You're a night owl,
And I'm an early bird,
But we meet in the barn at two.
You love me,
And I love you.
Birds of a certain feather,
Fowl that come together
To smile and flock and flutter,
To nibble the seeds that fell from the bales of hay,
And say, "Life is good,
And Love is food, too,
As far as the world allows
Between barn owls
And barn swallows
Who, at least, have something warm in common,
Even if it's only the barn part.

-jenn

I don't like to hibernate alone.
I feel cheated that, at least,
While I sleep,
I should have little triplet cubs
That could fit in a teacup.
They could nurse and nuzzle me,
And while they grow,
Their tiny paws could tickle me
And scratch away,
And I could dream of salmon
In the cold stream and catching them
And eating them and sharing them with my young.

But as it is, I will wake alone
My children will be grown
And I will be left to wonder where they've gone.
Or maybe it is I who've gone astray
And my waking is from some other time
And from some other hibernation place,
And maybe, by then, I will have grown up, too.

-jenn

This day has been like a big wet slobbery kiss from a dog.
It's had its ups and downs.
It's had its moments of smelly breath.
But all in all it's been good for the face.
A more natural moisturizer you could never find,
And a big smile can make any face look younger and brighter.

And what big fat meanie could not smile
With a big galoot dog licking you right in the face?

This rainy foggy cold winter day
Is that happy to see you,too, friend.
So welcome it with a laugh and with love
Until you can see its wagging tail for yourself.

-jenn

Why do birds sing?
Are they happy?
Or so full of sorrow
That they seep sadness out
In chirps and peeps?
What is the meaning of their various songs?

The path of the Sage is twofold, they say-
Loved and adored,
Or walking away into the woods, never to be seen again.

I have walked silently by the brook,
Listened to it's rumbling overture,
Overheard the overtones of the birds.
I've walked in time and in tune
With the melodic muse,
Mimicked the foreign opera
Until I learned it note for note.

And though I do not understand the words,
The sounds and deep vibrations that I've heard and felt
Are just as much a part of me
As the wild blackberries and honey I ate out there.

And I could tell you why the birds sing,
But you wouldn't understand me,
Because it's something that has to be felt,
And one can only experience it.
And in an unexpressable way,
Be moved to keep the deep and beautiful secret to oneself.

-jenn

The winter comes like a long lost uncle,
A steam trunk full of musty clothes
That need to be washed
And a health inspector's appetite.
Layer upon layer of deeper isolation and withdrawal,
I can barely hear him tell me
How much better Lucinda's pancakes were.
I can barely hear the tiny pellets of freezing rain
Pelting the tin roof ever so gently,
Snowed in, and snowed asunder.

-jenn

Stark beauty of a dark silhouette,
Winter tree, a bare, naked lady
Against a pale, colorless, morning sky,
She sighs.
Many have tried to capture her longing in still-life,
But no medium of paint or photograph,
Watercolor, pencils, has been found
That can capture her boredom.
Tired of sleeping until spring,
She yearns with her branches out and up,
Her nipples erect and goosebumps on her bark,
And would that she could stay undressed all year long,
And yet be clothed with the sun and warmth and dignity
That is afforded to others
Who do not wish for things they cannot have.



-jenn

If you treat your lady like a queen for a day,
You will be king and have a long reign
In her heart and her mind's eye.
But if you treat her like a nag,
You will drag your way around a doghouse
All day and night,
And your tail will never wag.

-jenn

When I was born,
I had spots like a fawn,
And they were perfect for me.
They hid me from the evil envy of others,
And protected me from predators of doubt.
But as I grew, I came to see,
My spots were much too big for me,
And I was not a deer,
But a cat,
And the dark rosettes that covered me
Were that of the Jaguar.

I didn't think I'd ever grow into
The spots of a leopard
And become a predator myself.
An awkward stage beginning in my teens,
And lasting four decades, when
Finally at age fifty-three,
I find that step by step
And bit by bit,
I'm equipped to hunt down my dreams
And live well in the skin that I'm in.

And so if I smile at night,
Lying in the dark,
Where no one can me but the stars,
It's only because
I'm happy.

-jenn

If I die suddenly and without cause,
I want you to know it was all due to a plastic fork
I was using to stir my stew.
A tine broke off and melted in
Without my knowledge.
I stirred it thoroughly into the soup
And then I ate it.

But the true cause of death
Should go down on the certificate,
"Gluten Intolerance,"
For never would I use a plastic fork to stir my stew
If it weren't for the need I have
For an uncontaminated utensil,
And the only things I hadn't used
Were that plastic fork and a number two pencil,
And I didn't want lead poisoning.

But little do I know what effect
Ingesting plastic may have.
I'm hoping for something beneficial,
Like more elastic skin
Or stretchy bones.
Truth be told, I'm hoping to go all super heroine
And be the best Plastic Woman
You and this world have ever seen!

And I don't know---
Im gluten intolerant,
But if I can't eat my daily bread anymore
Maybe I'll discover and recommend
The daily dose of plastic,
If I live.
But if I don't,
Please, tell the coroner why.

-jenn

I read the books of a dead man,
And little did I know
That he lived right next-door to me,
And while he was alive,
I could've gone right over
And had tea with him
And talked about these things.

I am in love with his books
Because I see his heart shine through,
And maybe I would have been in love with him,
And maybe it's true,
That he could have loved the girl next-door,
And maybe he did.
I'll never know.

I wonder, tho, if I should go
And meet the new ones moving in,
The neighbors, that is.

-jenn

I've done everything I wanted to do today,
Except the dishes,
And I didn't want to do them, anyway,
And you,
I didn't do you, properly.
But I sure wanted to.

If the best laid plans
Of mice and men
Lead to the best lived lives---
The best laid husbands,
The best laid wives,
And if the road to hell is paved
With good intentions,
Then here, today, somewhere between
My not so pure intentions
And my dreams of perfect peace
And saturation,
I stand, paved with maturation
And grace
And love
And desire for you.

-jenn

I heard a plaintiff poet read
A poem she'd written
Where she repeated the title frequently,
"I'm not a machine."

"I'm not a machine," she'd say,
And look out at the audience
With a far-a-way look on her face.
Her shoulders would drop
Every time she said it,
As if she almost could herself believe it,
If she could but utter it one more time in Latin.

But her poem didn't rhyme,
And there wasn't any magic fairy dust
To sprinkle on her rusted gears,
Or a velveteen way to give her any skin,
Or a wizard behind a thin curtain
To give her any soul.

But good for her, I thought,
With all her words and all her themes.
She's not a machine,
But I am.
I can wake every day and not give a damn
About doing good or doing harm.

But give me farms to cultivate!
Cotton to bale! Peanuts to combine!
My mechanical arm never tires,
It only needs more grease,
Hydraulic fluid and baling wire,
A fine crease down the center of my metal pants
To winnow away the chaff.

I can laugh now,
But I was once like her--
A machine,
But not sure
What thing it was I was meant to do.

Someday she will be like me.
She'll wake, or sleep,
I don't remember which I did
To turn the switch,
To on,
Or, it dawns on me as I sit idle,
Waiting for the farmer's bridle
To come and up the throttle.
Then I will sputter and cough
And wonder if I may have turned me off, instead?

-jenn

With a head like a light bulb
And almost as bright,
Kokopeli, the trickster, gives ideas to institutions.
He can tell them anything.
He knows they'll never do anything with it,
Including, but not limited to,
Passing it on to someone else
Who might actually develop it themselves,
For the good of all humankind.

But for the prophets,
Those who go in search of the new heavens
For the reality that needs to be now,
Be assured, the New Jerusalem will kill them, too,
Long before they could show us the way,
But not before the idea can be stolen
And given away to the money changers.

-jenn

The slow swells and falls of the ocean lull me.
The rhythmic vision and the corresponding sounds
Put me into hypnotic suggestion.
My universe abounds
As my soul is duped again.

I buy the illusion that the ocean is just one big harmless thing.
I've traded my awareness
Of the cohesive nature and the polarity of water’s molecules,
When everyone knows
You can drown in three drops of water.
Or is that three inches?

I'm both sine and cosine.
I am wonder and doubt,
Logarithms that pass back and forth
And meet one another, cresting and falling.
I meet myself coming and going,
As I wade in without a care.

-jenn

When you get that shoe horn just right
And your foot bloops nicely into that tight fitting shoe
Then you know how good it feels to put your shoes on.

And, you know even better how good it'll feel,
To take em off.

-jenn

I'm wearing a string of former irritations.
I will not cast them
To the swine.
 I don't wear them to look good for the public.
I like how they feel
On this skin of mine.
I wear these pears for me.

I wear these pearls to remind me
That my former irritations
Don't define
Who I am
Or where I'm going.
I have the power to re-define.
I wear these pearls for me.

Oh grain of sand
Stuck in the oysters craw
You begin as an irritation
But as natural as the law of nature
You become a pearl
I wear these pearls for me

I wear these pearls as a princess rotary,
A string of answered prayers,
A string of victories and resolutions,
A sign of future resolutions,
Irritations overcome,
I wear these pearls for me.

-jenn