A Poet’s Life: My Many Capital Valentines

Currently Listening: Annie Lennox, No More I Love Yous

I spent Valentine's Day the most romantic way an upwardly mobile creative professional non-monogamous queer Millennial Girlboss can: with my platonic female life partner (a fellow intellectual and self actualizing startup founder) in a velvet draped dimly lit room about 200 feet away from where Donald Trump lives.

Yes: I was the poet-in-residence on Valentine's Day at Washington DC’s newly opened private social club: The Ned.

I sat in this painstakingly restored and redesigned space, infused with subtle and not-so-subtle nods to the inevitable if much bloodied ascendance of matriarchy in our great nation, writing poems for retired Navy SEALS and apocalyptic environmental activists and wealthy women who had never enjoyed an honest adult conversation until (apparently) the moment they met me.

I drank the best damn blue cheese olive dirty gin martini I've ever had in my life, swapping souls with some of the most powerful and self aware people on the planet.

I sat with my beautiful friend, who I've known through love and loss and wealth and brokenness and pandemic and legal and work and play and did I mention love? She helped me stay grounded as I processed some of the most intense angers, fears, passions, and intellects I've ever encountered in one room.

And I wrote some of the most honest, brutal, juicy, ecstatic poems I've written - in my life.

And shared some of the most intimate reciprocal energy exchanges I have had the pleasure of giving and receiving.

The generosity of spirit, the true feeling of a tiny sliver of hope that we could rebuild the social fabric of our societies, permeated the air that night.

I hope it's like that every night.

I bet it is.

Here are some of the poems I wrote:

I'd love to hold space with community like this again, anywhere in the world.

I find myself on a tour of sorts this summer and fall. I’ll be in Charlotte North Carolina, Washington, DC, New York City, Toronto, San Francisco, Sacramento, Harrisburg Pennsylvania, and who knows where else. Will you invite me into your world, to weave it into poetry? Email me, and let’s make magic from the mayhem. 

And if you’re a brand or company already thinking about global Galentines and Valentines campaigns… get on my calendar for a deep dive discovery call.

xLAMARKS

Founder and Chief Poetic Officer, Ars Poetica