And this is why one shouldn't stand under a tree in a thunderstorm:
Because the thunderpeal will release one thousand acorns
From their shells and they will fall upon your head,
And then the squirrels will come and make a nest up in your hair,
And being the kind and passive soul you are,
You will stand a lifetime there,
So as not to disturb the squirrels,
And people will mistake you for statue.
You will live your life ignored as part of the beautiful scenery.

Better just keep walking through the rain.
Getting soaked and being cold might be worth the pain
Of pneumonia, or defy the odds
And get yourself lightning struck.
"Might be worth it," I can hear you say
In your sweet self deprecating way.
You can tell yourself that lead doesn't attract it.
Or maybe knowing you,
You're much like me, and
You'd rather be remembered as a statue.

-jenn

The screen door has popped ajar
And saws back and forth like a rosined bow
Droning on and on and over again
Slow across that one string.
I guess the other strings are broken,
Or maybe one is out of tune,
But someone has given the night a fiddle
And three lessons to get back at me.

I'm not sure what I did this time
To warrant such a nasty revenge,
And such a creepy one,
But as I lie here in the night,
The dark has been supplied a soundtrack,
A song of witches mocking me
And the pain in my achin back.

They say that even Jimi Hendrix
Started out on a ukele that only had one string.
So why should I begrudge the night
Its practice times, it's small beginnings?
Who knows, in time, what tunes the night may sing?
If I only could, I would, buy the night a second hand guitar,
And a tuner and see what he might do with that?

Ah but a cosmic amp awaits me somewhere,
A distorted moonbeam plied with reverb,
A little sleep between the sawing,
Maybe time for one dream.
The night dreams too while wide awake,
A hot fiddle breakdown,
Taking the stage at the grand old opry,
Taking the grand applause,
Taking a bow and pointing his bow
Out into the audience,
Acknowledging that one special person
Who made it all possible.


Who knows?
Maybe I'm the one?
Maybe when he gets real good,
We could sit out there on the back porch
With that old screen door blowing,
And he could play me a little Bonaparte 'a Retreat?

-jenn

Don't try to walk with the rock in your shoe.
Stop for a minute and try to understand
What the rock is doing to you
And why.
Justify yourself to the rock
And try to walk a little further.

Tell yourself it's just a pebble
And that you're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Walk on through your pain.
Justify yourself again to the rock.
Tell it all the reasons why you're out walking.
See if it makes any sense to the pebble.

Tomorrow all your reasons will be in vain,
For you won't bother to take your walk.
You'll be in pain.
Stone bruise on the heel of your heart and the heart of your heel.
You will feel so strange
And won't know why.
Is it just your foot that wants to die
Or is it your soul,
Your whole way of being?

Or you could stop and take that rock out of your shoe,
Throw it as far away from you as you possibly can.

-jenn

What is there to talk about?
Nothing exists except this moment,
Milliseconds strung together like pearls
On a rope of sand.
They stream behind me now,
Flying back like my hair
As I breeze into the great unknown,
The last and only frontier--
The future.

-jenn

It's good to be upside down,
An anti-gravity effect.
Work to pull your smile up
Into a frown.
Let your blood rush
Out of your feet,
Down, into your head.
Exert, so you can think
More clearly
Of what is right,
What is wrong.

If you can't make yourself
Invert,
You should allow someone
To shake you down!
String you up by your toes
And rattle the spare change
Out of your hide.
See what you've really got inside,
What you're made of.
Do you have one dream left,
Folded up in your pocket?
What are you afraid of?
That something true
Might bubble up or down out of you?
Or that it might only pass
Like gas?

If you cartwheel now
You might let go
Of the why's, the how's, the who's,
And get a grip on you.
You could love something so unique and kind.
Find something beautiful
And so new
From a different point of view,
From some great unexplored cavernous corner
Of your own mind.

-jenn

I'm grazing my way to a spring fed creek
Through a green and sunlit meadow.
I stop in the shade and stretch my neck
To nibble a grainy pear.
And after I've had a drink,
I flop in the wet sand at the bend
And wallow in the cool mud
I find there.

And tonight I will gallop
Through your mind
And rear up on my hind feet
And come down hard
On the floor boards under your bed posts,
And rattle your window panes.

But tomorrow, when the sun comes up,
None of it will matter,
And you can wipe me from your mind
Like one tear from your eyes.
Forget the thunder,
But maybe you can think of me
Sometime, when it rains.

-jenn

I could age twenty years in a day
With a good haircut,
Thirty with a bad one.
I wouldn't look like an old lady any more,
I could look like a little old man.
And if I stopped to shop at Steinmart,
I could fly with the hairless and hipless,
And smell like old money
And Botox and spray-on tan.
But I think I'll just dare to walk
Out into the elements,
Without any sunscreen,
Without a headband,
Hatless, and exposed
To the mysteries of a yellow sun
That fades my clothes
And darkens my native skin.

And if I'm lucky, my mind will stray
Like my hair,
And I will fly away to that place
Where I lose all consciousness of my self,
And yet gain its keen awareness,
For there, in the desert of my own soul,
My face will bloom like a cactus flower,
And I will have peace.

-jenn