June bugs will wear white sandals after Labor Day.
They will even arrive in May,
Rather than fashionably late in June,
As god intended.
They’re rather gauche and lacking grace.
But this one of mine
Has a particular shine I love,
So I forgive.
“Live and let live,” say I,
Even if I have to dig him out of the dog’s water dish
Every day.
-jenn
This is Oklahoma.
People want to know:
Is it a red state?
Or is it blue?
Do we allow protests?
Who do we worship?
But this is Oklahoma
In the morning,
When it rains on the Sunflowers,
And birds sing.
And lightning lights the morning sky,
And thunder rumbles through what’s left
Of the sultry night,
And you would almost think you were in Kansas
Or Arkansas,
Or Texas if you could get beyond
The red Red River.
But this Oklahoma,
This is the world,
The beautiful planet that we call earth.
This is me
Standing in
The invisible rainbow
That will never be seen
By those who only want to see with their eyes,
And label the names of what color and size everything is.
And this is you,
Basking in the infrared and ultraviolet
And the bluest blue
That happens when
It rains on sunflowers in the morning in Oklahoma,
As the world spins through a spiraling galaxy
Of light and dark matter,
With birdsong sweet,
And the smattering clatter
Of the Lord’s percussion,
More thunder for us.
You want to know what Oklahoma is?
This is Oklahoma.
-jenn
These little chinks in my armor
Are called stretch marks.
They’re caused when something new begins to grow
Very quickly inside of you.
Something grew and grew and grew,
So much so, my tegument gave in
And stretched almost to breaking point.
These little chinks in my armor
Seem like imperfections of my skin,
But I see them as new beginnings,
Proof beyond any birth certificate,
That my body is a place where the miraculous can happen,
And it did.
If I eat this banana and it becomes me,
That should be enough
To see that we have something magic happening
In each and every one of us.
But I ate a banana and it became you,
My child.
You,
Who have my eyes and hair,
My sideways glances
And faraway stares
And dreams
From other dimensions.
I feel.
And in this world
So fake and pseudo fair,
I seem overgrown with weeds and needs and stretch marks,
Which may, in truth,
Be the only things about me that are real.
But behold, Renaissance is still present in my heart.
It beats,
And if I can strengthen those around me
By setting an example of self-improvement
And practice self-correction before the very eyes of my children,
We will, too.
Great progress and good fortune are available for me.
It’s all available for you,
For everything…
As well as for these little chinks in my armor.
-jenn
It’s dicey,
But it’s very real,
And without words,
The way I feel
Is:
So good it’s scares me.
And when the curtains are raised tomorrow
With the sun,
Will anyone be in the auditorium
To watch the play?
It doesn’t matter.
For I am here,
And stand on the banks of a silent soliloquy,
And if I move my mouth
As others try to turn the volume up or down or off,
I will be calm and happy and satisfied with my own being,
And never will I scoff at you,
Or myself, or anyone who
Attempts to live according to his or her true nature.
-jenn
With a tremulous hand,
The artist penned
The stained glass patterns of the butterfly,
But each painful stroke
Gave definitive personality
To the multicolored wings.
Some who observed the artistic creation criticized,
But the maker knew
That everything would be beautiful.
And it was not until the butterfly flew
That others saw:
The flaws were part of the great design.
-jenn
I find there’s something a bit degrading about putting on makeup
The subtle message we send to ourselves that says
We’re not enough
More is needed
Something so sinister about dyeing our hair
Something so subtle
The clothes we wear
The smiles we try on for size
But they’re too big
Too small
Our faces have to pay
The price for it all
Sincerity
Is somewhere underneath
Buried with our hopes and dreams
That we could be not loved
Not appreciated
But just accepted
For who we are
-jenn
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
