I read the books of a dead man,
And little did I know
That he lived right next-door to me,
And while he was alive,
I could've gone right over
And had tea with him
And talked about these things.

I am in love with his books
Because I see his heart shine through,
And maybe I would have been in love with him,
And maybe it's true,
That he could have loved the girl next-door,
And maybe he did.
I'll never know.

I wonder, tho, if I should go
And meet the new ones moving in,
The neighbors, that is.

-jenn

I've done everything I wanted to do today,
Except the dishes,
And I didn't want to do them, anyway,
And you,
I didn't do you, properly.
But I sure wanted to.

If the best laid plans
Of mice and men
Lead to the best lived lives---
The best laid husbands,
The best laid wives,
And if the road to hell is paved
With good intentions,
Then here, today, somewhere between
My not so pure intentions
And my dreams of perfect peace
And saturation,
I stand, paved with maturation
And grace
And love
And desire for you.

-jenn

I heard a plaintiff poet read
A poem she'd written
Where she repeated the title frequently,
"I'm not a machine."

"I'm not a machine," she'd say,
And look out at the audience
With a far-a-way look on her face.
Her shoulders would drop
Every time she said it,
As if she almost could herself believe it,
If she could but utter it one more time in Latin.

But her poem didn't rhyme,
And there wasn't any magic fairy dust
To sprinkle on her rusted gears,
Or a velveteen way to give her any skin,
Or a wizard behind a thin curtain
To give her any soul.

But good for her, I thought,
With all her words and all her themes.
She's not a machine,
But I am.
I can wake every day and not give a damn
About doing good or doing harm.

But give me farms to cultivate!
Cotton to bale! Peanuts to combine!
My mechanical arm never tires,
It only needs more grease,
Hydraulic fluid and baling wire,
A fine crease down the center of my metal pants
To winnow away the chaff.

I can laugh now,
But I was once like her--
A machine,
But not sure
What thing it was I was meant to do.

Someday she will be like me.
She'll wake, or sleep,
I don't remember which I did
To turn the switch,
To on,
Or, it dawns on me as I sit idle,
Waiting for the farmer's bridle
To come and up the throttle.
Then I will sputter and cough
And wonder if I may have turned me off, instead?

-jenn

With a head like a light bulb
And almost as bright,
Kokopeli, the trickster, gives ideas to institutions.
He can tell them anything.
He knows they'll never do anything with it,
Including, but not limited to,
Passing it on to someone else
Who might actually develop it themselves,
For the good of all humankind.

But for the prophets,
Those who go in search of the new heavens
For the reality that needs to be now,
Be assured, the New Jerusalem will kill them, too,
Long before they could show us the way,
But not before the idea can be stolen
And given away to the money changers.

-jenn

The slow swells and falls of the ocean lull me.
The rhythmic vision and the corresponding sounds
Put me into hypnotic suggestion.
My universe abounds
As my soul is duped again.

I buy the illusion that the ocean is just one big harmless thing.
I've traded my awareness
Of the cohesive nature and the polarity of water’s molecules,
When everyone knows
You can drown in three drops of water.
Or is that three inches?

I'm both sine and cosine.
I am wonder and doubt,
Logarithms that pass back and forth
And meet one another, cresting and falling.
I meet myself coming and going,
As I wade in without a care.

-jenn

When you get that shoe horn just right
And your foot bloops nicely into that tight fitting shoe
Then you know how good it feels to put your shoes on.

And, you know even better how good it'll feel,
To take em off.

-jenn

I'm wearing a string of former irritations.
I will not cast them
To the swine.
 I don't wear them to look good for the public.
I like how they feel
On this skin of mine.
I wear these pears for me.

I wear these pearls to remind me
That my former irritations
Don't define
Who I am
Or where I'm going.
I have the power to re-define.
I wear these pearls for me.

Oh grain of sand
Stuck in the oysters craw
You begin as an irritation
But as natural as the law of nature
You become a pearl
I wear these pearls for me

I wear these pearls as a princess rotary,
A string of answered prayers,
A string of victories and resolutions,
A sign of future resolutions,
Irritations overcome,
I wear these pearls for me.

-jenn