Metered Ramblings And this would be the page where I bare my soul. And since naked people deserve criticism, send it my way. Oh and if you happen to be a random publisher and want to send me a grand or two, by all means, click on that little e-mail link on the bottom of the screen... Otherwise, here are some poems I've created, some from personal experience, some out boredom, some just trying to capture all the random parts of life people live through.

And here are the poems I was brave/stupid enough to actually post:

• The Faerie Queen
• On My Skin
• What It's About
• To My Best Friend

And then a little prose to discredit the title of the page:

• Jen's Ramblings

And for the most recent addition, a section on my more academic works.  The first 'lil composition was actually my "thesis" while in Maastricht. But read to enjoy, because while it was an attempt at an intellectual dissertation, I did have a good bit of Europe left to see.  But I guess if I had to stay "at home" and write about something, sexuality wasn't such a bad topic!  The second one is an essay I wrote for Honors English, ended up published in some "Welcome to Comp I" textbook, where it can live out it's life successfully making students grumble under their breaths about having to read it.  I'm actually quite proud of that, even if the essay is just a bit mediocre in my opinion.

• Sex, Evolution, & Advertising
• One Star, Two Triangles

The Faerie Queen

Once there lived a faerie,
Made of air and light.
A little girl, quite the sprite �
Of nature gay and merry.

But occasionally full of sadness.
Surrounded by a world so big.
What could she do at the size of a fig?
Succumb to the world�s crazy madness?

See, no one believed she existed,
For faeries are hard to see,
And a faerie can be hard to be,
Goblin problems unable to be listed.

But this was the worst of her problems:
She spent many a lonely night crying,
Because her kind was dying,
And not from those nasty goblins!

For faeries are killed by unbelief,
At any moment she could go
Forever trapped in the world below,
Plagued by fear with no relief.

She was beautiful, even for her race,
And rightly so, for she was the queen,
But fate to her had been so mean,
And the strain stained her pretty face.

Faerie time was closing fast,
Knowledge she must receive,
On how to make man believe.
And quickly, she was hope�s last.

She was graceful, quick, and smart,
But did not possess all of her plan.
She needed a royal human man
With an open mind and seeing heart.

For he could not see her with his eyes,
But must first listen with open ears,
And learn to accept his fears
That belief in faeries was not all lies.
�Come to my magic glade,
For you are a human king,
You wear the signet ring.�
She pled before her cries could fade.

Enchanted by the faerie dust,
Now of her tiny size,
He knew faeries were not lies,
And spread the truth he must.

She explained all this to him:
Soon he would sleep and see dreams,
Waking remember it was as it seems -
Her true world and not a sleepy whim.

To the king she solemnly promised,
Should his kingdom ever be of need,
Come she would, and faeries lead.
But now he must part, not to be missed.

The king, as he was a good man,
Did what he should,
Told all he could,
As was the faerie�s plan.

The queen�s people were saved,
Reborn with the break of every dawn,
And at the births of babies and fawns,
Together all cheered and joyously raved.

But the Queen did not forget her oath.
As she watched her people dance and sing,
She subtly helped the human king,
For now she had duties to them both.

Suddenly she bolted, called to action,
For the king could come to harm,
Harm not of a magic charm,
But from his brother�s evil faction.

The king was at risk of a horrid death,
For the plot was to overthrow the throne,
Even if the cost was blood and bones,
For they desired the king�s last breath.


You see, the king had no heir,
In his death, his brother ruled,
And only for gold, don�t be fooled.
So there was not a moment to spare.

The Faerie Queen wove a magic spell,
The evil faction to stall,
For she had promised last fall
To keep the kingdom well.

Now in the form of a lady,
The perfect object for the king�s lust,
She did what she knew she must,
And became mother to the king�s baby.

It was a tiny infant boy,
A Human-Faerie child.
Half civilized, half wild,
And end of an evil ploy.

The boy would join the races,
Between the worlds form a link,
And the gap would shrink,
For he was of both places.

She ruled the Sprites,
And the king those of human kind,
Their child of both their minds,
And best yet, oblivious to goblin bites.

Because of the Faerie Queen�s son,
Human and sprites together resided,
For he led them together united,
Evil gone, chased away by faerie fun!

But alas, again the story almost ended,
Where are the people of the Faerie-child?
Banished to the imaginations of the wild,
Only by your belief can this be mended!
 

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On My Skin.

I smell you on my skin,
Away, but with me.
I taste you on my lips,
Here, but gone.

An affair of the senses,
A rush of intoxication,
What is this game we play?

Ragged and jagged,
Conversation runs,
Our lips made for meeting,
Speaking only for fun.

I smell you, I feel you,
But what do I know?
What air do you breathe,
What makes you you?

In my life,
Two great distractions.
One this security of love,
One this fearful passion.

The baby blues and the brown,
The rock and the river,
The known, the unknown,
The bourgeois and the laborer.

One loves me, one wants me.
Neither of them sees me,
Yet they both feel me.
But will they feel me stay?

The known, the devil known,
And the unknown, problems anew.
What is this lingering thought?
This unconscious desire?

It is all about depth,
But I�m drowning in the shallows,
And I don�t know the answer,
For I lack the question.

I don�t know the answer,
I don�t know where I went wrong,
But the problem is definitely
Your smell on my skin.
 

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What It�s About.

It isn�t about needing things,
It�s about wanting things.
It isn�t having what you want,
It�s about wanting what you have.
It isn�t about what you have,
It is about what you need.

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To My Best Friend:
Beside Me.

To all the memories:
The fun, the pain, and the tears.
Laughing at 3 a.m. until our sides hurt.
Smiling so hard our cheeks stung,
And crying so much our eyes would smart.

The conversations without words.
The worse without meanings
Being able to yell at you for nothing,
And listening to you rant for the same.

The bus trips, broken Bronco, and flat tires.
Dancing in the rain.
�Jumping� on the tramp.
Phone calls late at night.

The poems that only you understand.
The endless circles on Main.
Sharing EVERYTHING.
Basketball games & technicals.

Midnight curfews,
Dances in short skirts.
Bikinis in hot tubs.
Movies we didn�t watch.

Movies we did watch.
Setting up our friends.
Getting set up.
Breakups.

Sadly this page is coming to an end,
But our friendship is far from it.
Here is to more memories,
More tears, more laughs,
And a friendship that hopefully never ends.

Look ahead.
College, marriage, kids.
And through it all,
I hope I�ll always be able to look up and see
That red head standing there beside me.
 

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You know you are a writer when you write to express instead of simply communicate, when the sight of a blank page or an empty computer screen makes your fingers itch and your heart burn. And when you write.


You, my friend, are trapped in a cell. A lucky few of you are in cells so obvious as to have bars and cement floors. At least you can see the confines your life has been pushed into. But there are others. They work in nice white cubicles that release them only after they have sucked them dry of energy and ruined the chance that anything but the television will be seen for the rest of the night. But those aren�t the only restrictive white walls. No, some cells hide under the well accepted pretense that they are liberating or enlightening. We send our children off to colleges and pack them in dorm rooms, telling ourselves that they are free thinkers when in reality they have just traded mumbling the latest Friends catch phrase for a regurgitated version of whatever crap their favorite professor thought up while in his last opium haze.
Yet some of you still don�t see the cells. If you aren�t living in the florescent glow of the open sign at the local bar, you are probably reveling in the joy of being free of sin, set free by some wonderful religion that has coerced you into thinking that everything everyone else does is sin. And you will remain relatively sure of that conviction, because to think otherwise is tantamount to blasphemy. And getting very close to seeing the cell.
Now you wonder, �What is the answer? Where is this going?� Ok, you agree, you are in a cell, trapped by your job, your faith, your family, your addictions. Now where is the escape? How do you become one of the few that know the answers and that really think and live outside the box? You won�t because you, my friend, are still thinking inside the cell. You live in cells within cells within cells. Anyone that writes has something important to say, and anything repeated more than twice is fact. You still expect every essay to have a nice pat resolution, and you still think that doctors don�t party the night before surgery.
So writing an essay with just four paragraphs, minus the critical conclusion, would be tantamount to what? Bad writing? Says who? The people that define the cell you live in?

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