When that person calls you by a name that isn't yours,
Before you roll your eyes and gasp
And allow yourself to burn
From the flames of such a disregarded fire.
Stop for a moment and listen.

For this is the word
That formed in the brain,
Of this said person
When he or she recorded the concept of you
In the very mind's eye.

And if there's something in a name,
Then there might be something, too,
In the sounds and syllables that
He or she relegates to personify you.

Or maybe this person is in tune
With some lost former life of yours,
And calls you by that name you had.
And in a flash of de javu,
You'll wonder who you really are,
And wonder that this skin flint
Seems so confident to know.

But maybe your parents didn't listen,
Or maybe they gave too much mind
To the pulses of the universe
That came to light when you were born,
And maybe said jerk
With a casual glance can see
All of your forest thru all of your trees,
And conjures up a name above all names,
The name you should have had.

Or maybe he or she's forgotten you,
And remembers someone else instead.

-jenn

I'm suing myself for malpractice.
I've treated myself awfully poor.
I've second guessed and disregarded
The truth about myself.

I've never fully embraced myself,
Or seen myself as others see me,
Or come to myself via myself
And viewed my given soul.

But something today has lifted my veil,
And I shout to the system
And the culture,
"Stop the wedding!"
I know that this is all wrong.

And now it's come to amputation.
I must perform the other-ectomy
To rid myself of the things not meant to be me.

But is it better to enter the next life maimed,
And limp across this one with my own true soul,
Than to marry an image of myself
Drawn poorly, or conjured by illusion?

Or should I lose all consciousness
Of me and what I am
And simply become a little child again?

-jenn

I wish I were intolerant to dishwater
And toilet wands
Instead of gluten and lactose.
I wish my system couldn't take a microscopic amount
Of boorish behavior from know -it-alls,
Or self-absorbed control freaks.
I wish I had a doctor's note
That would get me out of empty meetings,
And prescribe for me long walks by the lake.
I wish I were averse to haters, fear-mongering remarks from insecure people, and the jealous snide of critics,
Instead of being hypersensitive
To sugarcookies and milk.

-jenn

Maybe our spirits met in a time and place out in the night
Somewhere out west of the great salt lake
Where the counties are big enough to handle
The great expanse of our Love
And there we rolled thru the sky like thunder
And loped and billowed oer the clouds
And gamboled like colts til lightning bolts
Electrified the desert

And then in a flash we trembled
And in a sudden downburst of sweat
We rained down love and life in the desert
And got everything soaking wet

And it's allllllllllll so marvelously goooooood

-jenn

I want to baby baby baby you all night long,
Spread my feathers out over you and flutter,
Be all in a frenzy and stammer and mutter
and try to say your name.

I want to touch you everywhere at once,
Be as quick as Mercury
And heavy as lead
And weigh on you like glories forgotten
Until nothing matters but the thought in your head
That is pure and knowledgeable
And right and good.

-jenn

I feel like a human raised by wolves
Then brought into captivity
And forced to learn English.

But then after so many years of trying to live this way,
I find that you,
(And I don't know how)
But you speak Wolf,
And you speak it beautifully.

And I respond from a place
I'd forgotten I had--
A deep place
Beyond my precognition,

Back to the strange milk
That nourished me
And the mother tongue.

The various breathings I understand,
The panting, the huffing,
The smallest of sighs,
The grunts and groans imperceptible to human ears,

The rhythm of the feet,
And the song of the howl, the growl, the bark, and the low whine,
The purr.

Were you raised by wolves, too?
Or , how else did you learn to speak as a native?

-jenn

This world seems to shout a constant, "No!"
And so I'm glad we oui so well.
It is so sweet to hear a rushing, "Yes,"
Roll down the riverbank
And over the falls and deep into
The pools of you that gather in my soul.

I bathe in the rainbows of that mist
And refresh permissive things to try
There where failure resides in peace with success.
And the mystery of that sacred union
Blocks all fear and the vulgar urge
To shout out, "No!" like all the rest.
But instead, I stop and think,
And agree with the beauty and the truth,
And whisper, "Yes.
Anything for you."
-jenn