Some humans captured monkeys from the jungle,
Trained them to fetch beer and cigarettes,
Put them in silly, costume jewelry
And ill fitting coveralls.
Some, they put in frocks with stoles
And trained them to hold high sanctuary,
And then one day, the humans went away,
And never did they return.

And now the monkeys reign in the courts,
And sit in the seats at the city council,
And some recline in worn out La-Z-Boys.

And they all keep doing
The things they've always done,
And none of them ever bother to ask, "Why?"

-jenn

She lacked a daisy,
And for the want of a flower the chain was lost.
Thus she had nothing to pin in her auburn hair.
Drony, she walked the field alone.
She didn't want to go
To the ball, to the fair
With only repetitious, uninteresting
Things to say, and wear.
Alas, alack, and a lad undone,
A field of green clover danced in the wind,
And her, sentimentally woebegone.

-jenn

I saw a white horse and an eagle fly on my way home.
I saw redbud trees and baby green leaves,
But I still don't feel anything.
I mourn.

Are you dead, or are you gone?
Does it matter either way?
Is it night or is it day?
Or just the cold gray of another dawn?
I mourn.

I could rend my hair and roll in ashes,
But I'd rather shave your head and sackcloth you.
And there's no telling what I would do to you
If only I could find you.
Where have you gone?

And so I mourn.

-jenn

Tattooed on a flap behind my left knee
Is a set of owner's instructions,
And since I can only read them
In a mirror,
I wondered if Leonardo wrote them.

I've also seen strange dotted lines
That show sometimes,
And others not,
And once I thought I saw the words,
"Do not fill past here."

And I don't know if anyone else
Has ever noticed them, but you.
No one bothered to read them.
And maybe I shouldn't have either,
For they referred me to an artist signature
Scrawled across my heel,
(It wasn't Leonardo.)
And just below it
An expiration date
That's already passed.

- jenn

I had the thought going up the stairs
That life had caught me unawares.
I'd been offered the job
And taken the call
While lying on the beach.

I didn't think about going home
And putting on my office plume
I'd just headed in.

And only as I reached the stairs
Did I think of my unkempt garb,
A turquoise bikini top
And maroon cutoffs.

Many thoughts just then.
All the things that small hearted "friends"
And family had said over the years
Slumped me.

But in one second I threw that off
And squared my shoulders,
Lifted my chin,
And quoted a song,
"I'm in good shape for the shape I'm in."

I ascended into my destiny,
Happy and free
And just exactly me,
And no one else could have done
Exactly that.

-jenn

Come to my
Birthday party tomorrow.
You'll be the only one I want there.
Forget about the ribbons.
Bring me a slingshot.
I'll shoot Cupid out of the air.
We'll forget who he had picked for me,
And I'll pop whoever he had in mind for you
Right in the hiny with my peashooter,
Or with my brand new to me slingshot
That you just gave me for my birthday.

-jenn

Who will grease the wheel
That doesn't squeak?
While other rotors groan
And belabor the point of the work
And diadems are filled with lube
And elaborately taken
And eased and greased,
Quietly I'll slip the tube around,
And poised, as Circe or Minerva,
In a fashion understatement,
I'll squeeze some grease
Out for the bearing
That never deigns complain.

-jenn

A virgin writes of her sexual experience
In a high and lofty way,
But it's a delay,
A filibuster,
A green stone wall,
An innocent nude
Awash in a chiffon duster,
Making an in-adept judgment call.
Poor thing.

But someday she'll know,
If she can be unschooled,
Which are, and are not
The made up rules of love,
And then she'll stand impressed,
As sea breezes blow
On a canvas of Monet,
And be aware completely,
And never bother to write
Or to dare say anything
About the unspeakable tangents
Of carnal knowledge.

-jenn

A man
A dark history
Loves a rich mystery
A deep abyss
He can try
To get to the bottom of

He swims in the night waters
The high tide waters
He's a fresh water river otter
In the streams
And a salt water trout
And he walks on the sands when the tide rolls out
To see what's left

Rich leather
All weather tires
A hint of tobacco
From a fragrant pipe
Coffee and chocolate and
Cinnamon Aramis
My favorite
And he's delving
To strive to the bottom of it all

-jenn

Everything's budding except the oaks.
Everything's gushing and blushing
And cries, "Oh my!"
To the false blue sky of early spring.
But the oaks are native
And understand how the latent sting
Of winter's frost lingers
Sometimes long after the equinox.

The oaks aren't impressed
With the trends of the best dressed,
With the tresses of peach and apricot
That spring premature,
Just in time for the Easter Spell.
The oaks' roots run well and deep below
And keep them from following
False idols, like the sun,
And false nature,
Like anyone who blows and goes
On and on about nothing.

So the oaks smile and nod
And drift back to sleep,
Until something real
Comes to wake them from all the dormant hype.

-jenn

We feel sorry for Aurelio
Because he takes a bath in the irrigation pond in the evening,
And heats his home-made tortillas
Over an open burner
On an antique stove.
In the morning after his breakfast,
He'll pack himself two bean burritos
And set them at the end of a row
And hoe peanuts til lunchtime.
Then he'll eat his burritos and never have an ounce of gastric pain.
He'll drink water right out of the irrigation spigot,
And hoe peanuts til sundown,
Then go, and bathe in the pond again.

He lies down at night in an old house
Nestled between two groves of live oaks
Along a fence line
Between two 60 acre pastures
Of coastal Bermuda and Love grass.
He'll fall asleep in a bed beside a wide open window
With a cool dry breeze blowing over his clean sheet,
And the sounds of the night birds chirping
And some tunes on his transistor radio.

And we feel sorry for him,
But he has six children in Mexico.
The oldest is seventeen and pregnant
With the first of his many grandchildren.

We have two middle aged children,
And it looks like our DNA will die out with us.

-jenn

I don't know how the wind can blow all day and not get tired.
It must be driven by some furious witch
Whose lover spurned her
Over a football game,
Or someone at the mall who told her she was getting fat.
Witches are like that.

Alas, the wind has died at dusk,
And no one mourned,
But several peeked out to see
If it was truly dead.

We can thank god for this
Catastrophe averted.
He must have gone and visited
The witch and somehow assured her
That her beauty and her style we're quite intact.
For I saw her smile,
Just as the sun had begun to set.

-jenn

My doctor comes and sits on the side of my bed.
He doesn't chide me with words such as,
"Physician, heal thyself."
He pulls his knees up
And curls his forearms in,
And like a sphinx,
He stares at me and squints.

And he purrs.

The sweet sound of a happy purr!
The buzz that penetrates my eyes, as well as ears, into my brain,
Untangles knots of thoughts that don't belong,
And massages the sore muscles
Of my conscious mind.
The matter relaxes just a little bit,
Enough to release my guilt and worried dread,
And I am free to love and live again.

I pay him, smiling,
By scratching his chin
And in between his pointed ears
On top of his furry head.

-jenn

Language is mathmatical,
Predictable.
Even as liquidity can be prescribed
And described as easily
As a course in fluids,
Equations and their derivations!
Take the second, the third,
To hear what our pronunciations
Will sound like in a couple of generations.
Reverse them, back, back again,
And find our English word
In Old High Norse. Back again,
And finally you will get the same word
In Proto-Indo European.

How do you like that?
You , who hate math, and give your preference
To letters and literature?
That embedded in all your precious books,
In the grammars you hold so dear,
In the precocious words themselves
And what you consider
Proper enunciation,
A tapestry of logarithm, calculus,
And binary code
Holding all of your thoughts together.

And you thought you were just talking!

-jenn

A Liberian librarian came to town
And told me it would all be burned to the ground
In a matter of days, and I would be saved
Because I had "liked"
Some of her stuff on Facebook.
I suddenly knew how Rahab felt
When she saw the hand
That she had been dealt was full of aces,
And that even a harlot in the strangest of places
Could take a scarlet thread
And show all the soldiers
Just what a wonderful thing
Salvation could be.

"Scandal!" You say? "Slander! Libel!"
Well, it's all right there on page twelve of your Bible,
Or if it's King James, page 23.

-jenn

Be patient with your honey, please.
Remember bees don't have to squeeze
The honey from the honey comb,
And honey isn't made to bruise,
Or for some bourgeoisie
Industrial use.
Honey is not accustomed to being pushed around.

But bees come face to face
To retrieve their honey,
And embrace it with open arms,
And carry it over the threshold
To the chamber where its charms
Will be consumed as angels sing,
"Here Comes The Groom!"
To the tune of the standard,
"Here Comes The Bride,"
With a chorus buzzing softly alongside, chanting, chanting,
"Hail To The Queen!"

-jenn

A rose needs dirt
And water
And birds to come
And perch and flutter
In the lower sturdier branches.
They try to avoid the thorns.
The rose needs wind
To come and blow
Her scent around
To show the world
The good things that she is up to.

But I dont need anything today,
But you,
To come and breathe for me,
And speak
Sweet loving words into my ear
To cheer me
And to suggest
Some things I might be up to.

-jenn