There is something so beautiful about your song,

The sound your living makes,

The deep gurgling rhythms of your breath in concert with your footsteps.

I am in love with singing it,

Like a child in a pile of leaves

That tosses them up

And shouts, "Happy New Year!"

And they flutter back down to me.

And you are more beautiful than even your song.

You're a fire of living flames

That dances over the burning wood

And rises like fragrant smoke above the coals.

And it is not what I see of you,

And it is not what I hear,

But by touching, I see and feel and know

How beautiful you are.

-jenn 

Mankind has shared its needles with the grain,

And now the whole wide world has been infected.

Natural immunity is weakened

By this and by insecticides.

Is there anything pure in the world today?

Only pure hatred, anger, and pure sickness.

And until inaction is achieved,

And the muddy waters settle

Without our interference,

Then and only then,

Will the universe be free to heal and be its perfect self again.

-jenn

My smart phone won't capitalize "Western Auto" automatically 

For me like it does other business chains,

Because western auto hasn't been around for a long long time.

But back before the days when phones were smart,

And before a Walmart, even in a neighboring town,

Could put you out of business,

There used to be Western Auto stores.

I remember people stopping in 

To borrow our phone

To make sure they had gotten everything from town

Before they headed all the way home,

Because there were no cell phones then, smart, or otherwise,

So only the calls could be labeled as such.

One woman had an "emergency," she said,

And needed to borrow our phone right fast.

I pretended to dust the register

So I could be close enough to hear.

"Charles," she said with a worried brow,

"Do you wanna have 'nanna puddin' for supper?"

Then after a very short pause,

"Ok, well I have the 'nilla wafers,

But I'll go back and get some 'nanners."

"Thanks, Hun!" She sang as she hung up the phone

And headed out the door.

Come ta think of it,

Maybe it wasn't Walmart that put us out of business,

Maybe it was the phone bill.

And now I'm starting to wonder 

Who Western Auto might have put out of business

Back in some other, more ancient day?
Someone, perhaps, that didn't have a phone?

But I know Walmart will never die,
But eternally will be capitolized, and capitalized by my smart phone,
Because they would never let anyone use their phone,
For any level of emergency,
Even a banana pudding emergency!

-jenn 

A book on sale for half price at Half Price Books

About a hundred philosophers of the modern era---

Of the hundred talked about, only two are women.

"Why is it," I wonder, "That our regarded philosophies

Seem to come mostly from men?"

Women grunt their philosophies out

Somewhere between a phantasmagoric orgasm (if they're lucky)

And delivering the placenta,

And if anyone happens to hear it,

It's rarely written down.

After the childbearing years are through,

Women express their philosophies 

By rolling their eyes a lot,

And groaning to themselves,

And occasionally passing a kidney stone 

Or a sharp, smart alec retort.

I remember as a high school girl, 

Working as a clerk in western auto,

And Jim and Lessie Baum came in.

"Look Ma," Jim said,

"Everythang on this table is half off!"

He chuckled at his funny play on our sign.

Lessie never paused or looked back,

But muttered under her breath 

As she dead headed straight for the garden hoses,

"Well you orta be on there, then."

Which makes me think that behind the great women philosophers of our day,

There may be some men, of some kind.
Following them through the store.

And, it makes me understand 

Why all the books on philosophy at half price books

Are half off.

-jenn 

I'm sweating like a cadaver at church,

Or is that a whore in Walmart?

Or maybe a thief at the morgue?

At any rate, I know I've said too much already,

And if I must repent for all my political incorrectness again,

I may never see daylight

Except by way of these prismatic

Stained glass windows

Until all my "Hell Mary's" are said.

But what I've come not to understand 

Is why only the intolerant 

Can be discriminated against,

And that's ok.

It's also fine to pre-judge what someone considers the bigoted mind and the closet homophobe.

But if I bully and hate and can't tolerate

Those deemed intolerant by me and you,

Doesn't that make me intolerant, too?

-jenn

She's not worried about it,

Or she doesn't care,

That she doesn't have the world's sexiest shade of hair.

She wears gray pants

And a brown plaid flannel shirt,

And instead of make up,

She wears dirt upon her brow

From hoeing in her garden

And pruning her fruit trees,

From sweating beneath her beekeepers hood,

And tending to her Hampshire sheep.

They keep the shrub-brush nibbled down for her,

Which is more than the world,

With its sexiest shades of hair 

Has ever offered,

And they are rather partial to her muslin colored flannel shirt,

And she, to the idea of the Golden Fleece 

She's found, that the world's forgot.

-jenn

One tree has turned,

And the others fold their branches,

Narrow their eyes,

And shake their heads.

"It's not even gotten cold yet," they scoff

And hang on to their green.

"Maybe this year the frost won't come," they tell themselves.

And as the wind blows their tops around,

They peer this way and that and look for signs.

I have turned with that one tree

Because I see its wisdom.

It seems like I have given up,

Given out, that I wallow in doubt,

But I have deep faith, like roots.

I believe in you and love and life,

And I can see

That Winter is coming.

-jenn