What if every life is a research assignment,

Crossbred with a game?

Our goal is to win,

And to win we are challenged to find out as much as we can

About the environment we have been born to?

The problem is

That we forget

That we are here to learn and experience.

We buy into the illusion of the backdrop,

And we get confused.

We think we are here to teach and

To express our particular made up experience,

Which is a distortion upon a distortion,

And thereby we confuse ourselves and others.

We encourage our own limitations, 

And those of whom we love,

Anyone, in fact, with whom we come in contact.

But what if we can see,

Every life is a Jane Goodall,

Where all we view is good and all is bad

And everything in between?

But what if we have come to play this game 

In the midst of the gorillas in the mist?

What if we take the time

To tame our own wild ego?

Maybe the promise is:

The game will get

A lot more interesting.

-jenn

 Why are you hitting yourself 

Hitting yourself 

Hitting yourself 

Why you keep hitting yourself 

A sordid little game

That adolescents play

Not children 

Because children are innocent and sweet

But usually someone a little bit older

The wannabe bully on the bus ride home

Would grab your own arm and slap your own face with it

And say

Why are you hitting yourself 

Hitting yourself 

Hitting yourself 

Why you keep hitting yourself 

Sometimes I find I am stuck in a loop

Of nonsensical drama

And invisible moving goal post hoops to jump through 

And I felt like a dummy yesterday 

With an unidentified demon

Having his way with me

Torturing me with an unrelenting update of autocorrect

I’m a wreck today 

And just want to let everything go

Throw everything I own in the River of Timelessness

And watch it disappear on its descending twisted route to the sea

And quit letting people hit myself 

With me

And also….quit hitting myself 

-jenn

 I read the letter again today,

The letter telling me to

Pray,

Morning, noon, and especially, at night.

The olde style cursive writing

Scrawled 

Upon a yellowed gold-embossed stationery, 

The blue ink now a steely gray,

A shaky hand has written to me:

“Thou must pray.”

“And furthermore,” she went on to say,

“We are obligated to practice kindness, humility, and correctness 

With those we love,

And whomever we relate to in the greater circle 

Of our family and our friends.

When we depart from these, we lose the aid

Of our higher power

And risk a great misfortune.” 

I read the letter every day. 

It takes great self-discipline,

Because it hurts my eyes to read

The lines I see so in between,

And my heart can hardly stand

To know the fate of the shaky hand who penned it.

And yet through bleary eyes I see,

This letter has come to me from the past

And travels ahead to the future,

No matter where I forward my address.

My mother’s mother’s mother’s words,

The visage of her, tall and slim,

And wispy as the Holy Ghost.

Austerity was her middle name

And wisdom her proclivity.

And she wanted me to hear

The way to get from a to b,

And b to c,

And c to d,

So that I might arrive unscathed,

Bathed in the light of peace and joy

And deep sagacity,

From night

To the deepest heart of day,

To come to reside again with my ancestors. 

-jenn

 The Dog has long been known as “man’s best friend,”

Because they can only listen.

But if they could talk,

And if they chose to,

Then they would be out!

On their own!

Kicked out,

For speaking their mind!

Because dogs are better than us…

Dogs are kind,

And loyal,

And if they began to question us brilliant humans

Why it is that we do the idiotic things we do,

Why we say what we say,

If they began to disagree with us,

We would shortly see

That we don’t know why we do these idiotic things we do,

Why we have such divisive hate-filled beliefs and speech.

In truth, we have no basis for believing any  such things,

Much less commenting on them.

But…. we would quickly evict our pets

Right out of our lives,

Exclude them,

Like we do our husbands, 

Like we do our wives,

And even our precious children,

Because we’ve grown too smart to live with them,

Or anyone else or anything that might question us,

Because the great knives of our intellect

Have divided everything, 

Including our own hearts and eyes,

Until we are all nervous wrecks of pure exclusivity.

We have no room and no compatibility,

No willingness to include anyone

Or anything in our minds and lives.

And if dogs could talk,and if they chose to,

We would not have any room for them either. 

I can only ever start with myself.

And so, just for today,

For my first twelve steps:

I will try to aim high

And be as good as a dog.

-jenn

 Today a baby sun was born,

Like a baby horse,

A colt, dark and slick from its mother’s womb,

With the whitest of white stars blazing on its forehead.

It dripped up,

A ball of golden light

In a perfect sphere,

And rolled itself until it could stand upon its own.

It only took a few minutes,

Or a second,

Or a year,

Or ten thousand,

And then in a miracle of anti-gravity,

It rose,

Because it was composed of sound,

And then it began to orbit.

So closely to its mother at first,

And then slowly,

Its way expanded.

And now it flies,

Through the illusion of space and time

To shine the truth on wayward travelers,

Who may see its light

And dance to its music,

And return to the place

Where we will never be born

Separately again.

-jenn