Sometimes when I exhale 

I get a fleeting glimpse of

A fleeting aspiration 

That I used to know I had

Now I’m really not so sure

Of what I think I thought

Or what caught me by surprise enough 

To jar my instincts out

But sometimes when I exhale

I catch sight of me

In the rear view mirror

Sitting in the back seat

Dreaming

Sometimes the only stars I see are planes up in 

the sky 

But I

I never even wonder why they’re there

And they don’t make me want to go so far away

I’m where I need to be and better yet

I’m where I want to be

Right here on the ground with you

In the back seat

Glancing at the rear view mirror 

Seeing myself there and up ahead

And right here in the here and now

Dreaming

-jenn

 Return of the Snake

It was a known fact in Ancient Rome,

About the gardens long before, in Ancient Greece,

In the primal orchards, where the golden apples were grown,

That there were serpents that guarded the trees,

And there were women who went there to feed them.

And is this where all the trouble came from?

Another ancient culture with an Adam, an Eve,

A tree in a garden, and a snake,

And a story of how the perspective of duality was born,

How the woman came to be equipped to see the difference between 

Good and Evil?

But what was the knowledge that existed before then?

Was it an innocent, undifferentiating intelligence?

Was this the truth behind the fall of man,

That recognizing the differences would bring eternal bondage?

And if so what could bring the liberty we now seek?

What will bring a cease fire to the war we feel inside,

As the never ending quest, the pursuit of happiness,

As if it is only that or sadness we have to choose from?

What will it mean, what will it take 

To regain that peace? Could it simply be

The return to knowing undifferentiatedly?

To forget the labels, the divisions, the partial segmented intellect,

And return to the primal garden of our mind to where 

The golden apples grow,

Embody the existence of the sages who know 

That the trees, the apples, the women, the men, the snakes,

Are all parts of one great unity,

That we never walk alone, 

That we are not the prodigals, as we love to claim to be,

But more like the older siblings of the prodigal son,

And therefore, accordingly, all things are already ours,

That all things are already a harmoniously One, Oneness,

All the time, and all we have to do is 

Drop all of our nonsense and identify with it?

-jenn

(…dropping the nonsense would be the most difficult part… 😂)

 If you look beyond the veil

Of these people who live in constant strife

There is another form of life at war either one another 

These angelic beings or trans dimensionals, 

Whatever name you wish to assign

Malign and thrive on chaos too

They strive constantly in a great energetic disbursement akin

To canceling each others’ votes out

Over and over again 

World without end for them

But beyond that sphere

An adventure in peace awaits

Where lions and lambs truly grace 

The gate of heaven 

Fait Accompli 

For you for me

And it’s available now

For anyone who wishes to quit the resistance 

Follow the Tao

And study war no more

-jenn

 Iuventus Gratia Iuventutis

If you don’t like the world, you see,

Get down on your hands and knees.

There is a subculture just beneath,

And it is more real than you can see with your naked eyes. 

It’s a little closer to the root.

It’s complex and complicated.

It will blow your outdated theories and ideas into the ethernet.

Look at the butterflies’ wings under a microscope.

A whole life of mites is groping and mating, 

Migrating on the wing, itself,

As the butterfly takes flight.

You might want to take a step back and breathe,

Take a drink of your coffee,

And think,

Before you say this younger generation 

Doesn’t understand where you came from.

They do.

But do you know where they are going?

-jenn

 Flight Attendants 

In this world that hurtles through time,

Through space,

We see that we are headed someplace.

All of us,

Whether rich or poor, 

Or what side of the oceans we may call home,

The shade of our skin,

The depravity of our religions,

We all have the self-same destination:

Wherever this Earth may take us!

What we do as we take our flight

Is our business.

If we grumble

And judge our fellow passengers, 

If we complain that we have too much rain

Or not enough,

Find trivial things to entertain us,

It’s just because we’ve forgotten who we really are.

It’s because we fail to see

That we are in the company of greatness on this plane.

We don’t perceive 

That we may never get the chance 

To step into this same stream again. 

But if there’s ever anyone who does

Rise above all the clamour and roar,

Who becomes aware of the oneness of all things

Where This Planet is concerned,

Then the glamour therein

Becomes a heart to serve his or her fellow travelers,

To humbly attend to the needs and comfort of others.

Stewards and Stewardesses

Of the Fruits of the Earth,

The plants, the animals, the human beings,

The spirits that hover in between 

And the great mother, herself,

Who gave birth to us all,

Our homely earth,

Our great vessel that carries us on its back to our great destiny, 

Calls us to care, but not carelessly,

But to a service that stems from humility, acceptance, and correctness.

We are all called,

But not many will choose

To love and adore

During this brief span,

This cosmic journey

So out of our control

Across the skies.

Yay, verily,

Not many will choose

To be this type of flight attendants.

-jenn 

 Eagles soar,

But egos do, too.

The Sun is eclipsed,

And so is the opportunity for influence. 

Yet, Mistrust and Envy,

And all such other inferior elements, 

Will disperse 

If we can hold firmly to inner truth.

The planet is very out-of-control.

How do I know?

For I once held the same thoughts such as these,

Who riot plainly in the streets.

And smally, my thoughts believed: I’m only a part of a nation.

But, I’m one with the entire world, and even the cosmos.

How can I fix this?

Only by fixing myself.

And then offering my own self-transformation 

To the world, my family, the nation,

And even, the great cosmos.

-jenn

 Uneti — Connecting the Dots

I’ve been singing a song I learned to sing in Cherokee.

My great grandfather taught it to me

A long time ago.

I never knew what the lyrics meant,

Although I felt I got a sense of 

What the song was about.

I felt a sense of connectedness

When my great grandfather sang the song,

When he taught it to me and my brothers

In his backyard 

While we played croquet.

My great grandfather was a stickball player,

And he said he and his nephews sang that song.

It was about one of our forefathers 

Who was a stickball champion, 

Long before him.

But he didn’t know much Cherokee.

The teachers at the seminary 

Wouldn’t allow his mother’s mother,

Who went to school there

In Talequah,

To speak Cherokee,

Or tell the old stories,

Or sing any Cherokee songs.

Now we play the civilized game,

But while we hit the brightly colored, striped balls

Through the wickets with our matching, 

Brightly striped mallets,

We sang a song about a man who took a hickory stick

And wrapped it with deer hide,

And made a ball filled with horsehair,

And ran a violent roughshod over

The competitors in a game as important as war,

Most similar to what we know now as lacrosse or rugby.

They said my great grandfather played football once,

But not at school.

One night when he and his friends were home

From World War One,

They got drunk and then later on,

A neighbor’s dog

Drug a dead skunk up in the yard.

They started tossing it around and throwing it at one another,

When a rowdy game of football broke out.

But on that day, we played the civilized game

Called croquet,

And the wildest thing around

Was the voice of my great grandfather singing  loud,

The praises of the great Uneti.

Sometimes this song comes back to me,

And I instantly sing it all the way through.

Usually, it’s something I do 

When I’m alone, driving in my car

Down some hilly farm to market road.

My great grandfather taught it to me

And my two brothers

Over fifty years ago,

On a beautiful day in Lindsay, Oklahoma,

While we played croquet

On the perfectly manicured green grass of his sprawling back yard lawn,

Which he still mowed himself up on Murray Hill.

I still remember all of  that song,

And as I sang it, today,

I noted the repeated phrase “Uneti.”

And today, with the capabilities of my very civilized cell phone,

I was able to look it up,

And see the definition of that word is “Freckles.”

And so I don’t know now,

If what my great grandfather taught us is true.

Maybe the song is not about a great stickball champion.

But from what I can tell,

It would be a very Cherokee thing to do,

To offer such a humble, friendly, intimate nickname 

To someone great.

Like the name we called my great grandfather: 

“Gramp,”

When he was so kind as to get out there 

And set up all that croquet game

In the hot summer day

And play along with us,

When he was over eighty years old,

And teach us a song that his mother’s mother 

Had very quietly taught to him.

But Gramp didn’t know much Cherokee.

The teachers at the seminary 

Wouldn’t allow his mother’s mother,

Who went to school there

In Talequah,

To speak her native tongue,

Or to tell the old stories of creation,

Or sing any of the Cherokee songs.

-jenn