This sprawling rose was never pruned.
Some of its branches, heavy on the ground
With winter blooms, drape as a marvel,
A wonder to the eye, while other boughs
Diverge unto the sky in resplendent praise
Of love and life and invincible majesty.

She laughs at her haters and those who warned
Of doom if she wasn't properly tamed
And pruned, for she has grown
Into a valiant tree,
Yes, truly a marvel, a wonder, a sign,
A thing of beauty, an inspiration for any open mind.

-jenn

This time of year, the days are all downhill
And run together.
My soul is lightly tethered to the wind.
My mind begins to blow.
I'm amazed at various scenes,
And though I know
I've been here all along,
Like the leaves, I've fallen,
Scattered my memories about like ashes,
Seen flashes of truth from the future and the past,
And visions of things that might have been
Or still could be,
If I would only ask.

-jenn

Progenitors these days pave the way
For us to learn all about our DNA
And all that it prescribes.
We sit alone in the doctor's chair,
Filling out the questionnaire.
We can say thanks
In all those places where it says
"Have you or anyone in your family ever had 'fill-in the blank.'"
We can also feel their doom,
Write our names up on their tombs with them,
For they feel the very same way,
If only their pride would let them say it.
If only ours would let us.
But the generation gap has closed,
And our children will be the ones
To let us know,
And that will get us
Right in the dignity.

-jenn

We are genetically modifying ourselves.
Soon we will be barren and seedless,
Bigger, but not juicier,
More colorful, albeit, more plastic-ier looking,
Not good for anything but breathing up a lot more air.
And who, or what, will benefit from that?
Only the trees, whose plot this all may be anyway.

-jenn

Sometimes truth doesn't set you free,
It just makes you old,
And in your ancient wisdom
You sit, with a cold reality,
A realization of yourself
As you truly are.

But in your humble brokenness,
A better reality breaks
Over your head, like an egg,
Into your mind, like morning's sweet day.
And in that beautiful, quiet moment,
A pearl is cast to you,
For you are no longer a swine,
Your heart's desire is known,
You've come fully around,
And then you see,
The Truth really has
Set you free after all.

-jenn

I have seen a warrior's face.
Warriors who go out for raids
And don't come back,
Or come back scathed
By what they've seen,
By what they've had to do.

And we had medicine for that,
The smoke, the stomp, the take-to-water for days
Until the heart was cleansed.
We had medicine for fear and shame,
Medicine to give you back your heart,
And help you live again.

But after that war,
Medicine stopped.
Rounded up, and no more talk
Of the Great Spirit, the principal people,
Our warriors were crippled
Unceremoniously,
And so were we.
And now, you call it PTSD,
But then, it was living catastrophe,
And it lasts
Many generations
Without the Right Medicine.

-jenn

A little gray cat sat for two hours straight
And watched the faucet drip.
It tilted its head and continued to sit and stare.
Where do all those tiny drops of water come from?
Where do all those tiny droplets go?
A strange mystery.
But the cat is smart enough to know
That when it eventually wants a drink,
Curiosity will give way,
And trust will emerge
Right there in the sink.
It will quench its thirst
By means of this enigmatic machine
That it doesn't understand.

-jenn

I gaze into a magic mirror
That magnifies the epithelials,
Every cell that makes my face,
And I can trace every line,
And every place where wrinkles will soon be.

I look at me,
And think
That every step
Along my way
I've changed.

I grew uncontrollably,
And never could adjust how tall or short I was,
How many hairs I had upon my head,
But I always recognized myself
And reckoned this state as
Better off than dead.

But someday maybe I will look
Into this mirror and see
An unrecognizable me,

And what then?

-jenn

Night comes.
Shadows take strange shapes.
Peace seems very far away,
And so does morning.
Winter nights,
So stark and long,
A bit too tranquil
And ever warning:
Something tragic this way comes.
But I learned a practical sensibility
From my son:
I sleep better with a security blanket, too.

-jenn

Dreamers dream, and lovers love,
And lovers love to dream.
Dreamers love to love themselves to sleep,
So that they might dream deep and in color,
And even in the trancelike states
Of their subconscious minds,
They can smell the jasmine.

I can smell gingerbread tonight,
And aromatic coffee on to brew,
And in my dream, so many things I ought to do,
But I hear music on the portico.
Ting-a ling, ting-a-ting tong.

I want nothing more than to dance with you
While the night is young,
And my dreams are playing a song
Just for us on the wind chimes.

-jenn

When someone holds your hand,
And let's you hold on
Until you're ready to let go,
That is the unperverted spirit
Of female originator,
That is a love that nourishes you
And lets you be your best.

When someone runs beside you,
Holding you up while you learn
To ride a bicycle,
That is the unperverted spirit
Of the masculine ancestor.
That is a love
And a pride in you
That you can never, and should not ever
Have in yourself.

And when someone comes to you
In your fear and your weakness
And becomes your refuge and your strength
This is the unpervertable principal source
And sustainer of your soul.

We need someone to hold our hands,
To love and nourish all our lives,
An alma mater.

We need someone to be proud of us,
A pater magnus.

We need a secret place
To live and move and be,
And we have one,
And you will never be denied
Again.

-jenn

You've wiped your feet so many times on me,
And not from meanness,
But from disregard.
You mistook me for a welcome mat,
Although my distinguishing characteristics
Clearly marked me as a coverlet.

You could have pulled me up
And over your head,
And dreamed beneath the eyelets of my lace,
Buried your face in me
In laughter and in tears,
Instead of wiping mud on me
For all those years.

But I've been stuck just outside the door,
The backdoor here out in the elements,
Only washed when rain comes down, and wind
Sweeps across my back to brush me off.
But maybe limbo is a better place,
A far better place to which I've come.
Safer here outside the threshold,
Than in the deep recesses of your mind.

- jenn

The sky is shy today.
It stays on the fringes close to the wall.
It walks the halls
When no one else does.
It asks to be excused, hit or miss,
Odd intermittent times the bathroom
Goes unused, so it can be alone.

The realization of her gender
Has come upon her suddenly, here at middle school.
She questions her identity and her fate.
She can't relate to any final destination,
And yet she can't relegate anymore
The spasmodic methodologies,
The onset of menses,
And months begin.

She hears ancient doxologies ring
But makes no apologies
For not singing,
For not even uttering
A single word,
As she wonders if anyone else
Has ever heard "the talk"
Exactly this way.

-jenn

Once you prove how right you are
To everyone else,
Once you've finally shown all the other people
How perfect, how smart you've lived,
I wonder if you will then consider
Proving it to yourself,
And proving it to your children
With a heart of unfeigned love?

-jenn

I'm puttin on airs!
I like to wear such light and fluffy
Feathery wares.
They're bright,
Like the flight of Quetzalcoatl
At night,
With a million stars blinking
And winking and nodding
Yes! Yes! Yes!

So come if you will,
As you are for the stars approve!
But live and let live!
And remove your critical eyes,
If need be.
Pluck them out!
For tis better for all
To enter here mauled
And maimed
Than with a bitter, resentful,
Self righteous, two-eyed,
Spiritual pride,
And ruin the sense of harmony here,
Where the clear unobstructed
Divine Childlike Mind
Offers an open channel
Of divine energy.

-jenn

At the mile marker on my walk,
A leaf-nado joined me,
A whirlwind of fallen leaves.

Gently cycling up, with a tail trailing back behind,
A fall bride, not too feminine,
But gallantly she strode
A half a block to the altar,
But there, she fell apart.

The train of her gown fell on the street.
The brightly colored leaves
That had adorned her bodice like sequins
Lay there lifelessly.
As her towering torso caved,
She, halting, dropped my hand,
And whispered with her ultimate breath,
"Stay young while you still can."

-jenn

We want a rose without its thorn
But not without its bloom.
We want a witch without her spells
But not without her broom.
We want to cherry pick our lives
And have someone attend,
Make things easy for us in front,
And clean up our mess behind.

But true roses grow on thorny brush,
And true love grows amidst real life,
With tears and laughter and ease
And strife,
But when you quiet yourself, you'll see,
The still small voice of love
Growing there with you
In the wilderness.

-jenn

They accused me of being full of my own shit,
And I asked them whose shit I should be full of
If not my own?
I don't understand this world,
And it doesn't understand me.

So my telephone doesn't ring.
My notifications don't notiffficate.
My elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.

My fog horn blows.
My fog bells ring.
But the damn fog comes anyway!
I don't understand this world,
And it doesn't understand me.

-jenn

I was chided one day for saying "balls."
Maybe I said the word too loud?
Maybe I should have said "testicles," "cajones," or "flingle-dingles?"
(Well ok, probably not flingle-dingles.)

Maybe I shouldn't have been in a church that was posing as a coffee shop?
Maybe, in attempts to reach the "unchurched," or the "dechurched,"
People shouldn't chide people about the words they choose to speak.

But probably, I shouldn't have been in a church that was posing as a coffee shop.

-jenn

I remember once our family pet,
A Standard Collie, went into heat
And only found for herself
A little chihuahua she could breed.
(Now this isn't a statement about
Arranged marriages.
However, this may be part of the popularity
And demand for things like E-Harmony
And farmers only dot com,
Although their success rate remains to be seen.)

But this recollection serves today
To simply say that we children laughed
At how our big dog found a way to let him.
How she hunkered, poised just so,
Down on the ground, to get low enough
For him to get her,
And how we cackled, how we guffawed,
At his earnest and comical attempts
At humping her.

Then he succeeded and got it on,
And they went on and on and on
Til it was over,
And then our laughter changed to fear.
Our parents could now hear our plaintive cries
Inside where they sat, presumably
Reading the paper and watching tv.
Terrified, we cried out,
"He's stuck to her! They're stuck together!"

But our parents never even came to see.
We stared awkwardly,
And were afraid to move in too close to interfere.
Their personal space cut a large swath across our yard,
And finally we moved away from them
And went to play somewhere else out back
Where we couldn't see them anymore.

But it was a sight I would never forget,
Natures way of not allowing
The male to mate and run.
Human males have evolved to stay for a little cuddle
And some pained, howling conversation.

And it also makes me think that
We, as humans, should be careful who's around
When we go into heat.
You never know who you might get stuck with.

-jenn

Someday historians will look back at our time
And say that World War 3 began in 1999,
Followed closely by World War 4,
And they will tell how some were brave
Just by going to the store
Where they lost their lives.
Some went off to battle at work,
Some attacked, sleeping, in their beds,
Some, shot in the head at country music fests.

And we can pray that they run out of bullets, I guess,
Or we could quit printing the money used to buy them,
But what's true rings always true,
The poor and the war we will always have with us.

-jenn

I was acetically acidifying my red lentils
When a late night guzzler tottered in.
He glared at me and my plate
And said, "I hate ta tell ya this,
But them frijoles don't look right."
He argued with me for a spell
Although I never said a word.
Finally I did say, "Have you been drinking gin?"
"Whiskey!" He yelled and then went on
To call me 40 names for a tea-totaller!
(Although he left out my preferred one--ascetic!)

"You don't know your liquor," he muttered.
"And you know what THAT means."
"No, I don't," I said, "And I don't care.
But you don't know beans
From lentils,
Although that probably doesn't matter either."

-jenn

When unseen forces mold your shape from home,
It will not matter where you roam.
The force from within that creates that look upon your face
Will also create an equal and opposite force against you every place you go.
Maybe it's true we find that which we seek.
Maybe it's also true,
That which we run from
Will find us over and over again.

Until we stop,
And stand up for ourselves,
Understand the past,
Then hand it back,
We run in circles,
And we let our tails chase us.

But we can understand the force within.
We can change the look upon our face.
We can love.
We can forgive.
And we can live in peace
And roam
Happily ever after.
( it just ain't easy. )

-jenn

At least when I walked the Tysfjord,
My struggle was up,
And awkwardly I won.
The water I drank was clean.
It had a fallen from the sky
Through fire and ice.
It was purified and perfected.
It fell in big white drifts of snow
And melted in the spring
And met me at my thirst.

And now on my way down,
The water is muddied from me clowning around upstream.
My battle is to descend,
And graciously I lose,
And like the sodden waters I caused,
I meet me at my worst.

-jenn