Why Don’t You Worry About What You Like To Worry About And I’ll Worry About What I Like To Worry About (Working Title)

Damn Moon (epitaph)

The beautiful trees with their beautiful leaves

Are reaching so hopelessly for the heavens.

The mixture of greens , from yellow-marine

To maroon-piu-spruce and brown pine cones is dazzling.

The sky so blue, it’s unique haute couture,

Offers a strange unattainable splendor,

Yet everything’s peace, til the moon comes soaring over,

Like a golf ball someone has just pealed off down the fairway.

Damn that moon! Ruining this pastoral, postcard setting

With its heavy, uranium-titanium smell!

Just something else to worry about,

With all of its phases, with its very silent, silent-treatment pout.

“Say something, Moon! I’m worried about you!”

“I’m worried about YOU!” I hear someone shout from behind me.

“Well hey!” I say, “That’s find and dandy!

I’m a “live and let live” kind of member of humanity,

So go ahead and worry about what you like to worry about,

And I’ll worry about what I like to worry about, too.......

Okay?”

-jenn

 I’ve got a million typos to offer

And a little bit of skin

Let’s start the world all over

Go back to where we want to begin 

And do

The sun says yes

It’s coming up again 

There is a kiss in here somewhere, she says

Digging through her cluttered purse 

You know a nurse is always ready for anything 

But a mama is ready for everything 

I’ll keep pouring, you say “when.”

The sun says yes

It’s coming up again

I had one baby

And I never knew

I could love another

But then I had two

And my heart grew twice the size that it had been

And then I had you.

And my head grew a yang 

And my tail asked, “Yin?”

The sun says yes

It’s coming up again

My heart has grown

While my brain has shrunk

And I’m happy with my ears of tin 

Would you like to start all over with me just now?

We could re-write the script.

(But I like the typos.

Let’s leave them in.)

-jenn

The sun says yes

It’s coming up again

 Yes....

I had a lovely day.

Lovelier still, 

Because I have felt your beating heart

Beneath the words you’ve quilled to me.

There is love breathing between the lines.

There is something true that shines

As a reality we share,

If even only in this parallel universe we care about,

Known as Poem.

And so we meet,

In that rare air,

And speak the proper, common tongue,

As Latin, once, the universal language,

Of Law and Letters, and Science was.

Here, our hearts, yearning to be understood,

Speak so sweet.

We meet at the gate,

Stand between the lines of  the demilitarized zone,

At the heart,  the universal parallel,

And whisper our love,

Where the language of Poetry and Poem meet to say,

“I hope you had a lovely day.”

💙💙💙💙💙

-Lady Blue

 Love Never Fails, But A Smartphone Will

My cell phone doesn’t like you.

It auto corrects the sweet things I try to tell you

To something off, or disgusting,

Or something strange that will make you question me.

I try to tell you that “I can,”

And my phone changes it to “Ivan,”

And then you suspiciously ask me

Who the hell Ivan is.

Or I want to say “I’m feeling rock bottom,”

And my smartphone changes “rock” to “Rick,”

And you tell me you’re sick of hearing 

About my old boyfriends and

You certainly don’t want me touching their derrières.

I apologize and get it all smoothed over,

And you say you love me,

And I try to say I love you too, and

I want to refer to you as “Lover,”

But my phone says, “I love liver, too.”

I don’t know why,

But my cell phone 

Doesn’t like you.

I try to say that you are “cosmic,”

But as I hit send,

I see my cell phone has somehow changed “cosmic”

To “cute and amicable.”

And once again,

Love has failed,

And has been foiled

By a mere smartphone.

-jenn

 I’ve had this urge.

I think I will,

Speak only in poems,

And otherwise, be still and quiet.

There’s a riot in my head

That no one seems to understand,

But sometimes at one’s leisure,

One can read in black and white 

And not be blinded by the color of the violent thoughts.

When I rage in scarlet screams,

And streams of tears run down my face,

It’s better on the written page.

Or when I tear the petals blue,

And throw them down upon the shallow grave,

It’s less painful to think of the abstract hue,

Rather than witness the bruised bouquet 

And the recently upturned ground.

And to read it safely from behind one’s desk,

One has time to ponder the consequences 

Of words that don’t even need to be said.

One need not speak, or hear, so shrill

A message thudding, fresh from the kill,

Or being killed, and thus, I have the urge.

I think I will,

Only, and, from now on,

Speak in poems.

-jenn

 My language teacher

Rolls her r’s

And properly conjugates the verbs,

Declines the nouns in perfect Castilian,

And everything is going great 

Until the end

When she opens the class for questions. 

Some boys giggle

And ask her how to say some words

That aren’t considered bad in English,

Unless they’re used in their slang capacity, 

(Such as “knockers,” “clap,” or “nuts”)

Because they’ve pulled this trick before 

And gotten away with it.

She may not understand just what they’re up to,

But she has the good sense to ignore their questions today,

And asks if anyone ELSE would like to know 

How to say something in Spanish.

I think of Spain.

Sometimes I can still taste 

The orange blossom honey 

You spooned onto my torta.

I might not understand, either,

What you’re up to,

But I have the good sense not to ask

How to say, “where are you?” in español.

-jenn

 Craneflies

What if we, like the cranefly,

Only last another day?

Who will be around to say

That we were here?

So, then, let’s just hang around

With our legs all upside down.

If all the blood goes to our heads,

It might be better.

For if we go to bed together, 

We may mate for life.

And if we propagate,

Then our seeds,

Our descendant craneflies, 

Might live eternally,

Telling all the common world 

Our privy secret,

The rich, rare, very uncommon,

Extraordinary love we’ve found to share.

-jenn