The Cocktail Napkin Love Poems: To Help You Through The Night

In college I used to write poems on cocktail napkins while frequenting happy hours with my boyfriend or other students…why not? Happy Hour at Huck’s had twenty-five cent glasses of wine and I was 18 and full of myself, and wildly in love with language and a man who swept me to another world.

In these pandemic days and nights, like so many other people, I find myself alone, wondering what to do next to fill the long days and nights while we wait for this disaster to pass. For me, being alone has always given rise to creative thoughts and energy. This go-round it reminded me of those old cocktail napkin poems. And so I began to write them again, this time using the “Notes” function on my iPhone: that tiny screen surely approximates the size and weight of a cocktail napkin.

This collection, The Cocktail Napkin Love Poems: Short Verses for Long Nights, includes about thirty love poems, inspired by memory, family, relationships, marriage, and the world I observe every day. The poems are simple and easy to read. They would not a degree in English to parse…just a loving heart. Some of them would make great text for a wedding invitation, or a love letter when your own words just can’t get you there. The cover illustration is by my friend, Anita Ewing, a fellow member of the Muddy Creek Artists Guild, and was inspired by the poem, “We are Diving”:

Near the coral where the fish

are a rainbow of color

only more subtle for they catch

light and move more quickly

than we can tell each other to look.

When I say, “I love you,”

words are like that–

Magnificent and fast.

Watch me instead.

Just now I am a dolphin

bounding for the air

“We are diving” in The Cocktail Napkin Love Poems

The book is available via Amazon, in paperback and in Kindle and, just now, is free on Kindle for those who are members of Amazon Prime.

For those of you embarking on new romances or engagements or in need of Valentine’s Love or anniversary specials, here is my own favorite (from my own book).

What were my dreams

Before I dreamt you?

What were my words

Before I spoke you?

Was there a song

Before I heard you?

I see the world before me.

I see everything

I see you.

From “What Were My Dreams” in The Cocktail Napkin Love Poems

Of course I hope you’ll buy my book or read it in Kindle. Even more, if you’ve read this for, I’d love to hear your comments on these poems. I did not submit to the usual literary journals because these aren’t literary poems. These are cocktail napkin love poems. Love endures. In hard times it is all we have. So perhaps for this little while my poems will help some of you out by going through.

Heart Failure

My heart surrendered. Too many years beating for the wrong Reasons–sure, got the blood going Where it needed to be, kept the brain On top of itself, all the billion cells Cavorting in the dance of division. But in all else, it failed, the heart, failed to do duty as eyes and ears, failed to … Continue reading “Heart Failure”

My heart surrendered.
Too many years beating for the wrong
Reasons–sure, got the blood going
Where it needed to be, kept the brain
On top of itself, all the billion cells
Cavorting in the dance of division.

But in all else, it failed,
the heart, failed to do duty
as eyes and ears, failed
to see what was in plain sight
failed to hear the cues,
or listen and know when to quit
the stage. It kept its hungry
longing alive, stuffed itself on whatever
felt good, no matter if it was right
or deadly–was not its place
to decide. It had a mind

all its own. It wanted
what it wanted. It took what it
could get. If it had to break
a thousand times into a million
pieces, it kept its steady drone.
Bam. Bam. Bam. Pulsing,
because once it started,
stopping felt like death.

 

 

My Husband Does the Wash

The day you turned Springsteen blue Crushed something in my heart. What we talk about when we talk Is never what we mean. I like to keep things Clean, but you don’t see the dirt. I sort by category and weight I read labels, and experience. Rayon shrinks, deep colors bleed. You say you will … Continue reading “My Husband Does the Wash”

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The day you turned Springsteen blue
Crushed something in my heart.
What we talk about when we talk
Is never what we mean. I like to keep things
Clean, but you don’t see the dirt.
I sort by category and weight
I read labels, and experience.
Rayon shrinks, deep colors bleed.
You say you will cover it up, the blue
BVDs and the grey undershirts. I wear
Everything on my sleeve, including old
Memories of Bruce, center stage
On my mind’s eye, his guitar tuned
To the beat in my pulse.

 

key words: laundry, Bruce Springsteen, relationships