JEN'S WRITINGS
At The End of Each Day. There�s a map on my face. It tells the story of a million different places, And a million different times,But who am I? And where do I live, In how many separate worlds do I reside. There�s something I fear From which I cannot hide, Even if I�m crushed under the rising tide. It wills still continue on long after I die. There�s a force that brings me closer to both opposing sides. One day they must collide, And I feel this will happen Long before I die. But it�s not an easy thing to feel, It�s a deep, remorseful sadness That makes me want to cry. If I choke back the tears I no longer feel alive. But if I cry out, I�d best close my mouth and cover my eyes. A folly of words Uttered and foiled. A folly of madness came long before the fall. Where will we be at the end of the day? Lost on a hilltop, lowering our gaze? Or if shepherds come running through fields where sheep graze Who will be the first and the last to give praise. Who will be fools, sinners or saints? Murderers and madmen once lost in a haze Leave beggars blinded, then turn them away, But nobody knows where the small children play, Or the storekeeper�s inventory that day. There�s something very dark and it follows me around. It�s not the past to which I�m bound, It�s not pity or shame, But a silence that follows and resounds. So peaceful it is, So tender and sweet, Now lay your head back And go to sleep. The Light that Touches Us. There�s a strange, mysterious laughter In the hallway. There�s a light shining through the door, A light we cannot touch, And yet somehow it touches us. There�s an image shifting in the shadows, Fear in the eyes of a stranger, And love that hurts so much. There�s a feeling of perpetual awe And a silence in her touch.. I was stationed at the crossway Somewhere between life and death, Watching a small child running Away from a corner to my left. He turned into and alley A world between heaven and hell, I was watching like a prisoner, That had fallen under a spell, Silent as his feet hit the pavement, Trapped as his soles rose and fell. There was a dog that was howling in the background, Angered by a strange ladies call, And a man that was running into a store Gasping for his breath. There was a woman lurking in the window Waiting patiently for her death, And a man driving into a store-front Taking his final breath. There was a squeal of joy Coming from a small child�s mouth, But it ended abruptly in silence. There was an old lady on the sidewalk, With a bag in her hand And a cat jumping over a fence. There was a long and suspenseful silence, As the old lady fell to her death. I closed my eyes for a moment, And looked back to find nothing was left. Just an image of chalk on the sidewalk. A quick, composite sketch, Some laughter and another prolonged silence, And the sun shining in from the west. There was an old man drinking near a railroad track, Next to a man in a hood. Slurring his words to the passengers, But his words never did much good. His spirit was growing weaker, And his eyes were growing dim, But those who understood didn�t care much, And those who cared never truly understood. An old lady sits with her needlepoint Watching the yarn rise and fall. There are several stitches left undone But she never catches them all. She keeps count of every mistake that she makes, Unravels more yarn from a ball. And everything else she watches, Casts shadows that dance on her walls, And those shadows they fill in the silences, But she never hears their calls. When you see the light in the shadows Shining down from above. Approach it very reverently, And follow it with love. China sungod. The sun was so lovely. She tattood you Blue In the Starlight. Gazing over Majestic Imperious White washed Nights Wishbones Bursting Over a young girl�s blight Divinity lush Upon the Lair Of the Lyre�s Flight These eyes I see through Are not my own These are the eye Of the Dreaming CrowA Cloud. (1985) The cloud high up in the bright blue sky Wanderer of the earth below. Like a consequence of the sun. It�s white attractive shape Will make the mind mingle in curiosity, But to the mind of knowledge It will vanish in despair. Mother�s Wake. I see you vividly The sun is so bright, And I�m troubled by The lights in your eyes By highlights and the skylights Of our dappled world. I drink the color in Seeing mother As a separate entity anew. I�m troubled by the way These images fortify. All that lusters fades And yet nothing stands still It leave me troubled by The words that we till. When the sky becomes Emblazoned with darkness And waves touch the moon Is it time to sleep Or to fear what wakes us soon. Wounded Crows. Wounded crows dance about on the edge Of a mirage. Maxing out the beat Of a concrete rhythm. Plentiful scrapscapes, And feeding mechanisms Pass along the highway in a blur. Watch the egression of the one legged crow As she flies through the eagle In a gesture of show. The beautiful maelstrom Of the one-legged crow. Her spirit pulls her through The muck of her slough. She is cunning like a stoic Patrolling her trough, Patterning her twill. She is of one Cheetah foot And an undying will. The epiphany Of a most peculiar ordinance. The symphony of the cacophony. Theophanic gestures That make me still And speak to the eye of my eye And the heart of my heart Pulsating in spasms In the center Beyond the thrust of the storm. She teaches me the freedom Of a one-legged soul, With the spirit of tenfold She entrusts me to myself But in the moment of my departure, She becomes the snow. I did not know How cold it could get out here. But the great waterway Inside of me still rushes on It's force moving foward Within me Pulling me further into worlds I did not know. Panther. Jet black stabs Across the sepulcher in brush Of the redwood tree, dogged and shrubbery Boned and throbbed like The rabbit pulsating to be released Of the dance we prolong. Such robbery sings a tell tale song Of the final moment Before the heart stop throbbing Pumping And, yet, robbing Us of sleep. The only release From a death as deep as life Is the secret the panther Living in obscurity keeps. Rebirth. Dead bodies lay sprawled out across The layer of earth that is peeled forth By the sun. Their spirits dance into the other worlds, Leaving behind crimson tears. Crow watches the sunset Over skeletal remains. She waits for a rebirth. One rises out of the lake and into the sunrise. Parable Eye. Not just the weeping You find out there in the fields. Parable eye. Circumvent the world Through silent words Labyrinth skull. Lost slumber And the pillaging of her efficacious dysprosium I plunder her rare and divine Sacrificial spine. Lopsided ambiguities And lidless orifices Walking in the wild Of the wizard. Chamber mind. Millions of images Like shadows Locked behind Ephemeral light. They mix and melt and mesmerize. The internal sight Of native revolt. Wars and shellshock And silence you seek Beyond a vestige of the orthodox The natives wander from nativity Into a new world order. Spiritual conquests and broken jolts Metabolized by the minds eye. Angel iris penetrates The winged unicorns flight. Demon makers and effigy idols Make humble abodes for weary coyotes. Realms we will recognize and run to. Watch the fire dancing me to dream. Reveries on the house. Her limbo lair. I dwell not there. Jaded and lonely species Inquiring minds seeking solace in Taoist revelations. Gaia�s children slain under the weight Of her motherly nature. Kharmic gestures And feisty little gecko�s whispering words of a final strife. Recombinant smiledons and terabirds Wait for lost life. Cognizant and contrite Working world elite Dreaming up new vistas unite. A bone hearted sexual innuendo Open-ended strike. We deploy tragic fabled workers And evade The true nature Of allegory. Are you lonely in the night? Take me to the eagle eye Show me to the source, Beyond her shoulder And lead me to the doorway Of the succubus. I am ready for the wild. A hesitant child no longer Lost within recondite resolutions. She is a fish That swims out of water And into thin air. Fire surrounds me And surfaces beneath the earth But we are not yet bare, Ghost ships swim to the horizon like Zombies rising out of the flesh. The earth without paradigm Before her boundless, effulging skies Circumvent the chamber mind Parable eye. My Drum. Oh my silent and sacred drum You�re voice so strong and deep. You�re sweet low rumbling hum Makes me collateral To the vibrations of the sun. Oh my verdant And upright drum. You carry me off To underwater worlds Held within a sea Of unbroken meridians I am no longer lost In the obsidian For I am at one. At one with my drum. Earthworm. The sea obscures the colors of the sky Thrown across our receptacle Of spacious sunlit underworlds. Lurking beyond the dark foreboding planet Of doom where Children dream in gloom. Stepping stones and carpeted cadavers Stretched across a silver moon. Earthworms and capers drinking Drowsily in a boon. The extra terrestrial Wondering while he wanders Throught the world sauntering slowly And holding his breath. War Hero. I see too many fabrication To be fit for illumination. Layering the lies upon lies Of my craven identity. Seethed and shattered Like a lineal mask broken I want out from behind This viel of my deception. Set the pyre ablaze In my stolen empire Yet to gaze out Into the sun set of my fury Have I left the fields to die. The Old Man and the Goldfish. An old man stood before the ocean fishing. He was not a fisherman and he was not a beach bum. He was just an ordinary old man who had retired from years of labor in the fields. One day when he was fishing he saw something orange fluttering in the water. It looked almost like a goldfish, but it was glimmering too much to be a goldfish. When he realized this he wondered if it was gold. He paused and realized he had never had anything that expensive in his life because he never took any chances and so he decided now was the time. He took a deep breath and plunged headfirst into the ocean diving for the gold. When he reached the bottom where he had seen the gold there was nothing there, and he realized he was drowning. He had never been a greedy man. He had always been a pauper, but it seemed that greed would be the death of him. He cried. When he was crying he saw a golden wing fluttering from the corner of his eye in the vast blue ocean. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he was thrown into ecstasy by the sight of it�s exquisite beauty. He felt lost and discombobulated in his new state of mind. When his vision cleared he saw the most beautiful goldfish he had ever seen swimming before him. She had eyes like a sweet young girl he had loved in his youth, and she smiled. He said, �Help me. I�m at the bottom of the ocean drowning and I will probably die here.� She said, �Oh, yes indeed you are at the bottom of the ocean, but you are not going to drown.� �What do you mean I�m not going to drown?� he cried. �My people are stuck here and you have been brought here to show us the way to freedom. We know who you are. You are the dreamer, and you have dreamed your way to our world. Now tell us what direction we need to get out of these waters and be free.� He pointed west towards the shore. The magical goldfish said, �Okay. Hold on to my tail and I will swim you to shore.� They swam past the coral reefs which were now grey and cold and lifeless and as they swam past them they became alive with beautifully resplendent colors and fish that were there before the coral reefs disappeared many years before reappeared. When they finally reached the shore the man seemed pale and lifeless. A surfer saw him and called the lifeguard for help. The lifeguard was a beautiful woman and came to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation. When he woke up he was still coughing and gasping for breath. Something came out of his mouth. It looked orange. He spit it up back into the sand. Many years passed and the ocean began to slip further and further back from the coastline and when he came back a tree had grown where the man had spit something orange into the sand. Every year the tree gives birth to new trees. That is why we have forests. They were brought here by the humble old men who do the field labor and sit in the sun fishing for fun but never seem to amount to much of anything at all. How the Crow Turned the Tables. There was once a bald-headed Eagle. He always had the top of the skies and because of this he could see all of the world below. When you go to the very top of the skies you find the world where the sky spirit lives. That is where the eagles go. Then there was a crow, and he wanted to visit the sky spirit to get some information that his people needed to survive because there were many floods on the earth and many people wer dying. She felt her reason for visiting the sky spirit was a good one, but the Eagle didn�t think so. The Eagle thought that Crow was not fit to see the sky spirit and so he blocked her entrance. Crow could no get to the sky spirit because it was the Eagle�s say so. One day when crow was flying over the flooded earth she saw a mirror in the sky, and she slipped through the mirror and went to the world where spirit lives. This was very different than the high heaven�s. as a matter of fact, through this crack in the sky she found the world below. A world composed of pure spirit, but she really need to get to the sky spirit and so she flipped the underworld upside down so that the heaven was below her and the earth was on top. As she was heading down towards the sky spirit now that everything had been turned upside down she saw eagle walking on the ground. Eagle was still blocking the entrance to sky spirit, but he didn�t realize. He though he was only walking around on the ground and that the sky spirit was in the heavens and he did not know that, because of crow, now the sky spirit was down below. She snickered to herself and said, �I can see you are walking on the ground now and I�m the one flying above you.� The Eagle said, �Why yes crow. I see that�s so.� She said, �Well, if you don�t stop me, I�m going to reach the high heavens to get to where sky spirit lives.� When she sasid this, Eagle, who considered crow unfit for doing just about anything worthwhile, flew up above her to block her entrance into the heavens and just then Crow scooted down below to where sky spirit lived. Sky spirit gave her a recipe to bring to the people so they could walk on the water when the next flood came. Crow flew out with the medicine and as she was flying up the world flipped back to normal so that she was flying down again and when she reach the bottom of the earth Eagle who was still walking around on the earth thinking it was the sky that was flooded. Crow was the onlyu one that could save the Eagle with the recipe she got from sky spirit, but the Eagle who thought Crow was worthless would no entrust her to anything and drowned. That is why to this day there are so few eagles and so many crows. The Coyote that Made Deep Water. There was once a coyote that traveled back and forth across the border in search of food and shelter, but he did not need water because he lived along the California coastline. But one day while he was traveling he saw something in the distant it looked small and furry and brown. What could that be he said. There was a sudden movement and then he saw something flutter and exclaimed �that must be a rabbit to� coyote was very hungry and so he decided to pounds after this meal. But as soon as he came up and it, it stood up and he realized how great and mighty it really was . he realized it was a large bear eating a fish, that had originally been haunched over the water but now he was standing up near a tree. But the beare was almost as large as the tree. When coyotes realize this he dove into the water to save himself and because he couldn�t swim he drowned. He was not the first coyote to pull such as stunt. That is why when people go to the beach they will sometimes noticed that the ocean floor drops off and becomes steeper. That is where coyote brought the earth down with him trying to climb back out of the water but his head was too heavy and he drowned. The old man in the cave He stood over a large hole in the earth starring as soup. One day a young man made his way up the hill towards the cave. He had a satchel filled with gold tbut he had no food or water. He was hungry and his feet were sore and his back was weary, but he could see somebody was at the foot of the hill and went in search of help. When he got to the top of the hill the old man who saw him approaching and greeted him. But you like some soup?� said the old man A young man looked into the hole in the earth that the man was stirring and hesitated. He did not like the look of what was being cooked but it smelled very good and he was very hungry and knew better than to let his judgments get the best of him. The young demand said, �Why yes. may I please have abowl.� The younger man got a bowl and began to drink. The broth was more delicious and savory than any other broth he had ever tasted so he got another bowl of soup. He ate and ate until he was full. When he was finished eating he was so satisfied that he turned to the man and said � here in my satchel is some of the finest gold in the world. Let me give you some.� The old man accepted graciously. He looked at the beautiful gold and somehow beautifully it glimmered in the sunlight. He had never seen anything like it before. It was very beautiful but he certainly couldn�t put it in his soup., so he melted it down and made a great golden spoon. One day while he was stiiring his soup, the spoon fell all the way down the hole. The hole was an endless hole leading to the sky. In the sky there was a moon and stars. One of the stars was very bright and gave off a blue light, and when the golden spoon landed on the star it it melted and the star became a bright yellow color like gold. The star grew: so large that the people were able to take a fire down from it, so that everybody could make a soup as delicious the man in the cave. They now call that golden star the sun. Lizard The Walker. My name is lizard the walker. I walk around for a while, and then I stop and stare. I stare deeply into the crevices of a desert rock. Inside of the rock dwells a little caveman, but the caveman can't see the lizard the way the lizard sees him. The caveman just feels that there's something out there watching him, but he doesn't really know what it is. He darts around touching everything with his club as he explores, and then he spies a prickly pear. He takes to sticks and picks up the prickly pear, and then he uses the two sticks to lacerate the flesh of the prickly pear. He watches it bleed as he tears it open, but he can't eat it. He can't eat it, because he's got a gash inside of his mouth that is bleeding. He dies near the cactus staring up at the great wide blue sky. I watch him die, but I can't do anything to help him because I'm a lizard, and he is just a man that lives inside of a rock. I can only watch. Some days I grow weary watching because the things I see are very sad, but I do not cry because I understand that crying only makes things worse. I just walk. I walk away with new awareness. The Crow and The Spider's Flies. There was once a young woman who thought that she could fly, so she gathered up all of the crow feathers she could find and made a pair of bird wings and took off on her journey for the sky. She felt that in her new founbd freedom just about anything could happen. She ffelt a new sense of magic present in her life and new blood pulsing within her heart. One day a miserly old spider came along and like so many others in the world he was jealous of her freedom and her happiness and her inner light. He said, �You are not a crow!You are just a worthless whore!� he did everything in her power to show the girl that she wasn�t really flying, and let the flies out of the web to attack her. It almost destroyed the girl, but she took the flies one by one and threw them back at the man and the flies ate him alive. One day she came across and beautiful crow flyihng across the sky. She said, �Hello brother crow. My nbame is she Crow. Come with me and I will show you where to find the choicest meats and seafood from the sea.� The crw said, �I�m on my way back to easy. Come with me.� She followed him for days, when suddenly she remember what the creepy old spider had told her and she cried, �I can�t fly. I�m not really a crow. I�m only a human being.:� The crow said, �that�s not ture. You are a crow just like me.� She began to fall, and when the crow saw her falling he flew to save her. He lifter her up over the ocean towards the mirror in the sky and said, �Look and see.�She looked at the mirror in the sky and saw her crow spirit staring back at her and that is why even though she moved about the earth on two feed the crows often flew close because they could see that deep down where her spirit was she too was a crow that could fly to the highest skies. And sometimes when you stand before the ocean you can look up and if you squint your eyes just right you can see the reflection of waves rolling through the sky just before the world where the clouds live. That is where the crows go so they can be reborn as humans to bring the light and the love down from the sky and into this world of sickness, death and dying, and that is why some humans go back to the water when they die. White Man the Crow. There was once a cave made of red rock. Some people rose up from the red rock cave and lived there for many years. In these rocks there lived a middle-aged man who called himself �Crow�. He wasn't originally from there. He was originally from theHe pretended to be an artistic connoisseur and because he was a highly skilled entrepreneur he grew in status. He told many stories fabricating the truth and most people believed the stories he would spin; But there was a young woman and she did not like his stories because she could see his intentions were evil and she exposed him for the liar that he was. He was enraged with the young woman and devised an elaborate scheme to destroy her, and because she was already a scorned woman nobody cared if she lived or died. He set up a ladder leading to the sun and told everybody that whoever could climb to the top wrung and touch the sun would prove themselves worthy as human beings, but whoever could not reach the sun would fall to their deaths. The young woman hade been persecuted all of her life but she knew she was a worthy human being, and was eager to prove it so that she could find her proper place in the tribe. A place where she coulde be of use. She began to climb, climb and climb and just as she was about to reach the top of the ladder to touch the sun, the man that called himself �Crow� used his sharp fangs to cut the rope that was attached to her safety rope and the young woman fell to her death. Nobody really cared that she had died because she did not matter, but she was not completely forgotten. The sky spirit remembered her and the tribal people were punished for their negligence. They were given winter and now that they were cold they really needed to find somebody to reach the sun so that they could have fire to keep warm when it snowed, but as more people fell to their deaths the people of the red rock realized that the man who called himself �Crow� was really an evil spider spinning a web of deceit for all to see and because his actions had caused the death of an important member of the the tribe he was finally dposed. He was forced to leave the red rock and live on the white sands near the ocean and after many years of living there his skin became parched white like the parched white sand, but his eyes were as black as coal. One day the young woman�s spirit rose out of the ashes and her crow spirit flew through the sky. The people saw it happening. She was so furious from all of the suffering she had been through that she flew all of the way to the top of the sky and she brought down the fire from the sun and when she landed the people of red rock finally realized she was a crow. When they saw that she held the mysteries of life and death in her belt they honored and revered her. The people of the red rock still sit around the fire brought to the earth by the crow singing songs and telling tales and jokes about �White man the Crow, who was never really a crow but a spider that took the life of a scorned woman who rose from the ashes of death to become a crow. |