Friday, July 31, 2020

It’s hard to look into the eyes of a child
And see your own.
The misgivings you’ve always 
Stored away inside,
Without even a tear to provide release.

And bottled away are the feelings
Of grief and disappointment.
My mind is reeling as I look at you.
I want to keep you safe
From all the pain that I went through.

If happiness comes to light upon your world 
In a backyard of love and songs
From cheerful birds,
May you ever be free.
May I always offer you
The security you need now, 
So that you may thrive as an adult.

-jenn

Thursday, July 30, 2020

The faint smell of chlorine,
Strange shadows begin to appear on the sidewalk.
The chain link fence casts the misshapen squares.
Ants run like crazed madmen
Hoping to beat the fierce spray
Of the nozzle when the kid yells,
“The pool’s closed for the day!
Everyone go home!”

He then starts, immediately, to clean the concrete bays
Where the teenaged girls were laying out in the sun,
Places where their towels,
One by one, touched down and crumbs fell,
Bits of cracker and candy and cheese.
The ants are having a hayday with these,
And the sad boys, dally,
Turning their socks right side out,
And put  their shoes on their oversized feet,
And try to wait for the girls to leave first,
So they can see the wet imprints
Of the girls’ butts on their shorts.

Eleven year old boys do things like that 
For hours at the pool.
They’re willing to look like a dork
And put on a snorkel so they can stay under
Long periods of time to get a good long stare
At the girls underwater, where bathing suits tend to malfunction,
And they have a chance 
To sneak a peak at some forbidden 
Area of a young girl’s anatomy,
Or even that of an old lady who might be thirty-five, or fifty-three!

But now it’s all over for the day.
6pm!
Time to go home,
And try to pretend you didn’t have
A really great time at the pool,
Whatever age you might be!

-jenn

I see the Bird Dance
In my mind.
My grandfather bouncing happily,
Methodically, he goes around the fire.
It’s the only time I see him smile.

I smell the smoke.
I see the stars.
I’m wrapped up in a blanket 
On my mother’s lap.
I’m too young to join the round.
I’m too sleepy, anyway. 
I drift to dreamland drawn into
The hypnotic sway of the fringe 
On the deerskin dresses of the women,
Hearing the rhythm of turtle shell rattles,
And seeing my grandfather’s smile.

-jenn 
If I want to
Find you
Where should I look
High in a love-cloud
Or under a book
Up in a tree top
Down on the ground
Come out come out
Quit messing around 
Wherever you are and
Come and mess around here
With me

If I need to find you
Where will you be 
Up in the mountains 
Down by the sea
Up in the attic 
Out in the garage 
Down the road
On the highway 
Like a mirage 
Please
Come and mess around here
With me

-jenn
You’re you and I’m me
And I can’t be like you when I grow up
Because I’m already grown 
But come and see
Come know what ya don’t know

If you could know what ya don’t know
Then you’d be a fantastic feat
You’d be neat, and so complete
And you could listen
If you could hear
But you have to stop talking
And draw near to the source of wisdom 

The willows bend
The ramblers rake, the mandrake roots,
The river snakes downstream 
Seeds grow
And you could know what you don’t know
If you’d listen

-jenn

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

The voice he heard
That told him he was special,
Had a different tone,
A different quality 
Than those he heard when he 
Went to school
And was placed in Special Ed.

The voices he heard saying he was different
Were the same ones he heard saying
That he was retarded.

But the voice he heard
In his heart
Was the voice he heeded,
And so he never wasted his time
Trying to convince anyone,
Least of all some schools administrators,
That he was anything like the other children.

But he went on.
In fact, he went on to do great things,
To reveal incredible scientific discoveries,
And to prove how relative labels can be,
And to prove, in fact, a very special relativity.

-jenn

My ribs are not a cage
Where my heart is trapped.
It soars to heights and lights
On branches to sing.
It breathes the air 
Of transcendent things
And brings them here to me,
While I sit so silently and listen.

I hear the whir of the washing machine, 
The tick of the clock,
The purr of the sleeping cat beside me.
All just a backdrop of rhythm 
That binds me
To the melody of love
That the birds in my head
Sing inside me.

My heart is not a cage
To trap you.
Come and tap your feet.
Snap your fingers and dance with me.
Let’s make music together, tonight,
And tomorrow, in the morning,
When light brings the burlesque colors
To life, and we remember how to fly,
Let’s fly together out of our ego cages,
Off into the starlit skies of wonder and love,
Forever....
Or at least until the washer gets done with the clothes,
And I have to put them into the dryer.

-jenn

Saturday, July 25, 2020

In my attempt to discover
My role in the world
Of selfless action,
I asked the Lord what I could possibly do for him.

In complete honesty, I asked.
And the lord said, “Be happy.
Can you do that?”
I said yes. And then I giggled.

And so I’m going to be happy today, 
And the day after that,
And the day after that,
And the day after that.

What are you gonna do...?

-jenn
Tell me who posed
So silently 
For the sculptor who gazed
Then chipped away
Everything that was not godlike 

Whose are the eyes
That both blazed with fire
And stared with ennui 
At the state of life
The fates had weaved

Whose the trapezius muscles,
The pecs, the glutes?
The quadriceps, biceps,
The abdominal obliques,
That inspired this art?

It inspires such worship 
Such speechless awe.
Was it take a magic lute
To draw you away 
To dance with me
And leave the sculptor 
To work from memory 

I’m sure one could never forget 
Im sure I wouldn’t 

-jenn

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Suddenly today,
When I go to shave my legs,
The razor’s dull.
I scratch it across my shins, anyway,
Can feel it pull at my skin, 
Scraping cells away.
The familiar ache,
The pains I take,
Remind me, all, of home.

I’m glad this happened.
It may just save me from a relapse.
It may help me see my whole life
As one big sidetrack 
After another.

So now straight up,
From my ankle to my knee,
I’ll bring you face to face with me,
Like this razor. Tap, tap,tap.
Now, where would we like to go from here?

-jenn

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

I’m going back before the time before time,
When things were real
Between me and myself.
I’m going back to see
What I looked like.
I’m going to let the image set
Real well in my mind,
And let my soul consider 
Everything else in relation to that.

And then I’m going to be me,
And if you don’t like me any more,
Then that’s how it is,
Because from now on,
I’m going to be real again,
Like I was in the time, the time before.

-jenn
I saw her walking away 
From the slip n slide,
A very faraway look on her face.
She never heard her husband say,
“This is not supposed to hook up this way.”
She never heard another word.
She simply walked across the road,
Away from her house and her three year old,
And over the hill.

The last thing anybody heard her say,
Was she was looking for a guy
That drove a black Chevy,
Two door, sedan.

He drew his line,
And she drew hers.
It pinged so far
Down the line,
That the slip n slide split its sheets
From top to bottom,
Just like the veil in the temple,
And just like her at the bar that night,
When the Righteous One said,
“Smoke ‘em it ya got ‘em.”

-jenn

Can I tell you what I want?
Can you find this lovely thing
For me to have and know
It’s mine, for all eternity?

Can I express my need to you
And not have you look away,
But put your shoulder under me
And lift me to the sky

And say that I am your beloved,
And that there is no one quite
Like me for you, and be the one
I dream about, and write my poems
And songs of love to?

Maybe there’s none of earth today
Who share this kind of want
With me, maybe only an immortal god
Could handle the weight my wanting brings.
Maybe the shoulder of Hercules, 
A demigod, could come as close,
Or maybe not, but I need someone
To sing my childish songs of love to.

Would you like to hear one?

-jenn
Some people these days, when they sneeze,
Are offended if someone else tells them ‘bless you.’
Maybe one should offer a polite ‘gesundheit.’
No one worries what that means anyway.
It means, ‘health,’ by the way,
Soundness, wellness, general well being.

But the etymology of blessed is literally 
To be ‘covered by the blood,’
An ancient word from an ancient religion 
Where an initiate would be put in a trough 
Dug out in the ground,
And a bull would be slaughtered on a grate that covered the pit,
And the initiate would be washed in the blood of the sacrificed animal,
Completely covered with it.

Christianity picked up this archetype,
Along with various other religions
Incorporated it into its theology
And a vestige of this comes through 
From even the time of the plague.
“Bless you,” remains.
A serious undertone,
I sure hope you’re not infected.

I see similar looks in the store.
Someone sneezes.
Five people stop in their tracks to 
See who it was.
A few offer a timid ‘Bless you.’
And a child that stands in a shopping cart
Says, ‘I hope you don’t have coronavirus.” 

-jenn

Saturday, July 18, 2020

My captain drug me down with the ship
As far as we could go.
Slowly it dawned on me,
He must have gills.
He could breathe under water.

But the angel of mercy
Came for me.
Code three!
Code three!
And now I can breathe under water, too.

And I will come and rescue you,
Paying it forward and backward
And hopelessly, endlessly without a clue.
Code blue!
Code blue!
The angel of mercy has come for you,
And now you can breathe under water, too.

-jenn

Friday, July 17, 2020

Horrorscopes 

A lazy day and their nanny has them swimming by the pool
In the smaller pool that’s specially designed for children.
It will become a hot tub for adults
When the kids are grown,
Unless the kids have their own kids early,
In which case it will stay a kiddie pool.

And everything has been planned!
She’s prepared for anything, 
Except her husband dying,
In which case, will she keep 
The lover she has,
Or will she decide to find a new one?

Will she have different needs to meet,
Or will they be so sadly the same?
If she finds that to be true,
Maybe she will keep the lover she has,
And find another lover, too.

For this is her nature.
She was born in the year of the snake,
And she really needs two husbands,
And luckily she was born 
In a tropical place on a sunny day,
Instead of some cold, frigid Christian way of life,
And very luckily, she has a pool, or actually, two,
And a nanny, so her husband can have a second wife.

But he never wonders what he would do
If either the nanny or his wife dies,
Because he’s already got two other girlfriends 
On the side, (because he’s a Leo,)
And he read one time that that’s how he should be.

-jenn
I leak my information 
Like a new mother
Who can lactate even
At the sound 
Of someone else’s baby crying.
Yearn for me!
Cry out to my soul!
And my soul will love yours!

Or I can leak my information 
Out to you in code,
Like a whistle blower,
Or a spy, captured behind 
Enemy lines.
My Love, I’ll blink in Morse code,
Praying that you understand 
The coordinates of my location,
And that you’ll come and save me from
The hordes of my detractors, 
Or, just the legion of doubting Thomas
Thoughts I like to call my brain.

Call out to me!
Snap the chain of my eventing,
Remind me who I really am again.

-jenn
There was a lot to eat at the banquet,
And I didn’t know where to start.
Everyone else seemed to be enjoying it,
But I didn’t have the heart to eat,
And I didn’t have the heart
To tell the master of the banquet 
That the food looked plastic to me,
And that all the conversation 
Seemed unworthy of skating rink teens,
Much less adults.
But who am i to ruin fun?
If so many others feel complete 
Here in this environment,
I let them be without a word,
And leave them to find their own peace.

For the shallow splashes have a beauty,
They have a certain attractiveness,
But the mysterious deep calls me,
And I must go and overwhelm myself 
With things the deep dark ocean knows
And holds for those who are brave enough 
To be alone sometimes, and torn off the tv.

-jenn
Two separate shipwrecks in the sea,
One is you, and one is me.
We both wind up drifting 
To the same desert isle,
And it takes a while
But we finally discover one another.

And after the initial pleasantries,
We begin discussion on how we came to be here,
The various and sundries
Of the maladies therein,
And it takes awhile,
But we come to see
How truly similar we may be.

I was abandoned as a child.
You were neglected,
Left in a file labeled no good.
We both had to learn 
From an early age to survive,
And our skills in that vein
Were disappearance, dissociation,
Seeking approval, amalgamation
With our enemies
To the extreme point that we
Abandoned our true selves,
And it took awhile,
But that came to be
The only home we knew.

And now we sit,
Right here together,
So far apart from everything, 
And yet more far apart than ever
From one another,
And don’t know what to do.

Maybe it will take awhile,
But I have hope
That the scope of our disfunction 
Narrows every day,
As you love you,
And I love me,
And ‘neath these swaying palms,
Sharing these clams and coconut milk
Together,
Maybe we can find a way
To love one another, too.

And yes I know,
It may take a while.
I’m willing.
How bout you?

-jenn

She’s not worried about getting weird tan lines on her face
From wearing a mask at the pool.
She applied sunblock liberally
Before sticking her toe in the lazy river.

And now she floats along without a care,
Mouthing off about her neighbor,
And the masked listeners don’t have 
To hide their smug smirks,
But they can’t disguise their eyes
As they see ‘said neighbor’
Walking up behind the masked talker,
And listening to the rant.

“Is this something you can’t say to my face?”
She asks adamantly,
And the masked wonder turns in surprise and shock.
Too bad she forgot to apply Hell-block,
So liberally, too,
Because the shoe is fixing to be on the other foot
When all her friends tell everyone they know
How the senior early-time at the pool came to blows,
And which end of the game of telephone 
The masked wonder wound up on.

-jenn

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Every useful thing I learned,
I learned from living at the lake:
How to identify poisonous snakes,
How to get by on just two changes of clothes,
How to take my cast iron pan
And scrub it with sand,
And rinse it in the swift running creek,
How to sneak into your berry patch,
Unlatch your gate and stroll
Half naked along the trail that leads nowhere.
(And then again, maybe it’s just where no one’s been in a while.)
How to pull a stingy smile from your hard face,
And retrace my steps backwards so
That no one knows I’ve come and gone,
Yet well I know, so well I learned,
Where nowhere really is.

-jenn