Above the clouds
the sun is
creating paintings
with yellow streaks
and puffy pink wisps.
Moving, reshaping, shifting
blending to form images
ever-changing
ever-moving
never stagnant
never the same.
I want to be a cloud.
Category: Women Who Think to Much
Dance of Anger, 1989
A Good Wife
I am my own wife now and I’m finding out just how good I’m going to treat myself.
Am I going to be a good wife or a bad wife?
I didn’t start out very good. I almost starved to death.
I forgot to eat because there was no one to cook for and I didn’t have anybody asking me, what’s to eat, what’s for lunch, what’s for supper, do you want to go out to eat, do you want me to go get something?
I was in a food vacuum, food just didn’t exist.
What I noticed was my deodorant wasn’t working, so I changed brands several times and when that didn’t help, I started to do some research on Google to find out what strange illness I might have that was causing an odor deodorant couldn’t manage.
I found out that I wasn’t putting enough food into my body and that my body was burning muscle to survive. The odor was from being in a state of starvation. I was shocked. I knew I had to eat to live, but I didn’t know I could die from not eating enough.
I had been wasting away and I hadn’t even noticed.
I took off my clothes to take a look at my body and it wasn’t good. Skin and bones.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had been hungry. I had already lost too much weight before my husband and I separated and the scale reported that I’d dropped ten more pounds and I hadn’t even noticed.
I had been eating yogurt and an egg once or twice a week, a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter every day, but my body was not happy and it wanted some real food.
I learned that once you are in the starvation mode, it gets dangerous. I had to start to eat slowly because starvation damages the heart and I could actually have a heart attack if I started to eat too quickly.
I went to the store and I bought more than just peanut butter, coffee, milk and dog food.
I searched for food that I used to like, so I could tempt myself to eat. I stood there crying because I could barely remember what I liked.
Just shopping for groceries was traumatic. I hadn’t shopped for groceries since my husband retired. We used to joke that he was the wife now and he said I could just write while he took care of cooking, shopping and helped with laundry.
It wasn’t really funny. I stopped shopping a few months after he retired because whatever I brought home wasn’t right, wrong brand, wrong price, wrong flavor. I stopped cooking because he would disagree with the what, the how, the why and the end result. I wasn’t even able to feed the dogs the way he wanted, and if I made my own coffee he would ask why I didn’t have him make it for me.
To some, it looked like I was a pampered princess, but I was actually removed from my kitchen. His at home-ness led to my retirement as a wife. He took over the bills, the kitchen, the shopping and the dogs and I allowed it. I gave up.
So I am my own wife now. It’s been five months, and I am treating myself much better, but it takes awareness and effort. I spoiled my husband and my kids forever, so I know how to do it, I just have to turn that love towards myself.
I started eating slowly. I started cooking for myself for the first time in years. Actual meals. My daughter and grandson come over for supper at least twice a week now and that motivates me to cook. I’ve only gained a pound, but I’m back to my favorite deodorant and it works.
The dogs are happy and well fed, so it turns out that I do know how to feed them. I haven’t cried at the grocery store lately, so I believe I am learning to be a good wife. To myself.
Up To My Heart In Mud
I would live without you if only I could…
Wanting you, needing you, I hate it all.
Tears fall each night
Sometimes they fall
all frigging day too.
I walk the floors
I climb the walls
I turn it off, I turn it on
Who I am depends on you.
Spinning in circles like wet lettuce
shedding its water
I try to shed my love for you.
I don’t love you
I don’t love you
But, oh God help me, God help me
Because I do…I do, I do love you..
Should love make me bleed?
Should love leave me
Hungry for your touch
Empty with a desperate need?
Now I know my long saved passion
Has simply gone to waste,
Thirty-odd years of being loved
Loved just enough so that
I didn’t pack that old suitcase.
Loved you for so long as
Every night you turned away
With one excuse or another
They all sounded the same.
I don’t want to hurt anymore.
Down to a choice…nothing or pain
Your words turn me inside out
And I go blank…shut down
I have no words to say.
I am no longer in the game.
You ask what about all the years
That we have been side by side
And I ask what about today.
What about me?
How long can my hurt hide?
Dreams of running, death and blood
Is this love or is it quicksand?
All I know for sure is that
I’m up to my heart in mud.
No More
No More
Less
Less
A Candle’s Flame
A Candle’s Flame
Hunger
Hunger
Where Is…
Where is…
Till the Water Runs Cold
Running naked in a field of tall grass
Lying alone on the beach with the sun aglow.
Watching my babies while they sleep
Searching for life’s meaning wherever I go.
In the bath, water like silk caresses my skin
A physical pleasure that’s unsurpassed.
Heaven on earth, you can touch your soul
Escaping the ordinary till the water runs cold.
breathing
why is it so hard to breathe
I can’t breathe
I try to draw air into my lungs
nothing happens no air no air
my lung are locked frozen
you used up my share of air
with your angry sizzling words
anger has sucked the oxygen
right out of this room
this is wrong so wrong
please be quiet please
please let me breathe
I gasp and gasp and gasp
The questions begin.
What is wrong with you?
Why are you so upset?
What the f— did I do?
my tears are flowing
no shortage of water
wrapping my arms
so tight around myself
I almost feel my ribs crack
I am having a panic attack
croaks from my throat
the attempt to speak
unlocks my lungs
air roughly forces its way in
it hurts as I choke it back out
broken lungs broken spirit
satisfied with my answer
View original post 73 more words
Love Like Water
JM, 1986
Mercy Killing
I’m laying our marriage down
putting it to sleep
a mercy killing that for us is best
laying till death do we part promises to rest.
I’m unplugging the life support
so maybe I can revive my heart
because there is more pain than love left.
a bed where passion died a horrible death
a living room where loyalty was beat
a kitchen you drove me out of
because I couldn’t do it right.
I wish I could cremate us
instead of dismantling us piece by piece
but I suppose that’s exactly what we’ve done
burnt our bridges until two now exist as ones.
Death of a Marriage, Rest in Peace. 1978
Death of a Marriage, Rest in Peace
I didn’t even know that you were sick
and now you’re dead.
Destroyed by a disease born
inside two people who couldn’t see
that love should come first
forsake all others, as God said.
But there is so much I didn’t know about you.
I never guessed that someday you would be deceased.
How can I bury you, when to me you’re still alive?
How will I ever feel whole, with part of me
inside your corpse, which hangs in the closet of my mind?
JM, 1978
Divorce
Jeanne Marie, 1978
Do I love you?
I Want
I want to catch a snowflake
and send it straight to you
wrapped in icy sleet.
I want to shake the stars
scattering fiery sparks
until you remember our heat.
I want to chase the moon
following its midnight map
until the beams lead me to you.
I want to ease this heartbreak
returning my soul to a time
when my color wasn’t blue.
What If…
What if I’m wasting today
wishing for yesterday
and then tomorrow comes
and all I accomplished
was wasting another yesterday?
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…
View original post 142 more words
Their Song
Their Song
She came home today
lipstick on her lips
suitcase in her hand
knowing it went
against everything
she had planned.
She’d left for good
then that song
hurt her so bad
smashed her to pieces
pierced her with sad.
And so she went home
back to a place where
she no longer belonged
led astray by her memories
betrayed by her heart
manipulated by their song.
by Jeanne Marie
Bird In A Cage
Bird In The Cage
The bird in the cage can’t fly
She can’t spread her wings
and soar through the sky.
There’s always somebody
who lusts after her beauty
someone who captures
her bright feathered booty.
With a few dirty pennies
and cruel lies she is bought.
She does not dream
never free, she is caught.
She doesn’t live
she just grows older.
Cripple winged bird
crying on your shoulder.
The bird in the cage can’t fly
she’s bound her own wings
but if he puckers his lips
to make a kiss, she will sing.
Gone
How long can her love last without being fed, without being nurtured or returned? A cold shoulder, an angry face.
When a woman’s love is set aside, rejected, it will starve itself to death, after breaking her heart from the inside out.
All that will be left is the casing that once covered her most precious asset, her heart.
As her heart shreds, she needs to find new ways to get her oxygen. She needs her heart to pump blood so that she can breathe. Each gaping, gasping wound demands to be filled…she can’t breathe…she can’t breathe…what will ease the excruciating pain in her heart, her lungs, her soul?
What will soothe the hurting?
Grandbabies, puppies, flowers and ice cream? Rain drops, snowflakes, chocolate and sunshine? Rainbows and Pink Angels? Cigarettes and her antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds? Worst scenario…Southern Comfort and razor blades? Janis Joplin rising from the ashes?
Round…
View original post 83 more words
Crushing Me
What do I say now, when there’s nothing left?
When I’m gone what will you remember about me?
Will you remember all of my mistakes?
Or will you remember the things I tried to be?
Will you remember the times I held you close?
Or just the times I failed to make the grade?
Will you remember the times our world turned upside down
Allowing black clouds to fog my brain?
Oh God, for love, the price I’ve paid.
Will you remember when I danced in the rain
My arms spread wide up to the clouds or
Will you be left with the times
our love brought you pain?
Looking back across the years
I recall the smiles, but I taste the tears.
So many wrong choices, how could I know
That the pain would go on forever
And that the dying would be so slow?
I see loved ones…
View original post 139 more words
Remember Me, The Mannequin
She has no legs, arms or hands
yet, she communicates from her stand.
Her head was never found
just her body on the ground.
She has no voice to speak
but still I feel her tear drops leak.
She is me and she is you.
She is every woman ever broken in two.
No eyes to see, no voice to shout
no one to speak her words
to hear her screams that can’t come out.
She remains still, she has no choice
she is crippled and she has no voice.
She stands for you…she stands for me…
I hear her thoughts so clear.
You are where you chose to be.
You have legs and you have arms
you even have your eyes to see
don’t be fooled by his sweet lies
if you are tempted, remember me.
Get moving woman
don’t you fret.
For me too late.
For you? Not…
View original post 12 more words
I Am She…
I AM SHE
There was a time when my mother was middle-aged and me?
I was young and naïve, not a care in the world
the arrogance of youth was on my side.
I was a footloose hippie girl and I thought love was free.
Her skin was firm and tanned, black waves of hair fell to her shoulders
softly surrounding her fair face, bosom quite generous,
legs as fine as any model, she was my mother,
but with flower child simplicity, I used to call her Grace.
She was spirited back then, although she seemed quite old to me,
and how did I become imprisoned while she has learned to fly–a butterfly set free?
Tonight, as I glance into the mirror, my middle-aged face stares back.
Have I become her, and she, the child I used to be?
At seventy-three she’s still a beauty, but time’s fire has burned…
View original post 92 more words
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie 
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