First you are young
And then you are not
The life that you own is
The life that you bought.
You can’t return it
Like a dress that’s too small
You own it, you wear it, that’s all.
You have to make it fit
My, oh my, what a mess!
It’s torn and it’s tattered
Like an old favorite dress.
Repair the torn out seam
Sew on a missing button
Because once it mattered
It’s an easy decision.
It’s your life, it’s your dress
You own it, you wear it, that’s all.
by Jeanne Marie
Jennifer Jean
They never tied the cord when
they tore you from my womb.
We are flesh woven together
like yarn on the weaver’s loom.
I’ve never cut you loose
connected by bloody strands,
I hide them deep in my soul
as you push away my hands.
A separate fragment of myself
removed and set apart.
Could it be that a piece of you
was left inside my heart?
by Jeanne Marie
Eighteen hundred miles from here there’s a place that she calls home, but it isn’t.
She left it behind long ago, this gypsy’s child who could not deny her urge to roam.
On the distant shore she still calls home there’s ocean air she longs to breathe…
the endless blue she aches to see, winds that howl all the way to her heart,
”Come home to me.”
When her longing for the ocean overwhelms her senses, she goes.
Sand castles that take so long to build; yet, never meant to last.
Waves that crash ice cold, slap against her legs, deliver burning blows, sting away her past.
As she tries to absorb the ocean through her skin the surf takes her pain and
batters it away, beats it senseless against her shins cleansing the memories from her head.
The salt in the air, the sun on her face must go straight to her head, drive her half insane
because what sort of woman lifts her body off the sand but lets her soul remain?
Still, home is just a word she doesn’t care much to define and her soul knows where it belongs.
In the early morning hours, one last plunge, she shares the waves with a wayward dog.
Their eyes meet, sentiment is shared, “This ocean it is mine, for this moment, it is mine!”
Dried kelp, empty crab shells, seaweed, rocks, she gathers with a fury she can’t explain
because what sort of woman flies to the ocean and attempts to carry it back home on a plane?
She hauls back a suitcase filled with rocks, stones of every shape and hue.
Still her ocean slips away, not even this gypsy woman can possess the bewitching blue.
She flies away, minus her soul, maybe she’ll return to stay, maybe when she is old.
Painted by many, photographed by even more, none have ever captured
the Lady’s true essence nor managed to carry home the sandy shore.
“I want to live at the ocean,” she tells him when she walks off the plane.
He mourns for the longing in her eyes, her lust for oceanfront property undisguised.
She knows the answer before he speaks, money stands between the ocean and her door.
She’ll have to settle for a visit each summer.
Meanwhile she’s returned to frozen lobster, dirty dishes and unwashed floors.
She gently arranges her cache of shells, goes back to work not quite resigned.
“If I ever sell a book,” she whispers, “I know which cottage I’ll call mine.”
The truth escapes me
Sifting down through
The cracks in the floor boards
To live beneath our home.
The walls absorb reality
Which never was quite clear
Facts taunt and tease
Sneak in when I’m alone.
Yesterday’s unwashed dishes
Fester in the sink
Mold grows in the cellar
Moving boxes still unpacked.
The truth lies under the house
It awakens me at night
It waits for me in my dreams
When I’m vulnerable to attack.
Behind the bathroom mirror
Demons guard the walls
The truth is not what it seems
Deceit covers reality like paint.
by Jeanne Marie
The rain is coming
The shoulder knows
The bones warn me
Joints throb they swell
They ache they burn.
The rain is coming.
The shoulder knows.
The weatherman
Claims no rain
His million-dollar radar
Is wrong, so very wrong
The shoulder knows
And it is never wrong.
The rain splats down
The shoulder throbs
Sunshine withheld
Picnics are cancelled
Disappointed kids run
Through the rain
Back to the mini-van
Whining, fussing, grumpy.
The shoulder could have told ‘em
The rain will pour down today
Stay home, rent a movie
Make some popcorn.
There is no comfort
In being right
How I wish it didn’t, but…
The shoulder knows.
by Jeanne Marie
Her hands make love to his shoulders
Caress the tension from his neck
Fingers entwined in his soft curls
Her face buried in silver and brown strands.
Inhaling the heady scent that is him
She allows her tightness to slip away
Falling, falling into a dark warm mist
A vapor of safety created by his love.
Absence of pain, regret, loss or sorrow
Blankets of tenderness and devotion
Washed worn by life’s bleaching storms
More precious than diamonds and gold.
His devotion surrounds her flesh and her bones.
Thus, sleep is a cocoon which shelters her
Pillows of passions released time after time
Cradle the woman and her fragile dreams
Rocking her to sleep in his gently flowing river
Drifting on billows of unconditional love.
Floating to euphoria, wrapped around his back
She wonders, how is it possible that her love
Could increase beyond description, young and free
When time has removed the freedoms of flesh and bone?
She loves him beyond explanation, a rare dilemma
For a woman who was born to dance with words.
She loves, she loves and as his love enfolds her, she is sheltered.
She sleeps and she is secure because he is there beside her.
by Jeanne Marie, 2013
I get so dizzy struggling to keep up to myself, running from room to room, to garden, to garage, to shelf.
Clean this, write that, whip up a cake, pay the bills while making a fattening meal, that my hips know they can’t take.
What am I doing?
Cause I really don’t know–and there’s no going fast when I’m traveling so slow.
I’m stuck in the back seat with the driver asleep at the wheel while somehow the joyride has turned into a raw deal.
Sleep?
Well, no, not very much–dreams are dangerous races cause my mind is unguarded, drifting in and out of strange places.
Displaying my fears, scrambling my brain, inflicting grief with no notable gain.
Shoving back in my face what I thought I’d discarded and a nightmare revisited ends what I’ve started.
Perhaps I could slow down and buy me a piece of mind, but an accident’s gaining speed ramming into me, hard, from behind.
Preceding the crash, Past insists on driving my soul allowing ancient ghosts to tell my thoughts where to go!
“Jump out of the car!” my panicky brain tells my feet.
Run until you can’t remember, the pain, the anger, the bonus gifts of deceit.
Happiness slithered
up my arm today
sneaking into my head
and then it warmed my heart.
Didn’t even recognize
the feeling
it startled me,
so rare
so alien to me
I was happy today,
I was.
Jeanne Marie, 2014
Today I will get up out of bed and
I will tuck my pain inside a pretty box.
I will close the cover and I will leave my pain there.
Today I will thank God that I can move and that I can walk.
Today I will exercise my body and I will feed my soul.
Today I will enjoy the flowers in my delightful garden.
Today I will give thanks for all that I have gained and
I will send into the clouds the pain for all that I have lost.
Today I will give a piece of my time to someone else.
Today I will not say any negative
words to myself or to anyone else.
Today I will not acknowledge or take into my heart any
negative words that are spoken to me.
Today I will feel the earth beneath my feet, I will let the sun
warm my soul and I will connect with the spirit of life.
Today I will open my mind, my heart
and my soul to all that I can create.
Today I will ask God to touch and surround
both my loved ones, and my enemies,
with angels as they walk their own path.
Today; if I dare forget to be grateful,
I will take out the memories of each
of my children’s and my grandchildren’s hugs and
I will let the memory of their precious faces surround me.
I will be busy today.
Jeanne Marie
I don’t like
eggs that are slimy and
lunch meat turned green.
Boys who are so nice and
girls who are so mean.
Ghosts who shout BOO
under my bed as I sleep,
bad dreams that linger and
sweet dreams I can’t keep.
My man flirting with another
while I’m standing so near.
A mirror reflecting my fat which
I didn’t even know was there.
Friends that are not
but I thought they were.
A hurt that won’t heal
a disease with no cure.
Alligators who get caught
and cut into Gator Bites,
sad end for a tough guy
who survived many fights.
Idiots who don’t even look
before turning
right at red lights.
Getting lost on roads
that I used to know.
A bad haircut, cause
my hair grows so slow.
by Jeanne Marie
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