Under Standards 

These are just words that drop

On your window pane tonight,

But someday everything will change,

And it will rain down on your face.

Will you forget to close it?

Or will you step out through it,

Into the true unknown 

With windblown hair,

Under the trees at night

While it storms,

And feel the lightning bugs that grace the arbor?

These are just words that drop upon your window pane tonight,

But someday you may learn to speak Chinese,

Or better yet,

You may learn to cast your spell,

And  conversate with me?

Come out and play,

And let the day begin at dusk,

Until the musk of dew distills,

And all our ills are gone,

Til , yay, verily, we can rain

Upon the window panes in the village,

And see if anyone else can understand.

-jenn

 Wood Thou

A Lover would keep me warm ,

So safe from harm,

And keep this cardiac pain away,

Stay the wolves as the smoke from a fiery flame.

A Lover would hold me

While I sleep.

Kindle a silent dream with me,

A Lover would.

Hold my hand,

A Lover would.

Understand.

So understoodly would I be,

Would I had my Lover here with me.

-jenn 

 A silent history exists

In the midst of ancient statues.

Empty, staring, hollow eyes

That cannot see,

Stone mouths with stony muted tongues

That cannot say

What the answers to the mysteries may be.

Where is the Holy Grail?

Where is the stone where Jacob laid his head

And had the dream of the ladder up to heaven?

Where is the mystical tree of life?

The city of Shambala?

Where is the Incan city made of gold 

Called El Dorado?

Only the statues and the shadows know,

And maybe the ancient pharaohs,

Whose ancient remains lie quietly in

Their brightly painted sarcophagi,

Screaming silently from deep within their ornately carved, treasure laden tombs.

And only the pristinely cut hieroglyphs 

Carved on the granite obelisks

In stately grammatically correct form cartouche 

Render the Royal Names,

If only we could correctly translate it.

-jenn

 Fountain of Youth 

I dip into the water at night,

Like a water snake,

After the eyes of day have closed,

And no one’s here to see.

The cool ripples of the gentle windblown waves,

Here, in this deep,freshwater lake

Revive me.

My ironclad scales pull tight with glee.

My youth returned

To slither and swim.

My narrow forked tongue a-quiver,

Flickers under the pale moon rising.

I am refreshed by the moonlit waters.

Now I float freely, on my back.

My hands outstretched,

I lose myself in the chasm between 

The stars so far,

So high up in the velvet sky,

And those so near,

Here in the satin waters.

 Holy Smoke 

The ritual bonfire burns.

Even in the rain,

The smoke smears down.

We dance in circles around the flames

While drums en-trance us.

There is no sky today,

Only earth.

Deep entanglements untie

As we dance and finally feel the truth:

There is a sky!

And we are in it.

The smoke is staying here to dance

With us, circling around the flames.

It doesn’t know the steps,

But then again it has no feet.

It watches us to learn the dance.

We watch it to learn to fly,

Even in the rain now pouring.

We smear down.

Our fingertips try to grip some unknown time,

Some unknown place

That Smoke calls home.

But we can’t go,

And it can’t stay,

And to think otherwise would be

A great departure from the Truth.

But we maintain the ritual dance,

And we still smell the remnants of the smoke

In our living, breathing nostrils,

And we understand the mighty dimensions, 

And the holy space that joins them

Where all things meet,

Where all things are True,

And all things are One,

And there is no more separation.

-jenn

 Clean Dirt

I try to get dirty but I can’t 

The garden dirt is clean dirt

I wanted to smear my own campaign 

Sling mud upon myself 

To understand our candidates 

In this strange political system

But even when I took a glob

Of soil and wiped it on my face

It wouldn’t stick

Because gardening is clean business 

And garden dirt is clean 

-jenn

 Acceptance 

Mother Earth receives her own,

The rain, the snow, the bitter herbs,

The leaves, the seeds, the trash, the dung,

The dead, the living,

Old and young.

All is one thing to her:

To be received.

Receptive is the way to be,

Accepting of yourself,

And all things and everybody as they are.

Then the beams from starlight gleams upon you,

And in such state of receptivity,

The Creative weaves on a magic loom 

A magic destiny,

Beyond what you would have forged for yourself,

And all that’s really left for us to do now

Is accept it.

-jenn

 The Wandering Caravan of Nothingness 

The glory is: This is the glory!

The time with friends who love and understand us,

(The very few along the way.)

The pets we love and lose,

And sometimes, we find them again.

They were having a good time by the swimming pool all along.

The strangeness and beauty of family,

The ties that bind,

The trophies we come to see as phonies

And try to flush them down totem holes,

The tears, like wine, we drink that flow,

As we discover, 

The glory is: This is the glory!

I wanted to write a poem that would make people cry,

And a voice inside said, “Cry it!”

And I dreamed a dream that night

Of the great wandering caravan of nothingness,

The band of gypsy life I had joined.

And I cried as I wrote this,

Great healing tears of understanding 

And sadness and joy,

But I have tried,

And I have found

That I can’t write that poem quite yet.

-jenn

 I wanted to know how it felt to be a flower,

So I went out naked into my backyard

And let the cold, cold rain fall on me for an hour,

And when the shower stopped,

The sun emerged from behind the clouds

And shined it’s warmth on me.

I grew 24 centimeters,

And my toes took root,

And my feet are now

A beautiful shade of darkest brown,

And I’m shooting out branches and shoots of green leaves,

And I may not know still

What it is to be a flower,

But I’m starting to see

What it is to be a tree these days.

-jenn

 Truth Truth?

Truth is not hard and fast.

Truth takes the path of least resistance.

We call it a white lie,

But it is also black.

Truth is not hard and fast,

But soft and slow.

It fills in the low places first,

With love, like water,

And washes all the hurts away.

All is Truth in Tai Chi,

And everything is a Great Tai Chi.

Truth will meet you where you are,

Flutter beside you.

It takes your heart and flies up,

Which ever way that is.

It gallops and thunders and stamps it’s feet,

But even as it does, it’s grace is sufficient 

And it’s exciting to feel this accepted,

Surrounded by the exquisite everyday existence 

Of essential Truth.

Yin and Yang 

Are not the same,

But neither are they different,

And all is Truth in Tai Chi,

And everything is just a great Tai Chi.

-jenn

 Proof of Income 

He was self-employed,

And it was difficult for him to get a loan.

Most banks required two years of W-2’s

To prove one’s income,

And that, for him, was hard to do.

For his ‘job,’ as he saw it,

Was to drive around the city all day

And spy someone texting while driving,

Or otherwise distracted by their phones,

Or ones who had crying babies on board in their backseats,

And he would swoop into their lanes, 

Just in front of them ahead of a yellow light,

And then come to a sudden, screeching halt,

So they might rear-end him.

It wasn’t technically insurance fraud,

But he had gotten away with this eighteen times 

During the past two years,

And he had made a fortune

Collecting checks for medical bills,

And car repairs and “mental anguish,”

And also selling, on the side, all the pain medicine he was prescribed,

And, not to mention, taking bribes from drivers who begged him

Not to turn them in again.

He had gotten so good at this, 

He had time to sit around

And try to dream up a good way he might now

Cheat the system of the banks,

So he could enjoy the benefits 

Of home ownership,

A first time buyer program,

With maybe even a lavish two-car garage 

So he could have a place to hide both his cars,

One for his brand new red Ferrari,

And the other, to park his trusty, rusty banged up jalopy in.

Well, I’d like to cheat the system, too,

But my version of it only consists 

Of finding a way to eat all the candy I want 

And not get diabetes. 

We all have our own priorities, 

And probably none of them are very good,

But maybe they could be,

If we could somehow forego

Our shallow worldly ambitions for Tomorrow,

And do, or not do, as the case may be,

Something beautiful for the subtle reality

Of the Oneness of the Universe Today.

Ahhhhhhh the Limitless Possibilities ...

-jenn

 Modern Day Asclepius 

A little girl went to a construction site with her dad.

He had gotten her a pink hard-hat,

And she had that on,

And while he got busy supervising, 

She discovered his bullhorn.

She took it out into the yard

And made a big sign:

“Say something through the bullhorn

For only one dollar!”

And soon a big line had formed.

She made quite a lot of money that day,

More than she’d ever made at her lemonade stand.

Everybody had something to say

And one dollar to say it loud.

I guess there’s a never ending supply 

Of us folks who are proud to pay

To have our say

And our five minutes of fame.

-jenn