Found Love Sonnet

This knowing, this love, love a binding

Force that restores my heart, an ache

Of time.  Deep, rich, like caramel and salt endings.

Also. Beginnings.  Substance in the wake

Of self-conceived drought.  A manna

From Heaven unexpected in its intensity.

The serenity of desire, the Eros, an honor

To know, a respite, the dreaming vivacity–

A brightness, a land mine painted blue

Electric this lusting becoming something more,

Greater an unexpected bequeathment, raw and true.

Fire in the gulch, timelessness no longer abhors

Me.  Rather, finds me safe, sound, mourning dove restored.

Completed.   Tethered to you and thus secured, a love moored.

Bow Hand*

Bow Hand

 

Speak to me in the language of cellos. Brush the kiss fluttering on my collar

Bones made of sharp starlight softened with dead time. Remember the waltz?

The shattering sky a spray of poetry whistled out the mouth of God. Holler

Mountain coffee in the cup, cinnamon dusted strawberry on my lips, Gestalt

Binaries and stimulation from early awakening upon REM sleep, I push crust

From my eyes and stretch heaven ward, then swan dive down, down, the torrid

Coast of love last found curled under my bed with a rasher of candied maple lust.

The metronome swings, tick, tock, tick, tock, measuring out, dolling out fevered

Visions stolen from sleeping doll hearts; while my head, perennially in the clouds

Languishes on my chest, a sudden dropsy of narcolepsy and I somnambulate, tip

Toes curled under as though channeling Degas graphite sketches on paper shrouds

Twisted crinolines, long legs point, feet flex, a sudden flutter, the ballerina’s hip

Scant weight against the palm of my desire. I shut the music box, silence concordant

With chandelier spattered light and the remembrance of you, my heart now dormant.

 

 

*Listening to Bach Cello Suite #5 in C Minor performed by Edgar Meyer

 

Luminous

Don’t put your light under a bushel!

I wanted to grab the woman across from me and give her a hug.

I did later.

But.

In that moment.

I nodded my head, I used a small furthering word, I repeated back what she said.

I used her words.

I heard her.

I really heard her.

I used feeling words and listened.

And.

It was amazing.

“You’re doing it kid!”

I was so excited and present and there.

The classroom fell away, I didn’t hear what was happening with the other dyads that were spread around the room, I didn’t notice anything but the woman across from me, the feelings registering on her face, the words she was saying, the situation she was describing.

The vulnerability.

I could swoon with the honor of bearing witness.

I had my first taped, as in recorded, role-playing session where I was a therapist and my client was herself, ie, not a made up character taken from one of our texts, which is what we have been doing until today.

I will have to transcribe it and I am eager to hear it and loath to as well.

Hearing my own voice recorded is not my favorite thing in the world, although I like my voice, I like reading out loud, I like reciting my poems, I like reading stories to the boys at work.

Speaking of reading.

The artist I collaborated with from Burning Man got back to me and he is very happy with the sonnets.

I reiterate.

I am very happy with the sonnets.

In fact, I think I may rework them a tiny bit and submit them to the Howard Nemerov Sonnet award.

The Formalist is accepting applications to the award until November 15th.

I am going to submit the entire ten as a sequence.

Only one sonnet will win the award, but as a poet I can submit up to twelve sonnets.

I have never submitted more than one that I can think of, at a time.

I have submitted I believe four times.

There were times when I thought, I will just keep submitting until they give me the damn award.

Now.

Well.

Sure.

I want the award, but I think, just as much, I want them to be published.

Even one of them.

They just do make me happy.

Of course, technically, I have published them, here on my blog.

“Quick” is the title of the blog.

Anyway, I digress a touch.

Where I was going with this is that the collaborator wants me to meet with him and read him the works.

I am excited to do that, to read them, just as much as to have them printed off.

There is something really visceral about reading them to someone.

They become more than the words on the page.

Oh.

I want you to see the words on the page too, they are some clever words, and some tidy word play and some great rhymes, but really, I want to perform them for you, read them for you, have my heart in my mouth and my soul bare before you, so that you receive the full song of the sonnets.

The epic.

Well.

Ten sonnets in a row, is not necessarily an epic, but all linked together by the words of another poem, using formal verse, my, my, my, Carmen, I think you made up another nonce.

I’ll take it, thank you very much.

I love poetry.

Not that you can tell.

Ha.

And I love the sound of my own voice and I am not humble at all.

But I have some modicum, every, once in a while, of humility.

That humbles me, that leveling of my ego, the evening out of my pride, that being teachable.

I am teachable.

I am learning.

I feel like I am an ever emerging young adult in the world, open eyes, dancing over the sewer grates of the down town rough and tumble asphalt, innocent, perhaps not, but open, fresh, awakened, alive, a light, a lit, in love with my life.

“You are my light.”

And you mine.

I smile and sink into my heart space and feel surrounded and held and the words float out like holograms.

She used the word again!

Luminous, luminosity.

The depth of seeing that she has for herself that she is not even aware of having, and how she does not want to hide her light and yet feels compelled to dim it down.

Shine brighter love!

Be brighter.

Be your own light.

Be the beacon, the unsheathed light of love.

Let is shine.

Shine darling.

Light up the sky.

I kept my mouth shut.

I let her do the work, which in of itself is a lot of work, a lot of knowing to just listen, to sit back, or forward a little, leaning into the words and cadences of her phrases, seeing how her body would get small, then big, then open and the emotions chasing themselves fleet foot and dancing over the planes of her face, the rich brown eyes deep and doe like, soft with tears.

I’m learning!

I wanted to shout.

I wanted to dance in my chair.

I don’t know that I was exactly articulating that in my head, it was just a nice buzz of knowing of connecting, of being in the moment and being there for that person and knowing, in my heart, deep and true that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, my gratitude.

It knows no bounds.

It leaps about the room.

It rolls across my bed and giggles.

It kisses my neck and drops me dizzy and divine, my hair fanned out behind me.

Lush.

Luminous.

Light.

Lit up.

Happy.

Joyous.

Free.

Liminal, dancing there, on the threshold.

Lined in love.

Lightened like feathers, swan down, cushions of softness and swathed in light.

All the light.

I wanted to reach across the way, to touch the back of her hand with mine, so I reached with my heart.

I believe it was felt.

I looked with my eyes.

I did not touch with my hands.

Sometimes when I look at you, I am touching you with my hands.

Stroking the soft crown of your head, tracing the bones of your face, holding it dear, sweet, delirious in its humanity in between my cool fingertips, scrolling down the tender nape of your neck, holding you, darling, close to me.

Sometimes I see you so bright and lit and full of love.

It astounds me and I fall aghast with love, adorned with love.

A glow.

And I know.

I know.

I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

Spot lit by love.

Hello Friday

Is it Monday already?

I have a lot to do this weekend.

And.

That is lovely and as it should be.

But.

Sometimes it already feels like Monday is here and I haven’t gotten to have any weekend because it is so jammed and packed and full.

I will give myself time tomorrow though.

I have it scheduled.

Sometimes that it what I have to do.

I also have lots of people I am scheduled to meet and be with.

Also as it should be.

People I haven’t seen in a while and some I have seen more recently.

One lady who cancelled tonight, though, gave me a modicum of movement in my schedule and I found myself getting out to a spot that is a familiar and safe place for me, where, like the anti-Cheers, everybody knows my name.

“You have a following,” he told me at Burning Man while we were sitting with another friend at First Camp chilling and gossiping and smack talking.

I was giving him a hand massage.

I was astonished to hear him say that.

I do not.

I protested.

But I have been around awhile and I know a lot of folks.

I run into people all the time and it’s really nice and it helps keep me sane.

Hell, I even ran into some one last night at the Franz Ferdinand show in Oakland.

I was sitting on a flight of stairs catching up with ma poulette from my school cohort.

Look ma!

I’m making friends at school.

Which is really nice.

I wish I had more time for friends at school, like hanging outside of school, but I don’t and making the time to go to the show last night in Oakland, a train ride, after work, a longer show than I was expecting, a long delay in the BART station, not having a ride waiting like I was expecting, Uber not navigating to me in a timely manner, the driver called three times to verify where I was.

Seriously?

I said the last time when he called, “I am in the exact same spot, exact same spot, and I am at Second and Market.  I am literally standing underneath the sign that says “SECOND” street.”

He found me.

But man it took awhile.

I got in late.

I had a cup of tea, I unwound, I posted up the blog from the day before yesterday that I wasn’t able to get to yesterday morning.

There was something wrong with the server and I couldn’t access the blog at all for a day.

It was frustrating.

I couldn’t tell if it was the website itself, WordPress, or if it was my network, because I couldn’t get on Facebook either.

Not that I needed to be on Facecrack, but that I always Twitter my post and my Twitter is linked to Facebook.

If I can’t access my blog sometimes I have actually gone into it the back door via the link on Facebook and made edits to posts there.  It’s a bit of a hassle, but it works.

No such luck the other night.

It happens more frequently than I would like and a few times I have been concerned about getting access to syllabi and my school e-mails, etc, but usually I can recognize that as needless anxiety.

“What if I can’t send my Dubitzky paper on Sunday!”  My brain roared at me when I was trying to get my blog online.

Hey brain.

CALM THE FUCK DOWN.

First off all, you have to write the paper.

That paper and a Therapeutic Communications paper and a lot of reading, but don’t worry, I’ll get it done.

Or I won’t.

But being in anxiety about whether or not the internet will be online before I have even written the paper to send it in is just useless masturbatory fear brain reminding me that I have a disease, it resides in my brain, and my thinking is not always so even keel.

Besides.

Should I ever really need to get online and it’s not working here at the house, I just stroll down the street a couple of blocks and use the internet at Java Beach Cafe.

It’s open late and I have done work there before.

So.

Nothing to be anxious about.

Oh.

I know.

There is always something that will try to take me out of the moment, like jumping ahead to it’s already Monday and where did the weekend go?

I, ironically, am actually getting up earlier on my day off than I did today for work.

Granted.

My job didn’t start until 1 p.m.

I worked until 8 p.m.

Actually I got done a tiny bit before that which was awesome, as I got to hop on my bike and make it to Our Lady of SafeWay right at 8pm.

I saw my peeps.

I got right with God.

And that is also why I’ll be up early tomorrow.

A shower.

My morning routine.

That thing at the place over there.

Then a meeting with my person at Tart To Tart.

And another meeting with another woman.

And maybe lunch and nails.

And then back here for a phone check in.

Then.

I am taking the night.

Some time down by the beach.

A nice meal.

Some reconnecting.

The lady I am supposed to see at noon on Sunday cancelled, so I could even sleep in on Sunday.

Though it’s doubtful I will.

I will get up.

Make coffee.

Smile in gratitude at my life.

Sit down at this very table.

Write.

Do the deal.

And meet with someone else.

There is always some one to meet with and another chapter to write and to read.

There is always another story to tell.

I like to tell stories.

You might have noticed that.

In fact.

Hmm.

I might just go work on a story now.

My ten sonnets.

(I am finished writing them, they now need to be polished like pretty little glowing moonstones)

I want to have them wrapped up and done before I launch into my Dubitzy Psychoanalytic paper on Freud.

I am feeling inspired.

Listening to The Orb–Moon Building 2703 has set the tone.

Time to get poetic up in here.

Excuse me.

I have to go get my sonnet on.

Yeah.

I know.

Whatevs.

Sonnet to Burn By

Wishing to cloak you in the cloth of love.

Surrendering to the moon rise I fall asunder.

Unburdened by expectation I move on dove

tailed into being one with you. Smite me under

neath the smatter of heavens and the weight

your body presses on mine.  The soft suck

bite of your mouth.  The please push height,

breadth, depth of you.  Stroke my hair, pluck

back the bow of my neck and break open

this woman waiting, pacing, dancing, arms raised

aching for release and the crash of sunset

crimson, rose, pink edged in indigo, such braised

brazen, bruising of self.  Battered again, yet

willing, pliable, and open to these days of wallop

heat and bent sun.  Open, closed, heart a gallop.

 

Sunset, Black Rock City

Stalker Pants

Good grief, Charlie Brown.  I found myself doing something I have never, ever, ever done today.

I, shhhh, do not tell my employers,  hell I am not sure why I am even writing about this, but it won’t get out of my head.  So here goes.

I googled some one who came into the shop.  I took their name off the credit card slip they used and googled them.

Shame on me.

I am embarrassed.

Although, not nearly as embarrassed as I was when I realized what a ridiculously human response I was having to this man.

He is not our typical customer.  He already had a bike he was quite happy with.  He just happened in looking to replace a pedal on his mountain bike.  He did not care a hoot about design or aesthetics.  He cut right to the chase–what’s the cheapest pedal I can get?

I have never dashed around the store trying to accommodate some one more.  I got the mechanics to put his pedals on, talked to him about lights, actually sold him some, although lights typically sell themselves.  You need them on your bike.  There is only one law in San Francisco on the books about bicycles, that I am aware of, and that is that if you ride at night you must have both a front and a rear light.

We sell a lot of lights.  They are often left on bikes and they are often stolen.  We probably re-order our lights once a week.  So, my charms probably had nothing to do with his decision to buy lights.

Although he did ask for me to recite a sonnet.

What in the world would have made him ask that, you may be wondering.  Because I blurted out some thing along the lines of I can’t do anything mechanical, like put pedals on your bike, but I can ring up the sale and I can bake a pie and I can recite a sonnet.  What malarkey.

I do know why that popped out, I wanted to impress him with my poetic soul?

Gah.

What the fuck?

He left his debit card with me and went out to hang posters.  Is this his job, I don’t know.  Is he in a band, I don’t know.  But, hey I’ve got his debit card so let’s play stalker.

I googled him.  He is on Facebook.  But he’s in Somalia.  Probably not this guy.

Ooh, there’s an obit.  Looks like lots of people really love and admire him.

Wait, obit, obituary.  Duh.  Dead person.

He’s not dead yet.

I calm down.  I reach for a business card, not the shop card, but my card, my card with my cell phone on it.  Should I circle my number?  I saw no wedding band.  Should I just hand it to him and say call me?

Should I put it back?  OR maybe slip it into his helmet?  He left his helmet as well.

I am officially in a dither.  Maybe he’s not as attractive as I think.

He’s back.

Oh, shit, yes he is.

But not in an obvious way.  There’s just something about him.  I don’t know what, I am not sure how to deconstruct it (and at this point, memory fails me a bit, he’s tall, has a bald head, a medium length beard/goatee ginger in color, no clue on eye color–blushed every time I made eye contact–could not maintain eye contact, he was wearing an old metal t-shirt of some band or another that I vaguely could recall from New York, punk/metal scene, he had a little tummy, I thought it was cute, a largish nose), maybe it was pheromones.

Maybe its I haven’t had sex in a long time.

Maybe it’s fate.

Shut up.

Then he asks for the sonnet.  I am opening up the lights that he purchased and he asks for the poem.  I totally freeze up.  He accuses me of lying about having it memorized.  I start reciting the one I know and I am suddenly shaking.  Although I don’t realize it.  I am shaking.  My hands are shaking.  Why can’t I open this freaking light box?

Because my hands are shaking so hard I am about to drop it.  I am light-headed.  And best thing ever, I am sweating.  I can feel my armpits getting damp.

Jesus.

I am so sexy in this moment.

I am about to finish the poem when I realize that the couplet ends with breast.  I am not about to say “sugar tit breast” in front of this man.  I pause, finally having gotten the light out of the box, I hand it to him and I just stop.

Stop right there.  I rip open the second box and say something asinine about how the batteries that are included are generic and he’ll want to pick up real triple A’s somewhere else.

Spell is broken.  I can still see my right hand is trembling as I hand over the second light, which he affixes to his bike, takes his helmet, thanks me, shoulders his bag, and rides off into the night.

I have nothing. My card is on the desk.  I have nothing but wet armpits.  Grand.

I have made no impression other than being a bumbling idiot in front of my co-workers, messing up my favorite poem, and sweating through my t-shirt.

Great.

I pick up his receipt. His name is on the receipt.

NO.

I do it anyway.  I google again.  Same results as last time.  His name is just a little too common.  This is a good thing.

Should I post to craigslist missed connections?

Should I just forget it?

How about this, crazy lady, he knows where you work.  If he’s interested you’ll see him again.  If it’s meant to be, it’ll be and no amount of manipulation will make it happen.

Odds are I just need to get laid.

My baby maker got triggered tonight.

Sonya, one of the little girls I nannied for, came in with her papa today.  I haven’t seen her since November.  She has gotten so big!  And she was a little shy with me at first, then she let me pick her up and snuggle her and I gave her stickers and stuck them on my nose and hugged her dad, who brought my W-2s with him (good thing, I need to take care of doing my taxes, I’m counting on a return to purchase my bike, all the parts are just about in and it will be built up next week), and twirled her around and kissed her, I put helmets on her head and blew raspberries on her neck, and toured her about the store.

She’s not my favorite bug, that honor will always be Juni’s but she’s a pretty awesome little monkey, and of the last set that I took care of, my favorite hands down, and I love her very much and I obviously have missed her.  She smelled amazing and her hair, which is this delirious froth of red curls, was longer and she held my hand and whispered under her breath at me.  I could have just sat in  corner of the shop with her all night.

When it was time for the visit to end I walked her and her dad over to Paxton Gate for Kids, which is right next door–dad had never been–and put Sonya down in front of a tree draped in sock monkeys.  She stood on the threshold of the toy store and reached for her father’s hand and I had to run, I had to go, my heart was just breaking.

My co-worker noticed and I excused myself to make a cup of tea and grab dinner, really it was to wipe the tears out of my eyes.

When I came back down the guy walked in the store.  I think I was having a hormonal response to having just snuggled with a two-year old girl.

Because I acted like a hormonal sixteen year old.

I apparently still have a ticking time bomb in my ovaries.

AWESOME.

Poetry in Motion

I am going to write a sonnet this blog.  It has been a little while since I have done one.  And I rarely, if ever, I’m perusing the memory banks as I write this, have I done one on the computer.  Usually I write out all my poems long hand.

I do a lot of writing long hand.  When I took a course with Alan Kaufman five years ago he heavily suggested and encouraged the group to do their writing long hand.  I was vastly relieved as at that time I did not have a lap top and the computer I did have was so old I hardly used it out of fear that it would disintegrate at my touch.

I came to really love writing that way.  I still do it everyday, give or take, I do miss a day on occasion.  Mostly I do stream of consciousness writing.  I call it a writing meditation.  I just sort of open up my head and dump it onto the page.  I never go back and re-read it.  I just drop it and go.  It frees me up to do other things.

And it’s not like this blog.  I think about what I’m going to write on this blog pretty much every day.  I often times don’t know what my topic is going to be until I start writing.  Inevitably my brain says, oh so slyly, you ain’t got nothing to share, sistah, give it up.

But there is always something lurking there.  Some line of words, or poetry, an image that I cannot get from my mind.  And so it goes.  I will click onto new post, the blank page pops up and something comes to the forefront of my brain and then I’m off.

Time Pieces

I am the tick tock girl.  Chasing down the hours of the day

to claim them later at your refusal.  I cluster flowers in my

hair and hope that you will notice them.  A bright spray

of poesies and daisies and jasmine.  I am so forever shy,

yet fearless in my pursuit of the now.  The French market

clock in my kitchen always stands at five to five.  I cannot

tell you if it is the morn that calls or the eve.  Then a carpet,

flower petals scattered here and there, trailing blue bonnet

essence in my heart shatters my reprieve and the cats claws

dig and knead and I forget what it is to croon to you, love, lover

loveliest.  The shadows fall down the sky, tumbling bylaws

shepherding my dreams, heralding my losses, keeping forever

time eternal.  I have sprung.  The springs have popped, freeing

me from you, noxious romance, petulant unrequited being.

Well, there it is.  I have no idea how that works.  But that’s my sonnet.  I like to write in the traditional Shakespearean form–which is as follows: 14 lines of verse comprising 6 stanzas of rhyming couplets finished with an end cap of two that rhyme together.  The scheme is as follows: abab cdcd efef gg.

The last couplet is the turn.  Shakespeare is nefarious at leading us down one lovely path of thought, then abruptly shifting it at the very end and giving the entire piece a twist.  My favorite is the turn at the end of the sonnet that begins “My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun.”  So delicious.

The reader thinks that the voice is lauding the beauty of the woman in the poem.  But at the end Shakespeare surprises you with a vehement thrust of accusation wherein the reader realizes that the woman has been cheating on the man.  She has in fact betrayed his love.  Very powerful.

I don’t know that all my turns are that successful, or that powerful.  Doubtful you know, I’m not equating my work with Shakespeare’s.  But it does provide me a wonderful template to structure my words.  What I love about formal verse is that it stretches my brain.

I used to predominately write free verse.  And then I found that my mind was challenged to find words that rhymed and worked in the structure of the poem.  I wrote ballads, ballades, sestinas, villanelles, sonnets, the only formal verse that I really struggled with where limericks.  Not a big fan of the limerick.

I wrote the above sonnet without going back and changing anything.  Now what I’m going to do is edit for spelling and see if the piece holds up to the structure of the sonnet.  If so, I will post ASAP.

This blog’s for the one who requested some poetry.  May this fit the bill.