I love you the way that I love the sound of vinyl records playing their signature sound.

I love you the way a cherry decorates the top of the most delicious Sunday. I love you the way whip cream looks on top of a latte. You are as satisfying as a popsicle in the hot summer sun. I admire you like the brightest star in the galaxy. I savor you like chocolate on top of strawberries. Your both beautiful and untamed like wildflowers. I love you with the insanity of van gogh and the tranquility of monet. I love you like my favorite song I hum when I'm happy. I can sip you like fine wine, slowly and get drunk of pure joy and lust. I love you like Popeye love spinach. Not like olive oil but spinach because when he consumes it he becomes super human. I think this poem could be much longer however I will stop here.. There are so many things I love that remind me of you.

As if I could save the world?

I straddle a fence 

Indecisive 

Tipping one side and another

Zero balance

Sanity is the depravity of feelings 

I'm internally bleeding

Pleading for healing

My wounds are not self inflicted

it is a gripping reality of  back stabs 

And knife jabs to my heart 

Hitting direct bullseye with each dart perfectly

as I marinate in pain

Wishing my sacrifice was equal to my gain

I am a martyr 

A mother's pain

Title: A mother's pain

Written by: Luchetta (Cookee) Mauus

I love you! I love you with my soul 

Which is why when I see that distant glare in your eyes ,it causes my heart pain

Once full of life I see you slipping away

mentally into a silent death 

And there is nothing I can do!

It hurts to love you 

I keep seeing a funeral of the child I once had, now grown into a man. Drums playing, Weeping, and finally a Hurst. When I gave birth to you this is not how I rehearsed life for you.

I am in between, a tug of war, hanging on to the person you were and the amazing person I know that you could become. This person you are in between is a person that I have never seen!

Saving you it isn't up to me. It is up to God and his will! No one's fate is sealed so, I am believing in a miracle.  I sometimes take trips in the  my mind of you being a baby and me holding you.

Looking into your eyes and stroking tiny hands and feet.  

You are the artwork of God ,  you are an extraordinary gift to me. 

Only this gift 

Somehow got tainted, by life and living

I beg with tears in my eyes to hold on to you, to life,  and I pray god's love will guide 

My son life is a gift from God above to fall in love with yourself each and every day. 

I am your a mother

Your doctor

Your lawyer

Your comforter

I wish I was a Healer 

I don't know any other way to be

I love you so much my child

That loving you, I'm losing me

Morning conversation with myself

You can never appreciate the beauty of sunny days if the sun never sets. This is where I am in conflict. 

I preserve myself by keeping in my memory, vividly the sunshine in the midst of my darkness. 

I have regrets that I need put to rest. I live every moment sober inhaling happiness anxiety and love. Contradicting 

I have laid down my life, my complete being, my self. I have sacrificed. YET ! I am not a Christ.  I DID IT , I admit for love. 

This lead to my demise. 

I missed out on living life. 

Life is short.

Short as Erie summers,  short as the peace in this Earth. 

Short as the words between enemies. 

I need to use this time wisely so I can make the journey back to me.

Tic toc does the party ever stop or is it the sound of time winding down,  running out on my clock? 

I want to float effortlessly on air without care or concern. I want to explore every possibility of what is living 

I want to see , taste and feel

Swimming Lessons

She swims freely in the same water she drowns in. The adult shell disguises the little girl within, screaming inside of her with every breath saying, " Here I am! I'm still alive, please don't let me die." -Luchetta "Cookee" Manus 2023

a poem from my boyfriend

CLYDE LONGS FOR BONNIE

I am missing you tonight lover and it aches in my chest.

Right where you would lay your troubled head and lay safe in my arms.

And sometimes when your away I'm the loneliest man in the world.

I'm loved by many but none of them love me quiet  like you.

 Because you have inspired the gift of poetry back into my sad heart.

You have coaxed the music out of my soul to be translated by my guitar.

Dear heart I'm throbbing with need..

My hands need  to caress you and feel the softness of you chocolate skin.

My lips need with unquenchable desire  to kiss the full ripeness of yours.

My ears need to hear you softly breathing.

The sum of flesh, blood, and spirit, cries out to feel all of your graceful being close.

Oh how I want you sometime.

I swore to myself that I would never be here again.

I just couldn't help falling in love with you.

So fuck it.

Ride or die.

Because you only live once.

Oh my love,  I bet  everything on you and said, " Let it ride"

And if I  bust, then your my last hand.

Baby doll the air is so warm and liberating this evening.

I have a deep longing.

I want to be on a deserted dirt road.

In the truck, widows down, music up, under the  stars shining like stolen diamonds.

As we expose what God made to the night.

Sharing each other completely.

Oh my love I am miss you right now. 

And this love poem is how I want to tell you that.

Because for some reason nobody writes love poems anymore.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Do you understand I can see you? Peek a boo! Not Casper!

Yes I can see right through you. 

I say mirror mirror on the wall...

can all these broken peices become one whole?

There you are!

A reflection of you. 

Which image is more true? The answer is both. 

They are one in the same. It is the inside that is stained.