They’re getting paid to watch cement dry.

They can’t have fools coming by

Falling in love and deciding to

Concrete the notices of it

In the blueish grayish clay 

With their names, or at least their initials,

And a heart with an arrow piercing it,

Right in the middle of their nice corner,

Or a proud mother whose toddler’s hands

And name and date

Are destined for immortality here.

But a dog has gotten loose,

And before they can stop him,

His puppy feet prints will dot the street,

And only now they see a leaf had fallen, too, 

Undetected, and will also be

A part of this semi-permanent record,

Fossilized in this modern “public work.”

-jenn

 When I didn’t know where to go, and 

When I didn’t know what to do,

I’d learned to wait 

And listen to

The homing signal.

I’m standing on the corner now

Of “Don’t Know Where”

And “Don’t Know How.”

The light’s just turned,

But I’m not sure.

A significant other passes away,

And no one seems to care,

But my Lover died,

And I don’t know what to say

Except that I am devastated 

By loneliness.

I feel insignificant,

And I can’t seem to hear 

Any homing signal.

-jenn

 I’ve been nice all my life,

And it hasn’t worked.

They say the definition of insanity is

To keep on doing the same old things

And expect different results,

So maybe now I’ll try

Being mean and nasty.

To the woman in the Cadillac 

Who honked at me,

Then quickly changed lanes

To get in front of me,

Only to have to stop

One block away

At the red light,

I’ll scream profane,

Call her a ‘bird brain,’

And flip her the middle finger.

And as I steam, I’ll think 

Of a stinger to reply

To the guy at the grocery mart

Who continually thinks it smart

To refer to me by, “Young Lady.”

Nobody got time fa dat shit.

-jenn

 When it rains,

The flowers weep.

The precipitation seeps

So deeply into their veins.

Do they know 

That they must sleep sometimes, 

And let the raindrops 

Reach down far enough to get

To their main roots?

I like to sleep, too,

When it rains.

I close my eyes

And count the grains of sand

I’ve seen in the peanut fields,

And think of the green, leafy shoots,

The way wet, careless weed roots smell

When you hoe them out of the dirty earth

After the rain has gone.

Sometimes I cry when it rains.

The sky complains.

The wind blows my hair into my eyes.

I stare at that place

Where I used to think I was alive.

I wander back in time

And feel the unquenchable nameless pains

That reach all the way back to 

My misunderstood innocence.

-jenn

 The Roommate 

I lie here deceitfully,

Scheming halfway through the night,

Climbing up trees, in my mind,

Just to fabricate a world 

That makes sense to me,

While she stands plainly on the ground

And tells her side

Of her story she calls, “truth,”

And simply goes to bed at night 

And sleeps.

I worry that there’s not enough,

And bluff my way through medical school,

Only to flunk out the last week or two

In a super industrial feat of self-sabotage,

While she works on a decorative collage 

For her floral design degree.

She cooks her rice and eats it,

And simply goes to bed at night and sleeps.

-jenn 

 Last night, I dreamed

I was playing with my cats

And woke up with scratches on my hands.

But my house burned down,

My cats are gone.

These cuts and wounds are only from

A half-dead rose bush I took on

Earlier in the afternoon.

Tonight, I’ll dream I’m kissing you

And will wake up in the mood for love.

And where will you be

When I need you here 

To contend with me?

-jenn

 I’m just a squatter here.

I stroll the back nine

Just to hear the meadow larks at sunrise

And feel the cool touch

Of rosyfingered dawn upon my cheek.

Is this how Homer wandered?

Then, without a place,

Now, a faceless poet in the annals of history?

A dirty canal and a narrow alley

And back to the street,

The concrete reminds me

That I don’t feel at home here.

Though, truly, I may be.

For, truly, I never felt at home, either,

When I walked the fields and pastures

Scattered over the thousand acres 

That technically was mine.

Suddenly I see a nameless flower. 

It’s come out of the earth 

As effortlessly as I have.

I walk by it, and I make a resolution,

To quit looking for home,

And try, instead, to find myself.

-jenn

 I make it to the lake just in time

To see geese mating.

It’s not a pretty sight.

It’s not a pretty sound.

Unromantic quacks,

Flapping and splashing,

A clash between ganders,

Me, chuckling.

It looks like the female is swimming away,

But she can’t seem

To escape the gaggle.

A cacophonous tribunal

Then, “Hooray!”

Goslings will soon be on the way.

Then there’s you. Then there’s me.

I’m not sure either of us

Have the sense

The Good Lord gave the geese.

-jenn

 Overheard at the bar:

“Something about becoming a woman 

Has made a man out of me,” he said.

“In a freakish disposition,

I understand vulnerability.

I know now what a woman wants

And long to give it to her.

The perfect balance of a tightroping act,

The thrill of the trapeze.

I’m a lion tamer, man,

And it only took the mistaken identity 

Of Tiresias, and that little misplaced chart 

At the hospital, when I went in 

For a heart transplant,

And came out with a sex change.

I never understood lesbians or English majors

And now I are one.”

-jenn

 There were people here before me

Who didn’t get to enjoy this tree

The way it looks today,

Or this bush in bloom,

With its green leaves, brown stems

And tiny white blossoms.

On this cloudy afternoon,

The wind chime bells remind me

Of the holy sounds that come unbidden,

Without any cause, from the cosmic sea

We call universe,

And that there will come a day

When I might not seem to be here

To see the things the way they seem to be,

But have no fear,

I will always be right here with thee.

I will always be right here.

I will always be right.

I will always be.

I will always.

I will. I will.

I will.

-jenn

 If I call your name 

In the throes of passion,

If I throb and convulse

And shed my skin,

If something underneath 

Is shinier,

More attractive,

Please don’t be shocked 

At the consequence.

Please don’t be shocked

If the name I call

Is not your given one,

But a new name 

In glory

I give to Thee,

For I have seen a hint

Of your true identity,

And call out 

To the Divinity in you.

-jenn

 The field lark chirps it’s sweet refrain.

In mock disdain, it refutes

The urban lute

That claims this is a wasteland.

How dare you judge!

How dast! how dast!

When clover buds hold so fast,

And wild honeysuckle rose

Graciously blooms and pollinates!

Whilst baby trees

Grow wild on the side of the watery ditch.

Turtles sun and restless squirrels 

Twitch their tails and run

And I spin mine,

My tales, that it,

Sitting here.

My brain unfolding antiquities 

In this hidden municipality behind the auditorium.

-jenn

 I tell you all my secrets without

Any hesitation at all.

All my truths appear in a burning night.

Black plasma flames as I peer into

The cauldron of the future,

Where visions are forged and realities are made.

They must begin in the dark like worms.

They writhe and try to find their way.

I protect them with lies, like Rhea did Zeus,

Who lay in a cave while his father ate

A swaddled stone.

But you alone know.

What will you do?

Can you let him grow and guard him,

Or swallow him whole, yourself,

In the garden of good and evil.

An altar awaits.

I’ve covered the gates 

With goat’s milk and honey,

And neither money nor trouble

Will tempt the Fates.

But I will.

I will trouble your trouble for you,

And with you.

-jenn

 “What a great place to use heroin!” he said,

And then fell over dead in the water.

No one thought to look for him at all,

Especially not at hippie holler,

Until the drought came along

And bones were found,

And everyone wondered, “Whose?”

And can you pick and choose which dead

You will speak ill of?

If it matters how many dollars a dead man has?

Or if any sense? But not even a penny

Was found on the sallow ground

Where this man’s pocket might have been

When he fell in and died.

And secretly everyone will say

That he killed himself,

But in today’s economy,

And the levitical philosophy we still bare and share,

We all do.

It’s just a matter of where and when,

And what manner of “vice”

We happen to fall into.

-jenn

 We make a toast

And sip champagne 

And someone else offers ‘’Salúd!’

And raises the name

As glasses clink 

And happiness 

Effervesces 

And I’m with you

Your knowing eyes

Sparkle

I drink in

The living sight of you

The fiery way you blaze

Through the night

Not like a falling star

But a bright comet

On its way

To some far-off heavy destination

And I’m here

With you

Because 

You know me

You know my secret sacred identity 

As well as I know yours

-jenn

 The party got dark.

The party fare

Consisted of word salad

And dangled carrots,

Future faking

And my ass on a platter.

I stepped out on the deck

For air,

Stood in the sun, leaned on the rail.

Three steps over, I turned around.

I’m almost out of the influence now

That they had on me,

All the letters of all of the meaningless words

Of the sentence they handed down on me.

(The trauma bonds are breaking.)

Three steps over

To the stairs,

Three steps down,

Three steps skipping along on the ground

To the sidewalk,

I’m free,

Completely gone from the sad influence 

They had on me.

My twelve step program to say goodbye

To contemptuous controllers:

Here’s mud in your eye!

I’m taking my life back

Three steps at a time!

Hallelujah!

I’m free at last! I’m

Free At Last!

-jenn

 If someone asks you how to write a poem,

You can quote Ksemarāja:

“First you have to extract subjectivity from subjectivity

And insert that subjectivity into objectivity.

Then you have to extract objectivity from the real objectivity

And insert that objectivity into inferior objectivity.”

Or you can just tell them to “just write a poem.”

Either way, 

Their question will have been answered.

-jenn

 She sits on a bench in the park

On a sunny day.

The grass is green,

And her hair is gray.

She pretends to read her paperback.

She has plenty of time on her hands,

Now that they put her husband away

In the penitentiary for good.

He used to send her out for tea

Or coffee or some other wild goose chase,

Probably to get her out of the house

While he raped their baby granddaughters.

Now she sees that. Now, too late.

She pretends to read,

But wonders alone,

How in the world she couldn’t have known

What was happening to them,

When it was exactly

What had been done to her

By her grandfather.

Too late she sees.

“Wake up, people!”

She makes her pleas to herself 

And anyone else

Who’s willing and able to listen.

-jenn 

 To the inconsequential moth

Who fluttered haplessly into

What was left of my bath water,

“I’m sorry you did that,” I rebuked,

“And now your faerie dust is gone,

Washed completely clean.

But you cannot fly without it,

And now you’re going down the drain,

Just because you yearned

For cleanliness.

Better for you had you remained

Dirty and unremorseful!”

But then a child came in by the tub,

Just in time to see the moth go down,

And hearing the refrain 

Of my funeral dirge for it,

The child peered through.

“Oh no, MaMá,” he cheerfully said.

“The moth will no more be dead

Than you or I today.

It’s simply sliding down a tube

That takes it to another world

Where he won’t need to fly.

He can merely imagine where

He wants to be and what he wants to do, 

And suddenly, he’ll be there,

Doing it.”

Thank god for little children.

-jenn

 There’s a fine line between 

Worshippers and those who stalk,

And when you cross it, 

Climbing Mount Kailash

To get a glimpse of a god,

Your poetry has to be very good,

Or his wife will shake him from

The trance that he is resting in,

And he will strike you from his presence.

Down his mountain you will go,

And your drum will leave a scar

On the face of that very mountain 

For all the world to see forever. 

That’s his mountain after all.

And you may think that this is bad,

But this is actually beautiful.

This is actually very good,

For all to see,

For all to hear.

“Damad damad damaddama,”

The mystic drum forever chants,

The story of love 

For all to see,

For all to hear,

Forevermore.

It’s beating there

Within my heart.

It’s beating there,

The story of Love,

The Song of Deepest Admiration,

Following you

To the ends of the earth.

-jenn

 When her diagnosis said that she was going to die,

The people said she took the easy way out,

Popping that cyanide pill she found on the sidewalk.

“What do you mean?” I asked,

And they said she should have tuffed it out,

To see what it’s really like to die.

“But she did die, 

Didn’t she?” I asked.

-jenn 

 A lonesome lady in red chiffon 

Carries one golf club on her shoulder

And hits one golf ball along the rough.

She’s smart enough to play before 

The sun comes up,

Before the clubhouse opens.

She misses out on the gossip this way,

And gets to play without any delays,

Or paying any greens fees.

She’s almost hidden beneath 

The very trees she walks along.

Almost.

Like an apparition, like a ghost,

In the misty, morning dew,

Wistfully whacking one golf ball around,

Finding a few that others have lost,

She discovers plenty of time for counting the cost

Of past mistakes, and future ones

She’s bound to find

As the day breaks.

-jenn

 They tell me when I’m dreaming 

I can be awake.

I can speak to my situation 

And have a say.

I think I can also dream when I’m awake. 

Maybe I can also have a beautiful word to say,

Today, in this strange situation I call “Life.”

-jenn