 If you can’t handle me in three or more dimensions You don’t get to have me in two You one dimensional fool If you can’t digest my substance and my messiness Seeing only the perfect image you behold You won’t get any of me, not anymore If you can’t treat me with the respect You would want any man to show your most sensitive daughter I withdraw any respect I ever held for you If you keep putting me on hold when you were Once so eager for me to answer the phone This fantasy of ours will cease to be reality Poetry by Jamie Marich
Mixed Media by Jamie Marich based on a photograph by Michael Gargano
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 Fear overwhelms me.
Sucking me dry Leaving me So many wounds A shell of a human Not human Left to die Without the virus My reality Disabled Imperfect, unworthy of care  You know it’s over when they let you enter without first scrubbing your hands.
This ends one of two ways. Only one means coming home with the one you love. Safety precautions are no easier in intensive care, just clearer. The ventilator, translucent skin, the unsteady beat of the monitors--all scream vulnerability and so, of course, of course you wash and gown and mask. That’s obvious. The dying parent. The tiny babies. Every cell in your body wants to shield them from danger, even – especially – the invisible danger clinging to you from outside, hitching a ride closer to them. Looking for a way in; their vulnerability an invitation. They can’t protect themselves. Protecting them is obvious even when it’s not easy. You respect the barriers marking the threshold between the menace outside and the relative (hoped for, prayed for) safety here, inside. When you can see blue blood rushing beneath translucent skin, it’s not hard to wash your hands. The line used to be hard and sharp. Maybe it was imaginary, but it seemed straightforward. Safety is here: danger is there. Now, the ink has smeared until that line becomes earth, becomes air encircling each of you and what does it mean to be safe now? Ah, but you know what it means to keep a distance, so that you can protect. You remember. It’s planted in the marrow of your bones. How do you love through panes of glass? With a heart beating so hard you’re certain your tiny babies must hear it, too. When you touch them with a gloved hand, is it warm? Do they know it’s you? Only your voice can touch without danger. The soft lullaby you sing into the incubators when you have to leave them. And the way his heart speeds up when he hears you coming into his hospital room. On that final morning, they let you in without scrubbing. You touch your father’s hand with yours, unwashed and ungloved, because that line doesn’t matter anymore. It’s how you know it’s over. All those years before, you got to take your babies home, drawing a new line around them, hard and strong for as long as you possibly could until you cracked it open to take them out. Out there. Unwashed hands and air travel leave them with bronchitis, but they’re stronger now and recover. You gave them time to grow and for their lungs to heal. And you know it isn’t over. It’s planted in the marrow of your bones. And now? Now you will stay away for as long as you must if it means they will be safe. You will love them again through a pane of glass (or a computer screen) when they are six-thousand miles away instead of in your kitchen, cooking and bickering, where you wish they were (where they’re supposed to be) instead. You will send your voice through the telephone and hug over a video link and listen through a window for the music you know is out there because the line defining dangerous and safe has shattered, and you will protect them with the distance that you keep because this is what you do when you love. - Visual Media and Poem by Dr. Mara Tesler Stein  May the reason I practice yoga be
To lead others to realizing the true nature of the Self Yet in doing that empowering others Especially my fellow sisters to advocate for themselves To not let men walk all over us In the name of spiritual practices or enlightenment For us to claim our voice As the creative energy that makes it all happen Refusing to be treated as anything less We are not just servants of the masculine We are the whirl that creates The motion and maintains the balance People have tried to keep the waves From rising to their fullest majesty not anymore, and never again  Burned Pages
Burn away the pages of my past told by strangers to my soul. Burn away the tainted edges gripped with desperate wishes. Awash my body with the healing embers of my own spark. Heed my call, the scream from my lungs. Heed the fire held in my heart. - Peyton Cram  Dance for yourself
like you want to dance for him When you move as a river touching your body with delight Know that you are touching eternity herself, the Divine Goddess When your hips unleash a torrent of sensual bliss Know that you are creating flames to warm the earth entire When you quiver with electricity and beckon him to come Know that you are connecting with your True Divine Nature Yours, not his  I love you with an old-fashioned heart
Maybe the leftovers of another lifetime My God, loving you was easier then In this time, in this place I am just another misfit with an Old-fashioned heart and an even Older soul who hopes we can one day Find ourselves on the same page of Our tattered storybook A single tear runs down my face Smearing the ink off my lonely page Soon there will be an empty canvas And I do not know what will be created A solo piece, or a call and response For now, the not knowing must be enough Photography of Jamie by Ellen DeCarlo (2004)  Photo Credit: Erin Kelly Attune me to today
Let my words Be your words And may I respond To life's challenged From the fusion of My humanity and My divinity  I’m tired and
I just want to go home I am hungry all the time and I constantly yearn to be touched Not just by anyone-- By the one I adore more than I should I crave the things I cannot have and I resent having to wear this meat suit My soul is already home My body longs to catch up My body is exhausted My body still wanders My body constantly feels teased My body is hungry all the time and My body yearns to be touched Can’t she just get with the program? I know I am not my body My soul is who I truly am When I recognize this truth, I am at peace And it’s so fucking hard to stay there When I live in this human shell I am not my limbic brain and yet I have a limbic brain, a brain that is tired And just wants to go home  One
I want nothing. Nothing pleases me. I celebrate nothing. I love nothing. Nothing beckons me beyond the urge to strive, a constant yen to stave off Zen. I want no sound, no taste, no smell, no color, shape, or texture. Nothing has plenty of nothing, respite for my senses, and that is what I want, for a bit of time every day. - Velma Lee Barber |
Dr. Jamie MarichCurator of the Dancing Mindfulness expressive arts blog: a celebration of mindfully-inspired, multi-modal creativity Archives
May 2020
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