Life Is But A Dream
I’d had a bad dream,
And I cried in the night,
And my guardian angel appeared like
A light in the darkness.
“It’s only a dream,” he said,
“Much like life is.
Don’t let it frighten you.”
Then I saw him closer,
As he moved toward my bed,
A look of determination on his broad, beautiful face.
Breathless, I asked him,
“What are you going to do to me?”
He just smiled and said,
“It’s your dream, Lady.”
-jenn
Numbers’ Game
I’ve seen him 472 times,
And I’ve never spoken a word to him.
All I’ve ever given him is a smile.
And now I think he’s trying so desperately
To get me to talk,
But whatever he does, or whatever comes out of his mouth
Just makes me grin,
So still not a word has passed my lips to him.
But there’s always tomorrow,
And it may be that 473 is a very lucky number
For everyone.
-jenn
Roll Tide, Roll
You’re a deep subject for my shallow mind.
But you roll through me like high tide,
Leaving debris on my shoreline.
One piece of driftwood stands alone,
Something beautiful that catches my eye.
The way the sun shines on it
Right now,
Breaks through deeply
To my heart.
I see it for the incredible piece of art that it is.
I’m so thankful for you.
-jenn
Floating the Deep Fork
Floating the Deep Fork
With a guide,
And some are fishing,
But I’d rather lie here
On my belly
And slide my fingers along the stream
While the River rolls.
Today the water is like glass,
And even though we’re moving,
It seems the scenes pass to the side of us,
Rather than us through them.
And we’ve voyaged to a place now
Where I’ve never been.
I sit up, to pay attention
To this feeling in my soul,
That the River has a certain pull to it
That I’ve never felt before.
I turn forward to look ahead,
The River, still eerily motionless,
But something under, a pulling roar,
“This River is ending?” I ask my Sherpa.
“No, it’s going over,” he smiles.
We’re going over the waterfall!
Now the urgency of fate!
Is it too late to take my name
Off this list, wind back the day,
Resist the urge to come on this excursion?
There is no diversion now!
We can’t escape the nature of River.
We’re going to seek out our own level,
And Hers, by her force.
We’re going over the waterfall!
Some have jumped and tried to swim ashore.
I’m alone now with the guide.
I hear him say, “Women are better at this,
Because they’ve given birth.
The earth is a woman, you know,
And the River, an earth goddess.”
His words seem oddly so mundane
In the face of this runaway train wreck we’re having,
But he is calm, like a suicide bomber,
And I am along for the ride.
But we are approaching the roar of the rim,
And in the deafening fall of the water,
I can’t hear him anymore.
I’m falling too, slipping off the raft,
The guide grabs me, holds me tight.
We’re somewhere in the process
Of living, dying, going over,
And he has somehow wrapped himself around me, and
Me around him.
Like twisted salmon, in some perverted version of upstream,
He’s mating with me for life
As we fall, and all I can feel
Is his deepest urge,
To sex me, to rock me
To my core, til nothing is left of me anymore,
To allow the waterfall energy of his desire
To shuck me like corn
And eat my seeds
And become something else inside of me
And me, within him:
Our babies, our children.
And finally he has gotten through
And penetrated my heart,
And all this, is what he had to do
To guru me into living.
But I am wildly, madly in love with him,
And he with me, and we’re still falling,
Cascading down, with only the sounds
Of the water drowning out all of our holy moans and vows.
We’ve going together, now,
Over the waterfall!
He asked me to come and sit with him,
And I did.
And I’d have done anything he wanted me to, really,
If only he’d’ve asked.
I only wanted to take him to task
On one thing.
He seemed to hide certain objects away
Before I’d arrive,
Like his fluffier towels
And his big blue bathrobe.
Did he think I was going to steal them
As someone might from a motel?
I saw him suddenly spy the ashtray!
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I don’t smoke,
So I won’t steal that.”
“It’s just a joke,” I added as I saw his eyes get big again.
And now, I’m talking to you:
I don’t want anything,
So I won’t steal anything from you,
Except maybe your heart because
You don’t seem to be able to hide that,
And therefore, there’ll be nothing you can do about it
When it’s gone.
-jenn
Silhouette, Mostly
It’s mostly just a silhouette,
With places where the light shines through.
I can’t begin to name the hues I see.
They glisten marvelously
Against the black,
And as the sun sets in back of it all,
The colors change, as if they are alive
Against the backdrop
Of some magnificent stage.
But maybe it is all an act,
And even the sun moving down
May return for one more curtain call
Before the floodlights fade away,
Before the night sets in to stay.
But the way the light plays with the dark,
And the way the starkness blends
With the very opaque ends of things,
Let’s me know, that only one complete energy
Is behind all this show,
And I am blessed to behold it.
-jenn
Warm Feet
He mumbles.
Mumble mumble mumble mumble ...
I only hear
Every other seventh word he says,
But it’s clear to me
That he’s inviting me
To come and mumble
Humbly with him
In his bed.
Under the cover of bedspread and sheet,
And under the mysterious wonder
Of whatever the rest of what his mumbling means,
But for me, it is just his feet I hear,
Telling me how warm they are,
And how they would never be cold
When it comes to me.
-jenn
Für Elisabet
The lipgloss that she donned was cherry,
But see-thru as the sky.
It cast a pale pink glow upon her smile.
Her hazel eyes would shift
And change their color like mercury,
From blue to green to golden brown
And back to gray.
But as the winds would blow,
So would her heart.
A start to something rarely concluded.
But beautiful fragments of fractal pieces
Of art, lying here and there
Dotted her horizons with zenith and nadir.
So love her or hate her, if you must,
But for those of us who understand,
We know her as “fantastic,”
As someone who has transcended all duality,
And lived as one of full-fledged life
In all diverse and multiple realities.
-jenn
Reversal Roll
Finally we have the roles reversed here in America.
Well, almost.
I was riding my motorcycle by
And saw this guy
Bent over tending flowers in his front yard grass.
“Hey! Nice ass, Big Boy!” I almost shouted.
I’ll have to rehearse
Just a little bit more
If I want to floor him
Like those construction workers
Down on Main Street do me.
But how will he reply?
Will he shrug me off with a passing glance,
Or yell back gruffly,
“Keep it in your pants, Honey!”
Well on second thought,
Maybe we’ve not evolved very far
Over here, in America, after all.
-jenn
Non-sequitor
The pursuit of happiness does not work.
It’s painful and fruitless.
There’s always another rung on the ladder to heaven.
And when you get this,
And when you get that,
You say you’ll be satisfied.
But you won’t,
Always there is a greener pasture,
A bigger carrot that dangles.
I think I have found something,
A treasure within.
It’s more than I want,
More than I can truly handle.
The spirit of a human
Is the candle of the divine,
Shining bliss all the time
Without pursuit of it.
I’m Ecstatic.
What more can ever be done to me?
What more could I ever do,
Or ever wish for?
-jenn
Wedding Supper
I remember a photograph I saw once
Of my grandmother in 1945.
She was 43 years old,
Standing in her kitchen with a neighbor lady.
They were making sandwiches,
And had a big stack of them already
On two plates, cut in half diagonally.
The sandwiches were for a wedding supper
For my Aunt Mary, who was getting married that day.
My grandma had a big smile on her face,
And I saw that a big blob of the sandwich spread
Had fallen down onto her thumb.
Somehow I just knew that she
Was about to lick it off,
Probably because that’s what I would do.
“What kind of sandwiches were they?”
I asked my other aunt who was showing the photos.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said casually,
Turning the page in the album,
“Probably ham salad or something.”
And I just smiled,
And thought how good that sounded.
-jenn
