Embarrassing Thoughts

Drive

I think I’ve frightened every boy I’ve ever loved
with my manic enthusiasm for things.
I throw my head back and laugh and
get a crazy look in my eyes
and they just
want to throw on the breaks.

I’m learning and learning
to be an adult, but don’t blame me, my dear
if I need a few moments of adolescent
crooning once in a while.

I’m learning to channel this energy,
this immense pain and anger
and joy and this rapture
and make something I can use.

A poem or a house - a garden
or a sculpted body. Yes, I’m learning
more and more that everything is a matter
of energy and what you do with it.

I cannot hold it in my chest anymore -
instead I’ll kindle it as a fire
instead I carve it into a knife
instead I chisel it into a tool
instead I sing it as a song
instead I write it as this poem
and use it to fuel me through this life.

Wish my bedroom was this put together.

1

photoboothchronicles:

What another couple did with the mantle at the General’s Residence!

via Abby & Brian’s Wedding Part II | San Francisco Wedding Photography» JK Life Stories Photography Blog

(Source: photoboothchronicles)

9

He put an Edwardian ring on it :)

engagement rings antique jewelry Edwardian

Facing

We made it official
on Facebook. It isn’t real until
all of our friends and
past lovers have seen it scrawled
across a blue and white screen.

We add our names
to a list of hopeful couples
starting a life on the internet,
arranging the pixels to pronounce
their love.

One more post to add
to the parade
of babies and weddings
and breakups.

We made it official, didn’t we?
We’re going to try and the
whole, whole world of the
web knows, so it’s real.

I suppose, long ago
we would have
called up the paper,
sent out formal little cards
that folks would have held
in their bare hands.

Not today, today we pin
a note to the interwebs,
awaiting loving responses,
knowing we are finally moving
forward on our timelines.

Today we tell all those
half-hearted social media
flirtations, no more.

Today, we join together
on Facebook, facing unknown
internet territory,
pictures of our faces
telling the world.

Facebook social media love marriage

Face to Face

* Another Poem about Marc from ‘08

You said to me you preferred face to face contact.
You kept my number in your phone for two weeks.
It waited there with all the other numbers awkward
and uncomfortable with a feeling like having to pee
in a place with no bathroom.

Then, our faces did meet, and even though my number had
given up all hope and become the depressed outcast of your
phone, you said let’s have dinner and you used my number
the next day to set it up, and my number experienced a
renewed sense of meaning in life.

So, our faces sat across from each other over a meal at a
Moroccan restaurant and had a very pleasant conversation
and they walked back to my apartment and there
continued to talk, and you said how you liked
human interaction and tangible products and angry music

all of which my face and my phone number approved of heartily
and in fact, our faces liked each other so much that they were
drawn toward one another at the end of the night and for one moment
we couldn’t stop them from touching.

It’s only the next day, but my face is thinking of yours, specifically my
lips feel that there was some unfinished business, and they have
stubbornly formed themselves into a semi-colon waiting for
the second part of their sentence, creating another awkward
feeling and forcing me to send you an email,

even though I know you prefer to speak in person. I am much more
articulate and secure in writing, and my message
is pleading with you to read between the lines or
rather to complete each sentence as you would in the SAT test
The longer my email stays in your inbox, the more
it begins to identify with my phone number,
which still hasn’t completed enough therapy to really be
over the trauma you caused it.

I try to comfort my email, saying there is no reason to be so
dramatic, email, you hardly even know this guy, so don’t
invest too much hope or desire or longing in him, because
it is a waste of emotion and you are probably just hormonal, email
so stop nagging me all day with your wants.

My email talks back, saying this is the first time in a long time
it has any chance of getting something resembling what it might
want, so it’s important not to let that go, and I have to agree
with my email’s logic, because my email is, after all, a part of me
and like me is floating in an in-between sort of world hoping
to grab onto something.

poetry relationships

Some Oldies but Goodies

Marc and I are celebrating the four year anniversary of our first date this weekend, so I decided to resurrect some old but good poems from the beginning of our relationship. Here is the first:

I am Picturing Myself as You Right Now

I am picturing myself as you right now.
The other night you said, no that’s alright
I think I’m just going to head home when
I offered you a chance to come in my apartment
to use the bathroom or something. Of course
it was out of genuine concern. After all, I had
to go to the bathroom. You hadn’t used the bathroom
the entire night, and I was just trying to be considerate.

I hope you don’t think I was trying to be a slut and I
wanted you to come in and grab me and kiss me
and occupy the space next to me in my bed that night.
No, that would never occur to me, it isn’t even
occurring to me right now. So, you said goodbye
and you hugged me. You made it a long and
significant hug. I thought, is this hug trying to say
something to me? Does this hug want to become
something far greater than a hug?

You pulled away, but kept talking. You were smiling
but also kind of nervous, I think. And then you leaned in
for another hug. Another hug? Surely, this hug had bigger
ambitions, I thought, but maybe it was afraid to become what
it surely was meant to be, so I decided to encourage it by
making it a kiss on the cheek, but immediately before I could
think that kiss on the cheek became a kiss on the lips, such a
good little kiss that was just long enough.

So I am picturing how you smiled, I think the same smile
I gave you, a dumb and happy smile, but in a very dumb way.
And how you said “take care” before you left. I would never
say “take care”, but you would, so I’m picturing those words
coming out of my mouth; “take care”, I say and I, as you,
walk away in the direction of Grace Cathedral. There, I catch
a cab. It is easy catching this cab. I don’t stand out on the curb
waving and yelling “Taxi!”, because I don’t know how to whistle,
which is what would happen to me, but not you.

Apparently you have good luck with cabs, even though I never do,
and you go home to your apartment and you live there alone, and
you don’t have to say hello to anyone or make any phone calls.
You are OK with that, and you play a lone and solitary game
on your computer for a while before you go to bed,
and I’m not sure whether you think at all
about our kiss or toss in your bed, like I would, but you probably
wouldn’t, because you’re that type of guy.

I write you a letter the next day saying thank you thank you
thank you for kissing me last night. Well, it didn’t say that, but the
words if rearranged in a certain way would spell that out.
You waited precisely 28 hours to reply. I think you have a rule about
that. No answering emails less than 28 hours after they are sent
or maybe you only check your email once a day. If I were you,
which I am so far from being, I would check my email more
often.

I decided to follow suit and wait exactly 23 hours to send
back another emails. OK, I got impatient, and I thought if I raised
you and waited 32 hours, which would only be appropriate
for a demure girl, then the time in between our emails would
increase exponentially and we would never get in touch. When I did
write out that email I thought of a lot of things to say.

Hey you, I would say, did you know that I am very clever and pretty
and wouldn’t you like to answer my emails more quickly? Wouldn’t
you like to read my poems? Wouldn’t you like to read the poems that
are inspiring me right now? Wouldn’t you like to read my yelp postings
or my blog, because these would be good accoutrements to help you
get to know me and how clever and pretty I am.

I decided not to say that at all, I decided it would be best to say
hey didn’t you mention that blog about building a boat and something
regarding large and poisonous spiders? I want to read about those things.
I have recently become interested in both boats and spiders. They are
very interesting topics.

Oh and, I am adding this last part very cleverly as an afterthought, of course, I
didn’t think of it at all until I typed that thing about spiders, which reminded
me that I hadn’t seen a film in quite a while. No, I would say it’s been quite a
while since I’ve seen a film, and wouldn’t you like to be the one who
goes with me to watch a film, especially since it will be so momentous
being the first time in a long long time, since I saw a film.

I am picturing myself as you, you haven’t gotten the email yet. It is sitting
in your inbox like a little spider that might interest you and
be written about in your blog, if you were going to continue on the topic
of spiders. When you do open it, you will judge me for not calling
you up and asking you in person, which you would much prefer
and you will consider going with me, and you will probably think
this is moving too fast, and I can’t respond within 24 hours anyway,
so I won’t go.

Or maybe you will say, actually yes, it’s been a while
since I’ve been in a dark room, watching a film sitting next to a
clever and pretty girl, so I will say yes. Would you say that?
It would be so reassuring of my cleverness and prettiness
if you would just say that. Wouldn’t you?

dating poetry

The Seed

Lately I’ve had these
odd and incongruous
dreams where I’m pregnant.

In them I am so purely
happy and glowing,
just as one should.

Last night I was carrying
both a baby and a
beautiful succulent
plant.

I was so proud and
thrilled – I don’t think
in real life I could ever
be as absolutely elated
as I was in the dream.

You see, the fears and
complications of life
will always get at me
during the day.

Even five years from now
married and happily settled
in a house with trees,
I will feel that familiar
trepidation mixed with
love and joy.

poetry plants pregnancy

My great, great grandmother’s tin where she kept her hankies. It’s from an old candy company, and there was a poem by Emily Dickinson in it - If I can stop one heart from breaking… apparently she was a very kind-hearted woman.

vintage candy heirloom

Here’s one of the treasures my grandmother passed on to me recently - a lovely wine goblet.

wine glass inheritance