Thursday, August 29, 2019

He lulls you in 
With a sheepish grin
And his lip in a hint of a pout,
But the dark in his eyes
Is comprised of the lowest frequency of red,
And then every other color
In the rainbow.
Those eyes absorb
Everything.

He's standing,
Waiting,
Holding the door for me.

I'm walking,
Walking,
Never seem to get closer,
Like a dream.
I'm trotting now,
Trying not to make him wait.

I reach the door
And smile as I pass through,
But there's another door!
My smile is gone!
And where are you 
To open it for me?


-jenn
I've been hurt before.
I recall the flame that burned
My childish fingers,
And refrain from repeating
That mistake.

I kissed you once
With blisters on your lip.
I touched your ache
With my bandaged wing.

I've been hurt before,
And I've felt love,
And sometimes 
They're the same.


-jenn 

Sunday, August 25, 2019

I hear a soft piano play
An elevator music version
Of a song I used to sing in church,
And all at once I sense my broken
Moments of my broken life and faith
And how many years it's taken
For me to put me back together.
Now I finally stand alone,
Even in this fast food bathroom,
And smile and say, I still believe!

I still believe in the beauty of life.
I still believe in love.
I believe in my sweet children,
And in my mother and my dad,
And I believe that goodness is alive
And breathes in old stories
And in new ones,
And I believe in art, in poetry
And in music.
And I sing my own words, now,
To this great song.
I still believe!


-jenn
A girl at kickboxing class
Confidentially took me to the side
And told me I might not want to
Wear "that" kind of shorts anymore, 
That everyone could see my hoo-ha.
"Well, damn, I wasn't going for that," I thought.
That's the exact opposite, in fact.
What I was wanting was 
For my hoo-ha to see everyone.

-jenn

A girl at kickboxing class
Confidentially took me to the side
And told me I might not want to
Wear "that" kind of shorts anymore, 
That everyone could see my hoo-ha.
"Well, damn, I wasn't going for that," I thought.
That's the exact opposite, in fact.
What I was wanting was 
For my hoo-ha to see everyone.

-jenn

The Irony

He said he would wait for me
A billion years.
And I would have waited
For him, too,
If he would have let me know
A little bit sooner.

But now, alas,
It is too late.
I cannot wait
Any longer.


-jenn
The big stud quarterback
sits on the bus
On the way to the big football game.
He has his headphones on.
He's in the zone.
No one would dare mess with him.
He's got such posture,
Such compose.
Someone wonders
What he's listening to,
And gets close to the quarterback's ear.
Quietly, in disbelief,
The nosy one turns to tell the rest of them,
"It's Air Supply!!!?"


-jenn
"I'm going to die in a hotel room with her,"
He made a vow, and wrote it down,
And it came true.
It came to pass
Out of the blue one day.
He was hell bent to see her,
And she said no,
And he said no no no no no.
"Please, don't say no
To me, today!"
So she said ok,
And met him at the usual place,
And he died
With a smile on his face,
Just as he had always said he wanted to.


-jenn
When my mother explained the facts of life to me,
She said was that I was going to bleed,
And when I cried and said I didn't want to be a girl,
She told me it was not the end of the world.

But maybe I cried because I saw
The sadness seeping from deep inside my mother,
And the very sad way she tried 
To hide it from me.

But this world will never be right for men,
Until it is right for women again.
But truly, it won't be right for women,
Until it's also right for men.

Something's got to give
And change, and realign properly
Out in space, 
To give us all a freaking break,
And let humanity live
Together,
And breathe, and have its being
In real-time peace of mind.


-jenn
He spent a lifetime 
Reading books that she had read,
So he could try to understand he sense of dread
She had for her life to come.
He dropped his jaw
When he came to the story
Of Miss Havisham,
And dropped the syllabus from his hand,
And dropped out of the hard knock school
That was loving her,
For he,too, had jilted someone at the altar
And had never given a damn til now.

But now he saw how it may have been for her,
But he could also see
How rather dreadful it would be for him today,
Had he gone through with it.


-jenn

Friday, August 23, 2019

There was a kid at Texas Tech in 1985.
He had a certain sense of things.
He would buy dress shirts at the Salvation Army,
And take a seam ripper to the collar.
He'd remove the pointed ends 
And turn the whole thing down and re-stitch it,
Creating a standup look that was uniquely his own.
And sometimes, he would find an old bicycle,
An old 1950's Schwinn, and fix it up and paint it.
He had one he rode around,
And he would sell them to his friends.
I bought one for $30 dollars
And became part of the throw-back brigade
Of that era, that railed against 
The thin, sleek, hi-Tech 10 speeds 
That prevailed in that day.

He was in love with a girl in the dorm that I stayed in.
She was from Houston,
And had pale, olive skin,
And jet black hair cut into a 'bob."
Her dark eyes would flutter,
But always down,
And she was not in love with him.
She wanted to be, but couldn't.

And all of us girls wanted him to be in love with us,
The way he was in love with her.
We were all so sweet to him
When she would leave him sitting alone in the cafeteria.

Finally one of the other girls
Convinced him to try his love out on her,
But we all knew it couldn't last.
He couldn't seem to look at her 
The way he had the other girl.

I took my seam ripper
And ripped out the stitches of the high-back collar
I had just made on one of my shirts,
And carefully sewed the pointed ends back on.


-jenn

Never let love go to your head.
You'll become heady and think that you're ready for anything.
But love never pans out logically.
You can sit right in the middle of a river of love,
And sieve away frantically in your mind,
Straining for little bits of gold,
When the river,itself, is worth your weight in soul,
And the spirit of the wind that rushes along with it
Longs to bathe your head in butterfly kisses,
And crown you king, or queen, for the day.
You'll miss it if you let love go to your head.

But let love go to your heart!
Your heart will play
Like a child in a room 
Full of someone else's toys,
Or a blind lover on a braille honeymoon.
Your heart will know just what to do,
Just want to say,
To love.


-jenn

Thursday, August 22, 2019

A spider on the storage building door!
Faint smell of paint and turpentine,
I brush my shoe across and miss,
And in a flash, I sense,
I almost killed myself.

An instinct of fear that thrashes wildly about!
Fight or flight adrenaline kicks in!
I saw the spider in myself,
And tried to eradicate the evil.

But the spider in me survives,
Up and down the water spout 
So many times,
Recreating the web, the sling,
The web-sack, the totality.
I am the spider,
And the spider is me.

-jenn


I'm pedaling down the streets of Paris,
Wandering, wandering.
There is no place I'd rather be,
No place I'd rather go.

It's the early morning, and the streets are deserted.
It's very early, and I don't have to
Be at the cologne factory for hours.
Only the bakers are up with me and the spirits of the dead poets.

I smell the bread baking all through the streets,
And swear I can almost see the scent
Wafting on the smoke from the ovens.

And I can hear the poetry
On the echoes of the ghosts.

I'm wandering, wandering.
My mind is wandering.
A sidewalk leads me down to a trail by the river.
Artful visions, colors fill my mind.
How should I know the very spot
So famously painted
Here on La Seine?

Later this morning, I will clock in
To the cologne factory.
Seven hours, I will pretend to work.
I have found something to do
Since you are gone,
And everyday, I leave,
Smelling like a rose.
I will fall asleep at dusk, and wake,
Hours before the dawn,
To wander, to wander,
And to dream again.

-jenn


The wispy girls are tall and slim.
They look like models on heroin.
They're vegetarian but work as waitresses
At the Texas Steakhouse Cafe.
And if they don't remember what you said,
When they asked if you wanted bread and butter,
Don't worry about it.

They'll smile back at you,
If you smile first.
But as they turn to go,
The bedazzled pocketry 
On their tiny asses
Says "Kiss it,
Or don't.
We don't care,
And neither do you."


-jenn

Sunday, August 18, 2019

I carry my cup in my downstage hand,
Away from the bright spot light of the sun.
All the world is a play,
And I don't want to be upstaged
By an inanimate object.

I shine in my part.
I've known all my lines by heart
Since the first week of rehearsal.
I've had to try not to memorize
Everyone else's parts,
So I don't lose the heart of my own character.

I should never tell anyone else what to do.
I'm not the director.
I just hope the crowds will be pleased,
For I know I can be upstaged by them,
Those great clouds of witnesses
That sometimes come 
Between me and the sun.


-jenn
I am always searching for someone
Who's searching for me.
As if in a dream,
An endless odyssey,
A mindless on-going carries me through the entire night,
A timeless plight through a nonstop bazaar.

But I don't want to stop and shop
Or eat or talk to anyone.
My eyes are ahead to the next blind corner,
Or the next strange door that mysteriously opens for me.

I never seem to get a glimpse of who or what
I'm chasing,
Who or what it may be
That is so worthy of all my time in dreams.
Yet, as the cat, I have no fear.
I only think like a predator would,
Without a care for what may be chasing me.


-jenn
I walk the beach on a windy day.
I have to close my eyes.
My hair is blowing wildly this way and that.
My hat is gone.
The wind has blown it away.
The sun shines hard.
My heart is gone.
I don't know where.
I'm like a blind woman in the sand,
And only the cool water 
That brushes my toes
In the rhythmic waves of the ocean
Let's me know that I'm still on the shore,
Or I would be lost.

Or maybe I am?
Maybe I've crossed the stars one too many times?
Maybe it's not the briny sea
I feel on my feet,
But the cosmic touches of the Milky Way.
Then, by needs, must this
That's blinding me be stardust,
And I'm not lost after all,
But happily, just on my way home.


-jenn 
I'm not going to try to define you.
You're undefinable in so many ways,
And I would never try to confine you.
My heart blazes with love for you.
It burns through definitions,
Norms and compendiums of outlines
Once designed to codify everyone
And everything.
But for me, for you,
I'd rather not have to write up any addendum
For every amendment you break in my mind.

And every time you break my heart,
I'm one step closer
To being free myself,
From you, and all the people 
Who have tried to define me.


-jenn


"The Tao is forever undefined,"
And I'm not going to try to define you.
You're undefinable in so many ways,
And I would never try to confine you.
My heart blazes with love for you.
It burns through definitions,
Norms and compendiums of outlines
Once designed to codify everyone
And everything.
But for me, for you,
I'd rather not have to write up any addendum
For every amendment you break in my mind.

And every time my heart gets broken,
I begin to see the reality,
That I have broken my own heart,
Like an egg, over the universe,
And now, I'm one step closer
To being free, 
From myself,
From all the people 
Who have tried to define me,
And maybe, even from the Tao,
But never, My Love, from you.


-jenn

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Just for you
I pick a tune out of the sky
Like an apple high up in the tree
Wait for me
And I will come and see
Just for you

I will come and see if the apples are ripe
If the cherries are in bloom
And pick the flowers that you love
Just for you

If sometime you wonder if I know
What a special thing it is for love to grow
Look down from your window 
And see the blooms
Of the flowers that I planted

Just for you
When I come up for air, I breathe,
And then I dive deep
To the underneath,
Where I take care of things
Barely,
And best I can.

Because I've taken sacred vows,
I nourish the sacred sea cows
And little sea monkeys 
Until they're grown.

There's a thing called gravity
That keeps me down,
But when I hold my breath,
I float somehow,
And bob around here and there
'Til I come up for air.

But truth be told,
There's nothing to hold me
Just below the surface.
This is no place for me,
Under the sea.
I long for the clouds,
Though I wonder sometimes 
If the sky is fake,
And I wonder if I could take a breath up there,
Or if I'd have to come down for air.


-jenn
The restaurant owner smiled at me
And cocked his head suspiciously.
"You look happy!" he said.
"I am," I said.

"I'm the king of the world,
Like Mohammad Ali!
I identify with greatness,
And all great people find 
Their likeness in me.
I'm not great,
But everyone else is,
And I am the reflection of all humanity."

I didn't really say all that.
But the restaurant owner really did smile at me
And tell me I looked happy.
And... I really am.

Even though I'd just come from another place,
Where I was treated rather rudely.
But lucky for me, I was wearing my 
"I don't give a damn tutu."
So I really did think every bit of that,
While I smiled back and said,
"I am."

-jenn