every single strand
of my being
strains toward you
you are the magnet
I’m the metal
it’s nothing that I choose.
your words whisper to me
come mere baby
in the shadows of the night
our first kiss lingers
only to be haunted by
our last kiss, our last fight.
Flesh and Bones
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.
Your Love Is Raw
I thought my love was true…so why do I always fantasize
about leaving us behind, running away from me loving you?
Your love is raw, it is bloody, it is deep.
Your warm, obsessive blanket covers my eyes, my empty girly head,
shielding me, protecting me at night, yet not heavy enough to let me sleep.
Lying wide-eyed in our king-size bed, the buried fights numb my head.
Your love, my shroud, my bad, my dead.
You call me to your side each night, honey, come to sleep.
Not unlike a small child, I run to you and snuggle under my pink blanket
on my corner of the mattress awake in the dark long after you snore.
Into the dawn I weep, tears leaving their dirty marks.
The weight of your need to possess me and my need for you cements my life.
It this all I’ll ever feel, is this all I’ll ever be, your woman, your girl, your wife?
Your need is soft, it is strong, it is rough, it is binding, it is smothering, it is fluff.
Your need has taken over my life which doesn’t even make any sense.
Becoming nothing, wanting something, I sit and scour my mind, trying to find myself.
Can I take care of me, this woman, this girl who will not speak?
Standing on the outside, looking through the tinted glass of our storm door.
I don’t want to come inside. Oh yes, I am sure.
Am I running from us because of our today or am I running from our pain-filled past?
I don’t know anymore.
No place left to hide.
Your love surrounds me, it saves me, until it drowns me.
Your love is raw, it is bloody, it is deep.
I Love You
I love you does not mean that I will accept
your unacceptable behavior.
I love you does not mean that I will allow
you to hurt me emotionally whenever you choose.
I love you does not mean that I will let
you crush my spirit and wound my soul.
I love you does not mean that I will let you tell me
who I am or control my decisions.
I love you does not mean that I will allow you to hurt people I love.
I love you does not mean that I will not walk away from you,
if you do those things.
I have learned through God’s grace, that I can live without you,
but I cannot live without me.
I have the beginning stages of Fuhgedia or as its also called on the street, Fuhgeddaboudit.
It’s a very peculiar illness and quite common in codependent women.
We go through life blocking out our daily experiences and feelings so well that we start to fuhged who we are and what we are doing, who you are and if you are related to us.
We don’t remember who we were before someone told us who we needed to be, what the desires of our heart really are and how we would like to wear our hair.
So you might have to tell me things more than once…things like the day my newest great-grand baby is due, your birthday, my birthday, what day of the week it is…stuff like that.
Otherwise, I’ll just fuhged about it.
Jeanne Marie, 2016
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Proud and bright
you hang.
Petals, firm and strong.
Then, one by one,
damaged petals
start to fall.
One by one,
till blooms
form a mountain
of red petals on
the cement floor.
Petals fall
as lovers argue
destroyed by
neglect and time
until love’s light
goes out
and velvet petals
wither on the floor
as quietly, they die.
A little water
a little kiss
a smile, a hug.
Nope, didn’t happen.
So one plus one
who once were two,
are now alone.
Each too proud
to clean the mess
or to pick up
the phone.
Petals fall,
one by one
by two.
by Jeanne Marie
Pink petals
pouring down
her body like rain.
Pink petals heal her
soul, washing away the
grime and bloody stains.
Broken a thousand times and each time
God glues the pieces back together.
Each experience creates a different person.
Sometimes a better person
sometimes just a person
filled with nicks and cracks and rough edges.
Sometimes I’m not sure I’ll even heal.
I don’t want that anymore.
I don’t want to be broken over and over again.
I don’t want to be shattered.
I want to be whole.
I have learned to live with the cracks,
but there comes a time
when you just can’t allow
yourself to be broken again.
Lord, let this be my last time broken.
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…
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Along our travels, we made a pit stop for food and I walked outside to get some fresh air. I found a field of dandelions gone to fluff and I picked a bouquet.
I spun around and around in my butterfly covered sun dress and let the fluff cover me as I made wishes.
I could feel the magic surround me.
The magic didn’t come from the dandelion fluff, it came from believing in dandelion wishes.
I’ll never forget that moment.
I tucked it in my heart to save for a rainy day…
Codependency
Loved you until I was drained, empty
nothing left of the love as I recall,
refuse to lose my mind, so it is over
bruised brain won’t survive another fall.
Driven quite mad, aching for your touch
spirit crushed by your negative weight
splintering my weakened, damaged bones.
Set free? Set free? Shit, it is too late.
Too late to be an innocent little girl
too late to chase the passions of 17
too late to write that frigging book
but all my floors are sparkling clean.
My womb has left, cut from my body
so, too late to be a better mother
loved ones from my hands I dropped
always ran, hid beneath the covers.
Some other day, some other love
some other life, any but my own
thought I had time to find happy
old came first, please leave me alone.
Hopes shattered and then returned
laid…
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Your love smothers me
Your love covers me
Shivers me to the bone.
Your love absorbs me
Your love confuses me
Until I beg to be left alone.
There are no coherent words inside my head
Only jumbled thoughts I cannot understand
Feelings have been frozen and numbness reigns
No decisions can be made
No ideas brought to life
Just a hollow empty space
Where emotions used to live.
I didn’t realize that the last box would be the heaviest
not until I stumbled with it down what is now your drive.
Tears flowing unchecked were blocking my common sense.
Crying, remembering when our desire was alive.
Shoved the box in the van, slammed my door closed
then I checked the garage for things forgotten.
Taped to your toolbox, I saw your favorite picture of me
the one you promoted from your wallet
to the dashboard of your race car, a Vega, 1973.
My image inspired you as you raced
or so you used to say.
I guess the week you yanked me from the car
was the week you drove your Vega to first place.
The house looks deserted, the grounds unkempt and unloved.
Summer heat has burned the lilac bush and turned my roses brown.
Flowers struggle among the weeds, most have died, died to set me…
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I see myself
sleeping walking.
I watch from a distance
me, walking away.
I see my body.
I see my hair.
I see my feet.
Wandering aimlessly
toward the water.
I shout to myself
come back, wake up
before you wander too far,
before you slip away and
disappear into the waves.
I keep walking forward.
I don’t even look back.
I have never listened to myself.
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
I Love You
I love you does not mean that I will accept
your unacceptable behavior.
I love you does not mean that I will allow
you to hurt me emotionally whenever you choose.
I love you does not mean that I will let
you crush my spirit and wound my soul.
I love you does not mean that I will let you tell me who I am or control my decisions.
I love you does not mean that I will allow you to hurt people I love.
I love you does not mean that I will not walk away from you, if you do those things.
I have learned through God’s grace, that I can live without you,
but I cannot live without me.
She won’t leave me alone.
We talk and we talk for hours, going in circles. I explain to her why she can’t have what she wants. I think she understands, and I tell her that I am done, that we are done talking about it.
She sniffles and she walks away.
Not five minutes later, she’s back and she wants to talk about it again. She makes me want to bang my head into a wall until I can’t hear her anymore.
I don’t know what to do with her, how to silence her.
Sometimes, she won’t listen at all. She cries, she screams, she yells, and she demands her own way.
She wants what she wants and nothing I say will make her give up on it.
It’s not possible, I explain. We have tried your way. Over and over with the same pain filled results.
When she doesn’t…
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My daughter sent me a picture of a rainbow and I told her it was awesome, that I love rainbows.
She said, “You silly gurl, you are a rainbow.”
When you think
I have forgotten
about you…
When your phone
doesn’t ring
when your text
doesn’t flash
when I’m not posting
any PINK Bling…
That’s when I’m
thinking of you
most often.
As I wander
through my flowers
flitting around
just a blue
butterfly orphan,
my only
nourishment
the flowers I walk in…
That’s when I’m
thinking of you
most often.
Jeanne Marie, 2014
Imagine a forest where the colors run free
you might see a pink and blue hibiscus
and you can rest under a lavender tree.
Purple lace drapes the branches above
as you stroll through the violets and lilacs
happy forever, dancing in a forest to love.
Imagine a forest where the colors run free
where the rain drips pink marshmallows
and Swiss Hot Chocolate always is free.
A little house you could call your own
with thousands of books waiting to be read
and never, ever, the sound of a ringing cell phone.
Imagine…
Words & Pictures, Jeanne Marie. 2014
My first published piece was a poem in moonchild, an anthology of women’s verse and prose. It was published by Suha Publications in 1976. I gave my oldest daughter my only copy of the book because the poem was about her.
Recently, I was searching for another copy, never believing that I would find one, but I found several copies on Amazon.com. I bought two and I was as excited when they arrived last week as I was when my book arrived in 1976.
My first words in print. The experience taught me that I could be published. It validated me as a writer, handed me proof that I was a poet.
If you haven’t been published on paper yet, do it. Submit until you are published. It is not only possible but very likely and the experience will give you wings. You don’t have to be published to be a writer…
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I am hard and I am soft.
I have sharp edges and smooth worn curves.
I am strength and I am weakness.
I can be broken, but I am unbreakable.
I will stand by you when you are wrong,
I will rejoice when you succeed.
I will stand by you when the world walks away.
I will leave you and I will always be beside you.
I will pull inside myself like a snail when you hurt me.
I will bloom like a flower when you love me.
I am a soft place to fall.
I am the hardest place to go when you have fallen.
I will always love you
No matter what you do or become,
You can’t lose my love.
I will smother you.
I will release you,
To explore your own strengths.
I will let you walk away if you hate me,
I will keep my door open if you want to return.
I will soul glide with you.
I will cry with you.
I will fight with you.
I would take a bullet for you.
I will make mistakes that will hurt you,
But no one could ever love you more.
I am where your life began and I am
Where you will always long to return.
I am not perfect,
But God thought I was perfect for you.
I am your mother.
Face the storm outside or the storm inside?
Such a dilemma.
If it was the end of the world
and zombies were at the window,
we would argue over which gun to load
until even the zombies got a headache.
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie 
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