The truck stop bathroom
Has pictures of Marilyn on the front door.
A subliminal message that says,
"Welcome to the crapper.
Now, have some class.
What would Ms. Monroe do, after all?"

The pictures also try to suggest
That those who have come into this place
All have MovieStar poo,
(Which doesn't stink)
And, therefore, you, with your common ass,
Don't have to worry about who came before.
There's no need to squat over the toilet seat and spray urine like a cat.
You can sit right down on it as God intended,
Because your dirty behind is probably the filthiest thing it has seen in a while.

All this in hopes that the light switch,
That sits demurely by the mirror,
With the sign that says,
"Flip if this bathroom needs attendance,"
Doesn't get flipped quite as often.

It's a wonderful idea.
I wonder whose picture is in the front of the men's room door?

-jenn

The last kind gesture I did before I died
Was to start the load in the washing machine.
I filled a scoop of Oxyclean
And dialed the setting to warm.

I hope someone knows they're in there,
And knows the clothes are clean.
I hope they don't forget and let them sour.
Maybe someone could take them out
And put them in the dryer.
But as for me,
I'm gone.

-jenn

Back in the Golden age,
The mound in town
Was the ziggurat,
Great pyramid structures
Ornate and built to last.
Some are standing still,
Since 6000 BCE,
The home of the gods,
The place of the bond between heaven and earth.
But now,
In this age of bronze mingled with clay,
The mound in town
Is the dumpground.

-jenn

My earliest memory is of the sun
Shining in my eye,
And it was bright,
So blinding bright to me.
And as I lay helpless,
Unable to speak or roll,
I didn't understand
Why sometimes the sun was there,
And sometimes it was not.

And if this life is chrysalis,
And one day I shall fly,
I hope the first thing that I see
Will be the sun of the afterlife,
Shining, blinding me
With goodness and light,
The love of a brand new day.

And I hope that I will know
Where the brilliance shines from,
And know that no matter how life might move,
I can always turn my head
To see whatever I want.
I want to see you.

-jenn

Regrets

With food, I mostly wish I didn't eat it,
With situations, I mostly wish I'd tried.
I usually I wish I'd said something,
Or I wish I'd said something else.
There are a few people I wish I'd never met.

But mostly, there's love,
And the mystery of knowing
What someone else is really like,
What they really think,
What they wish they'd said,

And the regret of not knowing
The people you love better,
And not letting them know you.

-jenn

He likes to sleep with the tv on.
She likes to sleep with it off.
And so, voila, there you have it--
Irreconcilable differences.

He could come in and visit her,
Or she could go and visit him,
But what's the point?
They've contributed their 2.2 children.
What more does society want?

And of course the children have the gene!
It must be the dominant,
For they go to sleep in their little beds
With their tv's all on.

She shakes her head and tells herself
That though her gene is recessive,
It would prove fittest in the survival,
In case of cataclysm,

If there was no more electricity,
No more sport scores scrolling,
No more canned laughter,
To insult the intelligence of humanity
And dull them off to sleep.

-jenn

Triple Negative

There's no use in crying over spilt milk,
But cussin,
Now that does some good,
Because accidents hanker
To verbal aggression,
And dawgs tend to stay outta the kitchen
When you're callin em what they are.

I once heard a tv preacher say,
"You can be pitiful or you can be powerful,
But you can't be both."
But I think that spilt milk is a sign,
An omen for modern day haruspex,
And it says, "Power is pitiful,
So do whatever you want,
And say whatever you need to hear,
Because might not nobody else say it for you, nohow!

-jenn