Under Standards 

These are just words that drop

On your window pane tonight,

But someday everything will change,

And it will rain down on your face.

Will you forget to close it?

Or will you step out through it,

Into the true unknown 

With windblown hair,

Under the trees at night

While it storms,

And feel the lightning bugs that grace the arbor?

These are just words that drop upon your window pane tonight,

But someday you may learn to speak Chinese,

Or better yet,

You may learn to cast your spell,

And  conversate with me?

Come out and play,

And let the day begin at dusk,

Until the musk of dew distills,

And all our ills are gone,

Til , yay, verily, we can rain

Upon the window panes in the village,

And see if anyone else can understand.

-jenn

 Wood Thou

A Lover would keep me warm ,

So safe from harm,

And keep this cardiac pain away,

Stay the wolves as the smoke from a fiery flame.

A Lover would hold me

While I sleep.

Kindle a silent dream with me,

A Lover would.

Hold my hand,

A Lover would.

Understand.

So understoodly would I be,

Would I had my Lover here with me.

-jenn 

 A silent history exists

In the midst of ancient statues.

Empty, staring, hollow eyes

That cannot see,

Stone mouths with stony muted tongues

That cannot say

What the answers to the mysteries may be.

Where is the Holy Grail?

Where is the stone where Jacob laid his head

And had the dream of the ladder up to heaven?

Where is the mystical tree of life?

The city of Shambala?

Where is the Incan city made of gold 

Called El Dorado?

Only the statues and the shadows know,

And maybe the ancient pharaohs,

Whose ancient remains lie quietly in

Their brightly painted sarcophagi,

Screaming silently from deep within their ornately carved, treasure laden tombs.

And only the pristinely cut hieroglyphs 

Carved on the granite obelisks

In stately grammatically correct form cartouche 

Render the Royal Names,

If only we could correctly translate it.

-jenn

 Fountain of Youth 

I dip into the water at night,

Like a water snake,

After the eyes of day have closed,

And no one’s here to see.

The cool ripples of the gentle windblown waves,

Here, in this deep,freshwater lake

Revive me.

My ironclad scales pull tight with glee.

My youth returned

To slither and swim.

My narrow forked tongue a-quiver,

Flickers under the pale moon rising.

I am refreshed by the moonlit waters.

Now I float freely, on my back.

My hands outstretched,

I lose myself in the chasm between 

The stars so far,

So high up in the velvet sky,

And those so near,

Here in the satin waters.

 Holy Smoke 

The ritual bonfire burns.

Even in the rain,

The smoke smears down.

We dance in circles around the flames

While drums en-trance us.

There is no sky today,

Only earth.

Deep entanglements untie

As we dance and finally feel the truth:

There is a sky!

And we are in it.

The smoke is staying here to dance

With us, circling around the flames.

It doesn’t know the steps,

But then again it has no feet.

It watches us to learn the dance.

We watch it to learn to fly,

Even in the rain now pouring.

We smear down.

Our fingertips try to grip some unknown time,

Some unknown place

That Smoke calls home.

But we can’t go,

And it can’t stay,

And to think otherwise would be

A great departure from the Truth.

But we maintain the ritual dance,

And we still smell the remnants of the smoke

In our living, breathing nostrils,

And we understand the mighty dimensions, 

And the holy space that joins them

Where all things meet,

Where all things are True,

And all things are One,

And there is no more separation.

-jenn

 Clean Dirt

I try to get dirty but I can’t 

The garden dirt is clean dirt

I wanted to smear my own campaign 

Sling mud upon myself 

To understand our candidates 

In this strange political system

But even when I took a glob

Of soil and wiped it on my face

It wouldn’t stick

Because gardening is clean business 

And garden dirt is clean 

-jenn

 Acceptance 

Mother Earth receives her own,

The rain, the snow, the bitter herbs,

The leaves, the seeds, the trash, the dung,

The dead, the living,

Old and young.

All is one thing to her:

To be received.

Receptive is the way to be,

Accepting of yourself,

And all things and everybody as they are.

Then the beams from starlight gleams upon you,

And in such state of receptivity,

The Creative weaves on a magic loom 

A magic destiny,

Beyond what you would have forged for yourself,

And all that’s really left for us to do now

Is accept it.

-jenn