It wouldn’t do me any good
To carry money around.
I’d only give it to the bums that stay
On 22nd and Grand by Trosper Park.
I see the winter landscape by the pond.
Over toward the water’s edge,
Ice is starting to form.
Some of the cattail grass is turning brown,
And some is not,
But nothing here is richer,
Nothing poorer.
-jenn
Something broke me down.
The world crashed in
Through the broken lens
Of my Kaleidoscope.
Tears damned up for years fell through
In sorrow and in rapture.
The blues and scarlet-crimson hues,
The violet, ultra-ohhhhh so,
The vermillion-pinks, don’t you know!
The yellows, that rained,
Like broken stained glass window panes,
The pangs of love and joy I knew,
When, just last night, beneath the waning moon,
I heard him call me “Baby.”
-jenn
How these aloe infused socks
Came to be made in China went as this:
The socks were made and then infused as such,
In that their mothers’ feet were oiled
And the socks put on their feet,
And thus, they sat or walked about
Or slept or stood with these socks on
And oiled, but good, until the socks were steeped
In the four postures of the zen mothers.
And then the socks were brightened, like teeth,
And packaged and sent around the world,
Bought and sold, and worn by you and me.
And while some will not agree that this is good,
And don’t want to be sold pre-worn socks
Of any kind, may I remind you
Of the mother principle,
Which lasts a very long time?
And might I say one thing more,
How great it is for mothers with sore feet
To have them rubbed and oiled every couple of weeks
And get paid for it?
-jenn
They’ve put me in a dungeon
And demanded that I spin gold out of straw.
Someone told them that I could.
But I don’t know how.
I love windows,
And there are none in here.
But slowly I begin to twist,
To make a mountain out of my molehill.
My soul protracts images from the walls of my prison cell,
The stories that the shadows tell,
The characters, their roles.
I pull the rays of an unseen sun into my heart.
I’m happy here.
And now the straw emits a light
So attractive.
It drags my love right into its core,
And as I stand, and turn, and dance,
And pull it so gently,
Somehow I see, I’m drawing out its gold.
-jenn
He likes being held
Like a hostage
And on snowy Christmas Day.
He likes the notion
Deep in his mind, that
Maybe he can’t get away
This time.
Maybe the spirit of something past has him.
Maybe, without a care,
Or a chamber pot to piss in,
He has something NOW after all,
This something that has him.
So Merry Christmas, Lover.
Your promises are vain.
But I’ve told you
I have something for you.
So hold me to it,
For that’s not a promise,
But only a threat,
Like clouds without rain
Or smoke without fire.
Your gun’s for hire,
But I only kill for fun,
And only ever on Christmas Day.
So which of us is better or worse?
Who can say?
And which of us
Will make the naughty list,
If it were written, today?
Who, the nice?
-jenn
A songbird calls happily out to me,
“I see you! I see you! I see you!”
The bird did something I couldn’t do.
It found me in my natural state,
Un-pretensed out in my orchard,
And now I must go and find that bird,
To find out what it heard me saying,
Heard me praying for.
My mind wanders after it.
The morning is cool,
But no wind blows.
So many various birds I hear,
Their coos and chirps and melodious calls.
Somewhere out there, quietly,
One warbler hides,
Or maybe he is in plain sight,
But has changed his tune
To disguise himself?
I wander on in search of it
Through the mysterious trees.
Lulled by the peaceful, charming ways,
Life draws me along,
Page after page,
Through this daydream.
-jenn
