Where the sun has baked the bricks
Like bread, they smell warm 
And wholesome,
And I'm jealous of them.

They have one job to do,
And mine, my job is to stand
And draw the sadness out of you.

I see it coming from
Your eyes, like exports of oranges out of Spain.

I stop to grab a rose for you,
A sprawling unkempt bramble in the alley,
Where a little sun shines between the buildings.

And the rose is wild and windblown.
It's bloom is as open as my heart,
And it pulls the tears out of my eyes.

I've given all I can,
And I have taken all I care to take.
In the give and take, I'm done.

I'm walking, on and on,
Down the alley.


-jenn
I don't know how the dream ended,
And that may be good.
Maybe it's good that we don't know
From one day to the next,
The great unfolding adventure
That is our life.

But the stars come out at night,
And the roses open in the day,
And the world turns on and on,
And in my mind I dance with you,
As I watch the sunlight dance
On the leaves just outside my window.
As above, so below!
Behold! My desire, my love for you,
Is true,
As true as the heavens,
And the earth that dances through them.


-jenn

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

The opposite and equal reaction to the rain
Is Love, drawing me up,
Into the wet leaves of trees,
And over, to your place.

And if I were a squirrel,
I'd go tree-to-tree to you,
And never touch my feet to the ground,

And never come down
From this loving-you high.


-jenn

Monday, April 22, 2019

Can I confess to you
All my sins?
All twelve of them?
All the disciples I went through
On my way to you?

Am I allowed to speak?
Am I allowed to say
The quiet ways
You move me?

I need a sanctuary,
A safe place,
To hide me from me,
And all the imaginary lines I've drawn,
All the real ones I've crossed,
Running from Peter, Paul, and Mary,
Trying to justify your existence in my heart,
And mine in yours.

Can I hide myself in you?
Just til the thunder quits
And lightning hits me,
In the dignity?


-jenn
If you don't think I think of you,
I'll remind you that still waters run deep.
Some ways up are steep and hard to see,
But when you get there, you will know,
I think of you
Even when I sleep.

If you don't think I think of you
Whenever things are fine,
And when ALL my ships are sinking,
You ain't thinking!

If you don't think I think of you,
What are you gonna do about it?
You could shout or take me to task,
Or maybe just very sweetly ask me
If I'm thinkin about you,
Because I am.

If you don't think I think of you
Whenever things are fine,
And when ALL my ships are sinking,
You ain't thinking!

I've already put my
Shirt on inside out today, twice,
And once backwards!
That's all I do....
Think about you.....

-jenn 




Saturday, April 20, 2019

Tortoise shell combs lag In red hair,
Uninspired by the stately banquet,
But the flames of light dance wildly on the ceiling,
Reflecting off the fake candelabra,
Just as they do when the party roars 
To roast the General Manager 
From the Chevy dealership
And the stripper jumps out of the cake.

-jenn




In the cosmos two stars collide
On the dance floor.
They dance the Milonga
Of the ancient variety.
Wild beats pulse through the universe
And the click of high heels
On a concrete floor.
Ruffles on the skirt strut out
In a never-ending twirl.

Meanwhile on earth,
I have met you.
We make love
And kiss goodbye.


-jenn
When I was a little girl,
Many times I'd ome home from school
Crying, and my mom would ask me why.
It was usually something some little boy said to me,
Or he pulled his chair away from mine,
Closer to some other girl.

And my mom would say, "They like you,
But they don't know how to show it."

I'm so very thankful for you.
I wish I could express
My feelings of tender loving kindness.
I love you,
But I don't know how to show it.
It'd be illegal in seven states
If I let loose and let you know it.

So here I am
Crying again,
My mom not here to cry to,
And this early in the morning,
There's nowhere else to fly to.
I'll try to walk a finer line
Next time, but I'll still blow it,
Because I'm in love with you,
But I don't know how to show it.


-jenn

Thursday, April 18, 2019

It's a story as long as my life,
And you don't want to hear it.
But I havent always been this way,
And so you may not understand the things I do,
But then again you may?
For you've lived a story as long as you're life, too,
And have you ever changed?

I became the thing I was born to be
By forgetting about all the things
The world wanted from me,
And I'm still becoming something 
That I have yet to see.
Come be with me,
And we can change, or not change,
Together.


-jenn

I think you either want me to be in love with you,
Or you desperately don't.
But the sum of all of the things that you are
And all the things you do
Is inextricably strewn
With every one of my favorite numbers.

I'm following in your footsteps,
Picking up things you've thrown down,
And you're going to hate me
For finding all these things you didn't want.

But will you hate me
For loving you,
The only way I know how?

For I have nothing to offer you
But these numbers
You've thrown down.


-jenn
You are my missing link,
My Alfred Russel Wallace,
My Galápagos Islands, circa 1836.
I'm stunned by the magnificence
Of the diversity of life,
Distracted by "The Expression
Of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872)."

And I have lots of theories,
And maybe none of them are true,
But I'm intrigued, thinking of you
In relation to "Selection in Relation to Sex,"
And your steady trend ascending, personal,
Ipso facto, "The Descent of Man" (1871).

But meanwhile,  I've been gathering animals,
Male and female of the species,
And trying to fashion nails to hammer
Up inside my ark,
And not to mix up metaphors,
But the animals all have scattered,
Because I'm not good at building.
I'm not good at anything.

I stand alone on the few planks
I managed to slap together,
A shoddy builder in the thunder,
And you, you are my rain.

And I don't know if this will be
"The Voyage of the Beagle,"
Or if the floods will lift me high
Atop Mount Ararat,
But I have the urge to cling to you
And love you, and select you,
Swim freely in your vastness
And forget about this raft.

And somewhere in between all the science and religion,
Is the fact that I am, right here, right now,
Alive with you.
And that's astounding,
Because you're really something.

-jenn



Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Shine on me, Moon.
Love me in the glow of your shine.
Fill me with the silver spires
Beaming from your mind.
Tickle me, pink.
I'll let you,
And you may be surprised 
To find me a magnanimous lover.

For I seem small,
But if I stand on tiptoe,
I can look you in the eye
And return all your loving favors,
For I, too, secretly, am a sky dweller.


-jenn

I spoke to the clerk 
And the postman.
I chatted with my sons.
I walked to
The edge of the woods
And lay down flat on my back
In the bluebonnets.

It sounds different 
When you talk to the sky.
The words dissipate
Like a goodbye kiss
Until all of your squandered efforts cease,
And you hear the birds,
And peace fills you.

-jenn


Thursday, April 11, 2019


Even in my backyard garden,
When I smell the wisteria,
I long to be in my backyard garden.
Even as I sit beside you,
I hear them call your name,
I long to sit beside you.
I miss you.
The day yearns for day
And finds itself in night.
Night is complete,
Teeming with places to be homesick for.

-jenn



I saw the guilty picture. *
Dog barks,
Statue blankly stares.
Maybe once it had eyes.
And now, the statue speaks.
It says, "Once, you had a love,
But she is gone,
And her eyes, too, are missing."


-jenn