Life is an abusive relationship
That never ends well.
It's controlling in its mechanism,
Isolating you from the start
And dropping you out of a Fallopian tube
To be impregnated by something else,
Changing you constantly
So that you never feel quite yourself again,
Or ever at home.

Sometimes when we're very young,
(Too young to know it)
We are happy.
But we wake from youth to find,
We're in the grip of something else.
We dangle over a precipice of sickness and disease
And an awareness of the futility
That pervades much.

We can be persuaded
Easily
That if we were ever free from
Our espousal,
We would never make
The mistake again
And be born twice.

-jenn

Nature breaks into applause
As the first spring thaws occur.
The creeks begin to run again.
The first clear droplets on the rocks
Below clap their tenuous approval
And wait for the rest
To come say, "Yes,
That was a very good show."

One bird chirps out a cat call
For the starlet whose barely dressed.
Her nakedness is winter's strange disguise,
But the eyes will barely know
As she starts to show,
Pregnant by spring
And the large green of summer
Will cover the secret birth.

But by next year stark cheekbones appear,
And the cold will drop her.
But nothing will ever stop her.
No redress for those who might question
Her eternal virgin-ness,
Or that the show must go on.

-jenn

I kicked a rock,
And the earth moved,
A star fell,
And one day was lost from the calendar forever.
1200 people were cured of cancer.
Membranes and tissue and derma regrew
Like the skin of a newborn child.

The medicine wheel must be realigned
From time to time.
So I drum to know without knowing.
So that even when I stumble
In my humanness,
And trip and stub my toe
And kick a rock,
It will somehow be the right one.

-jenn

It's not right to disagree
With someone you care about.
You won't change their mind.
Their decision
Will be their decision
Until they find
The information they need
To think of the thing in a new way.

But you will make an enemy,
Instead of the friend
You might need someday.

And besides,
They might be right.

-jenn

I ask him to dance,
And he says no.
So I shrug and go
About my business.
Later I ask if he wants some punch,
And he shakes his head with a look of disgust.
He sits like a stone,
A boundary marker,
Without so much as a rune
Or cartouche
To tell what he might be.
Finally he is on his feet
And shuffles them unenthusiastically
Out with me to the middle of the dance floor,
Where, untroubled, he places them squarely
On to the tops of mine
And says, "Well go ahead, and dance."

(Maybe I shouldn't have volunteered
To be chaperone at my son's high school prom.)

-jenn

The moon moves across the sky tonight,
Slowly, but predestined.
It will dance with its star this dusk,
Just like it did last night
And the night before.
Maybe a little farther apart,
Maybe a little closer,
But their season to dance is here,
And dance they will, away.

Then someday morning finds the moon
Still going down,
And sometimes the moon will stay
All day and never dance with anyone.
But his sulks and pouts are appointed,
And maybe, so are mine.

-jenn

In that time of day
When the world turns down,
And I stand with barely anything
Holding me here to the earth,
I dangle over a sea of space.
My hair stands on end,
Just like it did when I hung by my knees
On the monkey bars in1972.

And like a piece of patchwork quilt
That's come unpatched,
And blows about a vacant house
With all the windows blank, knocked out,
I bang softly into walls
And legs of sofas long forsaken,
And cry without making a sound
Or a tear.

-jenn

Truth only lies in questions,
Riddles and silly rhymes.
Clocks that keep faulty time
Keep secrets they can't tell.
Reality isn't atomic,
But arrives in bottles on waves
That swell and burst
On rocky shores where no one goes.

The truth doesn't come in answers that you hear
From somewhere else outside your outer ear.
But as the question poses,
A sudden flash inside your heart
Reveals the fact
That your soul knows,
And you have no need
Of being told.

-jenn