A mystic goes in rumpled clothes

And neverminds the trousers,

But walks akin midst wrinkled skin

And knows the hope it houses.

And if my soul besets today upon you,

I'll picture you right here and don you,

And wear your heart as the flag of my disposition,

And squeeze your very organs from

Within the rib cage your heart beats in,

Then I will sit where you have sat

And look out of your eyes,

And not one shred of sympathy shall condescend,

But I will empathize

And join you in your feelings,

So nevermind the trousers.

-jenn

I remain more fasted than usual in these times.

Then no one can call me the fatted calf.

No one will kill the fatted calf for me.

But neither will anyone bother

To slaughter me as their sacrifice.

And in a time of trouble,

I, too, will be able to hide myself away

In a very narrow cleft of the rock

That nobody else seems to want.

But until then, hide yourself away

From me, my great redeemer.

Turn yourself away from me as I am crucified today,

So I, too, can ask, as humans are wont to do,

"Why have you forsaken me?"

And somehow find the guts to mean it.

For in my heart of hearts, I know,

That there has never been a time

That you and I have not been together as one.

You are with me always.

-jenn

I looked at you once before,

And so I know,

And so I walk on by.

I hear you crying in your driveway,

Telling some poor soul on your phone

What good friends you could've been.

But as for me I follow peace.

I crave it so.

And this is no rash judgment that I make,

But based upon a double take,

Because I've seen you once before.

You bark at your dog

To show the world how tough you are,

But I have seen you once before,

And so I know.

-jenn

When we meet, I'm shy and sweet.

I feel about five.

I'm quiet as I watch you eat.

I watch your eyes.

They age me like the sun.

For a moment, I'm 21,

Then 14,then 34,

And before you know it,I'm five again.

Now you've seen through my disguise.

You recognized me.

I am caught, and yes,

I can grant three wishes to you.

I hope you've thought them out.

The divine essence tends to pout

When people don't wish big enough,

And don't bother wishing for my love.

You already have all of that.

-jenn

What is it about swimming in this pool,

Nude, tonight, in this perfect temp,

Under a perfect moonless sky,

Surrounded by a velvet charcoal gray of clouds

That can not seem to move right now,

Makes me feel that anything is possible?

Why should I awake tonight

In renaissance flight?

My heart beats like the pale wings of doves 

Against the black.

Im hoping against hope that I,

Undetected by the human eye,

Have ways to regenerate my missing hands and feet.

And if somehow the morning finds me,

When I see the first slit of sunlight,

I will know,

My new birth is almost complete.

-jenn

The art show had its vague appeal,

But when the Starry Night appeared,

The rest were swept away.

The beauty of a cosmic drop of dew,

Blown by a chilly wind,

Frozen in a scattered fractal

Of a snowflake on its way to fall

At night.

And as the Morning Star shines down

From the east,

And the moon wanes,

I fall for you over and over.

Ever falling through the Starry Night,

Ever my windblown hair and fair eyes

Captured by your brush,

The strokes of your pen,

You draw your blue notes on my skin

For me to play on my guitar.

The Morning Star rises in me again,

And I wish for you.

-jenn

He had ordered some flowers for her,

And was hanging around in the lot

When the delivery truck pulled up.

He wanted to catch a glimpse of her face in the reception area,

To see how she liked them.

He had his knee up, his foot on the running board of his buddy's truck,

Trying to look cool,

When he caught sight of another woman passing by on the sidewalk.

He stopped to drool and put his foot down on the ground,

Turned his head all the way around 

To watch her as she walked by.

And now he suddenly didn't care

If people stared at him,

Or if the flowers did their job,

Or even the reason he was having to make up for it all.

Seasons come and seasons go,

But there, standing in the tow-away zone,

He felt himself set free again,

Free to love somebody new,

And maybe, in a brand new start,

Someone could be free to love him, too.

Well, maybe.

-jenn

All summer long I followed the shade,

And now, for fall I follow the Sun,

Which makes no sense to anyone

But doodlebugs and one-legged ducks,

But the circles I swim are lucky and free,

And my hope is that I'm swimming with something synchronistically.

I feel like I am,

Because I have swam alone before

And this feels different.

And maybe it's good that I can't see what it is I'm swimming with.

It might scare me to know

What a big soul has chosen me

As its partner,

And I might have to face myself

And accept my greatness without apology.

Now before you scoff and write this off as a boast,

Can you accept the greatness that is in you

Without making any excuses,

Or saying how sorry you are

For shining so well?

Well, can you?

-jenn

There are some days this time of year

When I smell the earth in all her glory,

And I think of peanuts dug after the first frost.

Yesterday, they were green.

One day of white, one brown day,

And now the machines are going over them 

Like a fine tooth comb.

The plants lie there like cadavers

Stripped down to their very private parts,

Naked peanuts scooped up and into the combine.

Mother nature has a way of combining us,

And re-combining our DNA.

We bare what fruit we can in this life,

And mother does the best she can with us,

For some of us don't seem to bare any fruit but only our nuts.

It's only natural, I surmise.

Peanuts do it, just not all the time.

But, I don't seem to want the machines to come

And run over me.

I don't want the frost to come.

I don't want a day of white, a day of brown,

But I smell the earth and know,

It's only crazy for us not to go on living,

Or to worry how our lives will have looked

To others, after we're gone.

So I'm showing the world my nuts now, today,

While I've got the chance to pose them properly,

I'm currently residing squarely in my autobiography,

And if no one likes the way it looks,

They can read some other book 

That someone else may write,

Some other time than now.

-jenn

I dream things that arent true,

But do I believe in things that I've been told?

Am I no good?

If Santa Claus would only come

And bring me the present

I have the past and failure,

And am waiting for the day 

When I can say something about the nothing that I feel,

For I have come to believe in the power of zero,

And the places that it holds,

And whether it is good or bad, I do not know.

But it doesn't offer me things that it can't bring,

And it says nothing about the future.

-jenn

My Love, if you would wait for me

By the garden gate,

A thousand kisses await for you.

(And I will not be late.)

A thousand stars will light the way

Into the open night,

And we can either walk hand-in-hand,

Or dance beneath their light.

And if by some chance

The moon may shine,

Half light, half dark,

Then we will feel the opposing pulls

As they leave their marks upon us.

But in the morning we will see,

The two of us are one,

Like two cats curled up,

One white, one black,

The Yin, the Yang,

The Moon, The Sun,

The Universe, You, and I, waiting,

As the Cosmos waits for us 

To live, to die, to love again,

To be willing to receive again

Another thousand kisses.

-jenn

I am a constant state of autumn.

I am falling leaves and acorns,

Pecans, black walnuts on the ground.

I am the colors burnt orange, sienna,

Crimson, pale yellow and, yet,

Still green.

I am stars that fall in August.

Sighing out wishes, as I die.

I've followed the asteroid belt

Long enough to read the writing.

The Great Wall of the cosmos 

Is covered with glorious graffiti,

And I have learned everything I know from it.

I am wisdom moving downward,

Finishing the Circle of the Sun,

And there is nothing new under it.

-jenn

I hear something call my name.

"I am here," I say.

Once again, I hear my name.

It is "Hebrides."

"I am here," I call to it,

Like a craggy rock 

Jutting from the sea.

I answer the mysterious call

With words on the fierce sea breeze.

And while my long hair blows wild in the wind,

And while I'm distracted by answering him,

A crow has landed next to me,

And he will report to Odin

What I'm busy with.

"What is she doing, Huginn?" Odin will say,

When he has a thought of me,

And if he has a memory, he sends Muninn.

But either way, the answer is always the same,

"Nothin'," the ravens always say.

And so, Odin stirs the Mead of Poetry

And drinks it, and asks himself

Why he is so good to me,

And what I might be up to,

And then he answers the questions himself,

And writes an ode to me,

Of heartbeats and respiration,

And calls to me on the wind again,

And again and again, I answer him.

"I am here," I say.

-jenn

There is a hole in the sidewalk

That looks, to many, like a great flaw,

An imperfection,

But it is the void and chaos from which

Everything good and perfect springs.

It is an empty room where someone will come

And hang up Christmas lights,

And someone else will stand and sing,

And many will come to dance the night away

In the great ballroom called life.

-jenn

What feels better to the butterfly?

To emerge the cold cocoon 

With wet wings and chill bumps on its legs,

Thinking, perhaps, too soon its life was changed.

Or as it sits, considering in the sun,

The way the winds of change do blow,

It stretches out, just now dry,

And now, just now, discovers,

It can fly.

-jenn

He was telling her how good her glasses looked,

And insisting that she go to class.

He even had a mirror out

And forced her face

With his hands

To make her look at herself

With tear-streaks down her cheeks

And tear drops fogging up the lenses

And dripping from the frames.

And I was so mad at him,

I wanted to slap him.

I only wished I were strong enough

To hit him hard enough 

And make him cry,

And put a mirror to his face

And tell him he had to go to class

Looking that way.

Because she was eleven,

And she didn't like

The way she looked in her new glasses,

And he wasn't helping.

-jenn

I stand and cope

With the mild taste of soap

In my mouth from saying 

What I think and saying it

Exactly how I wanted to,

And so I'm not ashamed

For calling things what they are

And naming things

That need to be named.

If there are bad words it's because there are bad things.

And if I never win the prize

For kissing the most, and the right, asses,

I can give classes on standing for

What you believe in, and how to go to bat,

And leave the donkey kissing classes 

To someone who believes in that.

-jenn

I was moving and I couldn't find 

The clothes I'd planned to wear.

I found a gray pantsuit 

My grandma crocheted for me.

But when I looked into the mirror,

I could see my turquoise underwear

Right through the loops in the yarn.

My mother was waiting in the car for me,

Impatiently, and while she had my sons in the back seat,

Took the opportunity to scold them

About aging gracefully.

I turned to view my pantsuit from the rear,

And decided the only part of the whole outfit

That looked acceptable to me

WAS the turquoise underwear.

So I'll give the gray pantsuit a little time,

And either it will come back into style,

Or I'll give in to my mother,

And try to act my age.

But if all the world's a stage,

Today, I'm in full costume,

Just as I am, very comfortable 

In my skin, and in my turquoise underwear.

-jenn

She says what she says,

But she does what she does.

When you ask how she is,

It's a pat reply,

"Blessed, highly favored, deeply loved."

But when I asked her how her birthday was,

Her expression darkened and she said

She'd had to make "some hard decisions."

"Sometimes when the Lord works slow,

You just have to go ahead

And do something for yourself.,"

And so she says exactly what she says,

But she does....what she does.

-jenn

Only a dream could tempt me like this,

To venture out from my safe place.

A piece of fluff with a halting grin,

Something about the chase I love.

I pounce, and something else

Pounces onto me.

We tussle over the piece of fluff 

Until we have forgotten it.

Now it's a fight unto the death,

But lucky for us, neither of us have won.

And so I lick my wounds

And limp away.

I live to laugh another day,

And fight again tonight

I hope, with you.

-jenn

Only a dream could tempt me like this,

To venture out from my safe place.

A piece of fluff with a halting grin,

Something about the chase I love.

I pounce, and something else

Pounces onto me.

We tussle over the piece of fluff 

Until we have forgotten it.

Now it's a fight unto the death,

But lucky for us, neither of us have won.

And so I lick my wounds

And limp away.

I live to laugh another day,

And fight again tonight

I hope, with you.

-jenn

I'm not an Okie.

I wasn't born here,

And I won't die here,

If I have anything to do about it.

Send me back to Alabama 

Or Texas or Boston, Mass.,

But don't throw any of your red dirt over my ass.

My people were brought here

And told to put an end

To their language, their beliefs,

Their Medicine.

They were made to feel less than human,

And to survive,

They tried to pass for the less than human beings who brought them.

They took on their ways and their names,

Their diet, their religion,

And even their ball games.

But I am not an Okie,

And I don't pass for one,

And if I didn't have the two people I love best, my sons, 

Here, I'd leave,

And I'd leave fast,

And go back to Alabama,

Texas or Boston, Mass.,

And leave all this red dirt mumbo jumbo pride behind,

And find a better place to watch the sky,

A better place to live,

And a better place to die

Than here.

-jenn

This year as I shed my leaves,

I celebrate.

I exfoliate one by one

In a conscious letting go.

I smile in a happy ending

To styles that fear had draped me in,

And in an autumn awakening,

Will contemplate my bareness.

When I see what kind of tree I am,

I will rejoice.

I will mediate on that with gladness

And rest,

Trust the winter and the seasons

To bring me back around in peace

To become myself.

I will let my nature dress me,

Nothing more and nothing less,

And when the spring brings color back to me,

My buds and leaves will speak and sing

Of festival.

-jenn