If when you call or text

And I answer you

So quietly and so subdued

Don’t worry 

Just know

I’m listening to

Kinda Blue, by Miles Davis

And if the text turns satin sheen

I’m listening to Blue in Green

By Miles Davis

And if you think I’ve caught a buzz

Even though I don’t smoke 

Or drink

But you think that stir in your pants

Is not quite as obvious as Fran Dance

(By Miles Davis)

But it sure seems like one of us may get lucky tonight 

I’m listening to Stella by Starlight

By Miles Davis

But if a pep comes in your step

And a brassy tone

Rings out from your telephone

It means all my hay is baled

And I’m listening to Love for Sale

And you can say So What

But what else have you got to lose

You can’t lose nothing with All Blues

Baby

So....If the day has taken its toll

I say

Lose your day but gain your soul

Listening to some Miles Davis

-jenn

 It’s your lucky day!

Lucky for you

I was listening to

Al Stewart play

The year of the cat when you called.

I said hello,

But did you know 

That I was just about to cry?

The sky is turning gray.

“Why don’t you?” I hear him say.

But the keyboard had a mellow way of pushing me onward,

And I have other fish to fry.

The bonfire in my mind is raging high,

And now it’s night.

I’m blowing out the lightbulbs just like that!

How many will it take to screw one in again?

Maybe just one if he comes in the year of the cat.

-jenn

Hello?

 I roam the streets

Trying to see what’s going on.

I call out.

The streets don’t answer.

I’m just trying to see the quickest way to make a buck.

I called my mom two days ago,

And she ain’t called me back yet.

The dancers make good money,

But they spend it all on crack cocaine.

That’s the price they have to pay

To be willing to put their make up on again 

And smile.

I called my mom two days ago,

And she ain’t called me back.

I just wanted to tell her happy Mother’s Day.

I got to find something that will answer me,

Something that will make me willing

To put my makeup on again and smile.

I’m done tryin to be philosophical.

I got to put my make up on and smile.

-jenn

Hungry 

I was that kid in school 

That the teachers didn’t think ate well

I didn’t 

I didn’t eat well

But what I learned early is

Eating is overrated 

We really don’t need 

To eat as much as we think we do

My grandmother came from the Old Country

She was not worried about me

Whether I ate or not

Was not a problem to her

But this morning here on the high plains 

I started the day by running a gazelle down

It’s not so much that I crave meat

Or that I love the kill

(Or is it?)

Or that waiting’s such a thrill for me 

But I have others depending on me now

Who need to eat

Who want to

It’s part of their personality 

I’m a lioness on these plains

With hungry cubs 

Who don’t understand the Old Country

And so I started the day by running a gazelle down

I think slowly it is changing 

How many, again, is it until we get to seven?

It may take another generation 

Or two

Or threeeeeeeee

Or maybe just one more gazelle

Or maybe just one more morning run into the sun for me

But today I started the day by running a gazelle down

-jenn

 Noncommittal 

They say it takes less muscle to smile than frown,

And so maybe you won’t be so tired

At the end of the day.

I’m trying it out,

But I gotta say,

This smile is so heavy.

I think I’d rather carry you around,

As blue as you are,

Than lunk this smile

From town to town

Trying to cheer the whole world up

For no good reason. 

This heavy noncommittal 

Nonmusclaturated smile...

What kind of thing in this life

Doesn’t require muscles?

I don’t trust it.

Maybe that’s why

I find it so heavy.

I myself have a recommended daily allowance 

On muscles.

But I’ll try.

For you,

Blue as you are,

To carry around 

This heavy noncommittal 

Nonmusclaturated smile.

-jenn

 I’m metamorphosizing.

I wonder if you’ll like me when 

I come out of this cocoon.

I’ve always been a moon person. 

What if I start to like the sun?

Will anyone still recognize me?

Crawl in here with me, TrueLove.

Let’s morph together 

So I will know

At least one someone else will show up beside me.

When we learn that we can fly.

For two are better than one,

Don’t they say?

How could I know,

When I’m blind in one eye

And can’t see out of the other?

But maybe part of this changing process

Will open my thousand eyes as spots

On the Lepidoptera 

And then I can see.

I want to see you.

I want you to see me.

Love,

💙💙💙💙💙💙

LadyBlue

aka

-jenn

 Tacking

I’m sure to a passing observer

She appears

As a bird in a gusty day,

Whose feathers are splayed 

Askew like an umbrella

The wind blew inside out.

Mercury’s in retrograde.

Communication carries doubt,

Or, at the very least, it should be dubious. 

“What’s wrong with you!” her mother shouts.

But my friend has stalled,

A technique employed by

The greatest football teams

Right before they win.

She’s considering the wind,

And has decided she doesn’t want to go

Any old way the wind tries to blow her.

So she’s tacking

Happily,

Without regard to the shouts of the crowd 

Or her mother,

Because my friend knows exactly what she’s doing,

And she’s doing it well,

And she would never tell anyone 

To go to hell,

Least of all her mother

On Mother’s Day.

-jenn

 Norman-town is the best town I’ve ever lived in

For riding bikes 

Even though the wind blows strong

And make parts of the trails

Seem uphill both ways

I feel the bones of my ancestors rattle in these winds

My grandfather and my grandmother both died

Right over there, in Norman Regional Hospital 

And if that showed me anything 

It showed me I don’t want to die in a hospital 

If you want your death to be

Natural 

Like a purple plum that ripens slow

And then falls peacefully 

Off the plum tree

Into a glass clear pond

Then you better arrange to grow

On a purple plum bush

In a grove just beside the still waters

Of the glassy pond

Where mossy stones

Line the way that leads to home

You can’t do that? You say?

I hear the wind blow

I hear the spirits of my ancestors moan softly 

They speak. They say,

“Then train your mind

To always be at home within yourself 

Wherever you may roam

And stay there.”

-jenn

 Flip Side

Every day is something new

I just don’t think the way I used to

Maybe I’m going through the change

Maybe you caught me on the flip side

Everything old is new again 

I don’t know who I am anymore 

I’m not bound to an old identity 

Things hit me differently 

Than they used to

I choose a different set of reality 

And everything old is new again 

Maybe you’ve caught me on the flip side baby

Vinyl is back and bell bottom slacks

And a 70’s groove 

And everything old is new again 

Lao Tsu says great talents ripen late

Maybe I’m going through the change

Maybe life could rearrange 

Maybe everything I hate I could learn to love

And then everything old could become new again

Maybe you’ve caught me on the flip side 

-jenn

 There is a blue world.

Not this one here,

But one where troubles disappear,

I’ve seen it in my dreams.

In the blue world,

There is no hell,

Just cold calculations.

But everything is fixable.

Not like here,

Where everything is breakable, 

And even the wishing well

Is often out of order.

But since this world has a yellow sun,

I have some very warm calculations,

Some lovely orange designs on you.

Let me see them through to fruition,

Just one time.

-jenn

 I go to bed early

And often

Because I dream

And dreamers need their sleep 

And when the deep blue 

Creeps over me

And I see the stars 

I think of you

And fall in love

Over and over 

As the heavens toss and turn

So restlessly

And constant as waves

That churn the sea bed

And the sea

I feel you 

Churning me

And I fall in love 

Over and over

-jenn

 Gravid 

I’m at the back of the room,

At the bottom of the class.

I’m not used to being here,

But I’m finding out,

It’s a fecund place to be.

I see good people 

Who want to help me along,

The potency of sweetness 

From those who offer 

To carry my books to school.

The golden rule—

That those who have the gold

Make the rules,

Does not apply here

At the back of the room,

Just a “live and let live” epiphany,

And an epigraph scratched 

Onto a desk

That teen pregnancy is truly 

What nature intended.

-jenn

 “The good book doth say

That one should pray

When the wind’s in the tops

Of the mulberry trees.”

“And why is that grandma?” I heard the child whisper.

“Because the angels come down to roost

To get out of the breezy sky,

And if one will listen,

One can hear them sing.

And their singing is such

That earnest prayers availeth much

Because when one hears the angel songs,

One knows to sit for a long time beside them and listen

And not bother to ask for anything.”

-jenn

 The heavens, too, fall.

They scatter their showers carelessly, 

Cold drops falling with certainty 

On favored trees, and with decided 

Uncertainty on others.

Did Emily say, “The soul selects its own society?”

The heavens fall aplomb on some. 

The chosen ones feel that they have mattered.

But sometimes here in Oklahoma, 

The showers are scattered,

And we like it that way.

-jenn

 Kiss The Sky 

Now I’m going to settle in,

Get warm in my bed,

Watch the tornado warnings on tv,

Be ready to pull the covers over my head

And kiss my ass goodbye.

Jimi Hendrix kissed the sky,

But the sky doesn’t even return my calls.

I do everything for everyone in my life

And all I want is the sky to love me.

But it’s dark tonight,

And a terrible cloud is spinning slowly,

Menacingly, over Cleveland County.

I’m terrified, yet, even with this sick feeling 

Inside my tummy, 

A sorry hope tries to squeak 

Its sorrier rhetoric out to me:

“With the atmospheric lowering

This is as close as thou may’st  get

To the sky coming to see thee.”

Maybe I will get that kiss

One way or another?

-jenn

 The rain

On a cold Monday morning 

The jazz

On my radio 

So very blue

My car drives itself to your heart

But you’re living in a gated community

Well i’m late for work anyway

So there’s not time

To tell you all the reasons I have

For wanting to make you mine

But let’s just say that none of them are good

It doesn’t matter

Because your hearts living in a gated community

How I feel when I pull up to the gate

And I see someone coming out

And I’m prevented from going in

Who is it that’s so lucky as sin

To have been with you when you committed the crime

So you married her so she wouldn’t have to testify against you

And I’m in the witness protection program 

And your heart

And the rest of you

Is living in a very gated community 

But I have the rain

On a cold Monday morning 

And the blue blue jazz

On my radio 

The notes come to me

On the cold blue

The rain drops falling 

Just the same on everything 

The just the unjust

Without impunity 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Yes... even the gated community 

Of your heart

-jenn

 “What are you doing?” I asked my friend.

I saw her putting deodorant on the armpit of the outside of her shirt.

“I’m putting on deodorant.”

“Yes but most people put it on their skin,” I said,

“And try NOT to get any white streaks of it on their clothing.”

“Well I want men to see me for who I am,” she declared.

“And I want my prospective man to know

That I wear deodorant and a lot of it,

And he’s gonna have to buy it for me

When we get married!”

“Oh,” I said,

And suddenly understood what backward approaches I’d always had

To attracting the right type of guy.

-jenn