I used to be so down on myself,

Until I saw myself in you,

How true you are,

How fresh and new,

How beautiful,

How full of life

And wild ideas.

Your eyes shine,

Your wide grin,

Your dirty face,

The bruises on your shins

From climbing trees,

The scabby knees,

The suntanned arms,

The charming way

You disarm me,

Just before you play 

A trick on me or tell a  joke,

Or poke me in the ribs.

How lucky I am to be your Mom!

You bring me home

To my own heart,

Where I start to understand

The grand designs

Of this great cosmic comedy.

To be a happy child

Like you,

To be a happy child

Like me,

Is exactly the way the world should be

Every day.

-jenn

I yam what I yam.

I have one rut and I stay in it.

I plow and plant and gather the seeds,

And plow and plant them over again.

I eat. I sleep. I repeat

Sweet nothings in your ear.

I’m growing strangely tuberific,

Completely orange on the inside.

I don’t have to try and be sweet.

I find I truly am.

They say, “You are what you eat.”

Maybe you are what you war.

But as for me, 

I yam what I yam.

-jenn 

In the miracle of existence,

Something sweet.

No matter what the picture 

Of ‘family’ may be that you hold,

Deep in your mind’s memory,

A perfect situation exists 

In Nature, that allows

For life to come into being.

You, Me, We... are the miracle,

The miracle of existence.

If at any time I’m drawn to you,

It is due to a reverence

Of the mothering spirit 

That quickened you

And made you draw first breath,

The mothering sustenance

That nourishes your life

Until you close your eyes in death,

The existential mothering I see

Burning in your eyes

With fire,

With wild ideas that may, or may not,

Even be fully yet aware

Of what a miracle it is

That you and I are here

In the everyday natural miracle,

The miracle of existence.

-jenn

I went down and tried

To check myself into jail

Because I was hungry,

But they told me

I hadn’t committed a crime.

And I told them it was a crime to go hungry,

But they said no.

And so I went to Walmart and stole a protein bar,

And management called security,

And had me arrested for shoplifting.

So now I’m in jail,

Found guilty,

Of all of the above.

-jenn

The policeman pulled me over

For not wearing a mask.

He asked why I did not feel the need for protection.

I sat thinking without saying anything, yet.

Is it that I don’t believe there’s a problem?

Or that I don’t see a mask as a solution?

But before I could say a word,

He grabbed me by both feet at once and jerked me around,

“Answer ME!” he demanded, then, he

Pulled up my skirt and raped me.

And when he was done,

He wiped the slobber from his mouth,

With his arm, zipped up his pants and said,

It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t seen a woman’s face in so long

That he couldn’t control himself.

But you know that the prophets say,

Lawlessness always follows 

In the wake of a pandemic,

Even a fake one.

-jenn

Have I written all the poems

I’ve had in my head?

They’ve unraveled like thread

Til they’re done,

But then I fall asleep and dream

And another ball of yarn emerges

On the scene.

I reach to take it back

To reality with me

And only catch the end,

But I begin to pull it

To me as I wake,

And little bits of rhymes shake out

Upon my lap.

Sometimes one mysterious letter,

Like an X,

Falls in, unfettered from the string,

And when I read the message

Between the lines,

It spells to me,

“The dream IS the reality.

Keep dreaming and keep believing 

In Poetry.”

-jenn

I’ve been granted three wishes,

And one of them was

To go back and redo jr.high school,

Knowing what I know now.

I’m going to ask some of them

That like to see

Such violent movies on tv,

If they like to watch people die of cancer, too?

And to the haters that scoff

Their jealous hearts out

Toward the ones who want 

To love others and get along,

I’m going to sing them the song

About the elephant 

That went for a walk,

And how the randy monkey saw her,

And just as he jumped on her behind

And started going at her as best he could,

She happened to stepped on a thorny bush

And moaned in pain.

And as the prideful monkey yelled,

“Suffer, Bitch!”

She twitched her tail

And flung him forty feet

Back into the trees.

But as I think of these terrible things,

I wonder why I would waste a wish

On going back to something as awful

As the jr. high experience truly was,

When I can just sing to the entire planet,

The song about an elephant, now.

-jenn