Month: August 2022

Free verse poem: Replace the terror in me

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Free verse poem: Replace the terror in me

A free verse poem interpolating love and boredom, those mutually excluded. I write about my surroundings and how I respond to them; I write about you and how I’m feeling enamoured, but I won’t make this a love poem.
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I’ll slip like a satin glove
One abstraction over another, turn the pages, can’t stop reading textbooks on topics I haven’t reached yet in my academia
London print and soft pastels to remind me softness still exists
In little teacups filled with daredevil laughter

How do I
Distract from the blue light filter
I’ve got this covenant, this modern-day orchestration
A plate of cinnamon toast for two
With soy whipped cream and untouched, fresh blueberries
A breakfast in the comfort of our living room
With the television on,
Vintage advertisements
Try it for yourself, buy it, now!
We put our heads in our hands, switching places
Serenade me, serenade me
Run away with me

Impressed by my collection of 14.2 carat diamonds
I knew it wasn’t right, but I find it hard to stop myself from trying
When you hear me tell my truth, you think I’m lying
A country house’s ceiling covered in coral-buff-pink that doesn’t compete with the furniture and artwork in the room
I don’t believe I’ve lived this life before
I say silent goodbyes to the waves when I swim towards the shore
Never settling in life because there’s always something more

But I’m patient, I can wait
I know how to play this waiting game
But I’m patient, I don’t hesitate to hesitate
I know how to play this waiting game

You spend your life attached to the poison
You see the same things in every new person
But I – I find waves to weave my carefully knit spiderweb
The remnants of my being
(but I swore I could be tranquil)
I engulfed you like a macrophage
I brought you to the Heavens
They asked me for all my pennies and I said all I could offer were dimes
In an aster black & dune-white coin purse
With wild daisies in watercolour
Where I keep a ticket stub from our day at the ballet
Our day in the sweet vermouth from the South
Your shots of whiskey – endless, hopeless- almost!

But I found you out by the car, near the diner with the half-lit sun-kissed sign
That illuminates the grey tones of the weakened sky
I’ve yet to find a relation that feels like spiral twine
In due time
My dear one
It always takes time

Crumpets in bed, you’re so sweet; why are you doing these things for me
The back of your Carrera that you lean on when I find you
Down, downtrodden
In a medieval, Victorian garden
I found roses that smelled like the ones you once bought for me
I wrote secrets down on receipts for other people to find
And they’ll have no idea what I’m talking about
What I’m writing about
They always have no idea what I’m composing about
What I’m going on about
Often too timid to say what I’m handling out loud
(In the wild Texan landscape, I screamed without making a sound)

But you, cast like the sun’s sharp, contrasted rays upon the deep blue, dark steel water body that is
Where I swim against the current because it’s the closest I manage to get to what others feel from amphetamines
A satin blanket with a cushion for our picnic by the bayside

You, there, me – laughing when I look at you
Think I know why you do the things you do
But nobody is ever sure of anything, how can they be?
I’m the Chicago princess, the flat-rate bourgeoisie
Things that make most sense to you don’t mollify me
In the orbit of the moon
I am your apogee

How is your gaze so familiar when it’s just out of sight?
Inoperative like a 1990s old engine Civic brake light
But I’ll be the warm air watching your gunfight
With the resilience and nepotism of stunning graphite
Like the perfect backdrop
Like an ivory white snowstorm while indoors
I’m what the mosquitos won’t ever bite

I think it’s sweet, how people give you their time
In a palace where everybody always feels they’re running out of such a concept,
The ballgame isn’t enough
(Oh, you think you’re so tough?)
Pour me iced green tea
Show me you can be there for me
Tell me I’ve been disillusioned
Replace the terror in me

Satin-pink signature bowtie on the back of my tulle dress, and flower petals arranged to counter my dismay
I am a lovable girl
Who loves in the most appropriate way

The kind of girl that sends you straight to fame
Ambition my only pursuit, I write you love letters on the train

I am bored with how it hasn’t yet rained
In days
In days
In days
In days
In days
In days
In days
In days

Free verse love poem: Florals on film (white dove)

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Free verse love poem: Florals on film (white dove)

Short but sweet
I’m a plate of coconut-sugared honeydew
In the azure-blue wave of the evening sky,
I make my way to you
With a glistening undertone to my green eyes,
That you swear are hazel
Because you don’t look for long enough

Receptive, and kind
Is this a love letter to myself?
I want what I have to give; how can I be more transparent
Always feel like I’m tearing –
Apart music venues, but all I do is hang concert posters
Artists that I work with
They trust me with their craft
Something makes me think I should be proud of that
But I’m a mellow girl, tend to be more relaxed
(Because when it’s about me, I get frostbite)
Amputated in broad daylight

When you came over and laid on my satin blush-pink bedspread and stared at my lilac & steel grey walls,
I almost became afraid
That you’d get the wrong idea about all the wedding dress advertisements
They’re just for decoration!
(Can’t a girl feel elegant in her own residence?)
I’m not looking for tulle, when I try to breach the lull
Apprehensive about if you read what’s on my whiteboard
Like I’m the kind of person who needs inspiration external to self
But it’s all me
It all comes from me
I am the doyenne of my own prosperity
I need my very words for my sanity
And you – laying there – you probably didn’t notice
That I like white flowers too

More than my love for the moon
More than vegan blueberry pancakes with homemade butter
Horse-drawn carriages always made me sad
But a cowboy’s relation with his horse is what I admire
Absence of solicitude makes me so tired
I refused admiration for so many years
But oh, what it would be – to be softly admired!
Take away the high opinions
Give me real touch
To fawn on, to adulate
To feel you’re enough

Vindication has two different definitions, and they’re not at all alike
One is to remove someone from suspicion or blame
The other is to prove yourself right
That’s not how I want to spend the evening tonight
Even a white Mourning dove comes bearing a beak
The most indifferent amongst us would cite that as weak

But I am very familiar with my satin blush-pink bedspread
And after a long day when I rest my tired head

I think of white florals and play Baby Breath & Calla Lily film reels in my mind

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Free verse poem: This is my castle (they built it for the queen)

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Free verse poem: This is my castle (they built it for the queen)

All I want is some wine
To know that you’ve tried
But I don’t get what I want, but in case you forgot,
This is my castle; they built it for the queen
I’ve gone by my nickname since I was nineteen
I picked the cherry stems just fine
Wrapped them around you in due, hazel time
Not unsettled by rage, only burnt by hot sunshine
There is a time and a place
For letting me go tonight
I can only live in shades of blue for so long

You’ll call when you’re drinking
But the rosemary and fever dream has me thinking
That in this warm abyss, I’m finally putting myself first
I’m the most decadent of late-night desserts
(I don’t care if I get hurt)
Moving like the Chicago Transit Authority that picks me up every fifteen minutes,
To sit and watch the downtown splendor, the people having conversations
The luxurious skyscrapers with their gleaming reflections on the river
My god, if you could see it
My god, if only you could see it
Reels of the same film run through my mind

I look at the lilac flowers
That I picked out for myself
You handed your credit card to the cashier and made my head hurt
You didn’t want to be there
You pinched my weakest nerves
But they fired back, like dropped bombs on a 1990s Cadillac
I was confused when I looked in the mirror, and I wasn’t blushing
Why, as a young girl, did I feel nothing?

I moved, so briskly
I held them, so close
I always hold flowers so deathly close to me
Can’t help having something in my life I don’t intend to have and to hold, as the evening unfolds
I’m mesmerized by the dusky, disorderly, crimson, secluded, and mechanical sky
I can’t help having something in my life without keeping it close-by
I’m a porcelain and ivory, soft-hearted girl
All you had to do was try
All you had to do was try

Ice cream summer popsicle dreams
Muscle relaxant mixed with white amphetamines
To handle the chaos that you collided with mine
I think there’s a right place, and a right time
But if you call late at night, know I’ve had some red wine
So the pauses are longer
When you hold your breath,
No longer allowed to lay your head on my chest
Coming to terms with what I’m led to believe
You’ve been lying to me
I saw it; I grabbed it; I wreaked some fucking havoc
Internally, always
Internally
No longer lying awake as you, beside me, breathe

An exemplary paradise for your magical thinking
She’s the one, she’s the only one
Who cared to ask about
Things you couldn’t say out loud
To anyone, anyone
She’s the one, she’s the only one
She’ll be the one, she’ll be the only one
To tell you the truth
To show you who you are
She’s the only one
She’ll be the only one

I’ve moved in a geometric possession to the interwoven mention,
Of “boyfriend,” and “happy”
And “I don’t want to,”
A passing thought: was I gentle enough
As if in my lifetime, I’ve ever been rough
Like a foreign identity
I’ve latched onto lately
To remove your hesitation with no A+ on my exam
I rest my heavy head in my pale hands
I pull you back and forth like a rubber band
I’m swimming and I don’t want to come up to breathe

But I have to
I have to

Like fine black metal branches, delicate though not brittle,
The uncertainty
Is damaging
It feels
Like tragedy
Knocking on hell’s door asking if I’m ready for some more
Are you ready for some more?
The peaches were more vibrant than I could have dreamt them up to be
But they’re only on a painting that was completed in the 17th century
Find myself alone in this maze of lost equilibrium
There’s an error in your calculations
The past has nothing to do with the girl standing before you
It’s taken me 26 years to learn the blind cannot be cured by me
Even though it’s my specialty
Even though it was real to me,
Even though I

Count blueberries and pick off their tiny stems
On a blanket, it rains; I am hopeful again
For a time when I’m sitting in a boy’s passenger seat, and he looks at me
And he’ll feel so free
The thought of belonging to me
They have led astray me, but don’t go by a day
That I don’t count the ways

I grow softer, and softer
As I learn man’s ways,

I grow softer and softer
I don’t lose myself in the haze
If you knew what I know,
My god, you’d be amazed

Take that to the grave
My god, you’d be amazed

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Free verse love poem: Speaking volumes (white florals)

distantcaveLeave a comment

Free verse love poem: Speaking volumes (white florals)

I’m in the pool, with your gentle gaze moving toward the horizon
Smooth riverbeds, crashing yet
Solemn
Tender in their collapsing wake
My sovereign ways trap you like hurricanes
Find slumber in the rectitude of my rendition of a classic painting of a
Prince attending to a young queen
Dismayed at her place, though in a quiet peace,
That glances violently towards a moral upbringing
A softness I couldn’t portray

The Dressing of the Favorite (1857), oil on canvas, by Henri Pierre Picou (French, 1824-1895)

A sea-foam fog dynasty I swore was mine
I told you the truth
It mattered to me
I found thoughts in my mind that I couldn’t hold back, entirely
Though I did my best,
To provide you with rest
My satin sheath, vibrant with scarlet cardinal fibers
The delicate breeze, like rapture
Golden but never, truth be told, reflecting lightning that makes marks in the sky
A tribute to no one
Is every structure soon to fall down?
The bolts unfastened, my lace dress & ultramarine form
A silhouette only God could have created
A boldness that scares away anyone who isn’t
Strong enough
To hold a woman in his arms and
Not want to change her

The light pink August calendar I have on my contemporary glass tabletop
That forgot the date when we
Began things
Paved was our course with giving looks at each other like we’re in a vintage film
A theatre for just the two of us
Hopeful dedication
Watching our past conversations and having new conversations about those from before
We don’t run out of things to talk about
But when you find me watching the cars on the road pass by us, viciously,
Counting the trucks
Taking note of their model and make
You see something in me that I could not tell you
Not because I can’t find the right words
I always find the right words

Along the Siene, Winter (1887) by Frederick Childe Hassam (American impressionist painter, 1859-1935)

I don’t know what you know
And I don’t know if you know me
But when your gaze becomes increasingly familiar, I cascade into a
Reflection interrupted by the silliest words you stream together
A childlike ambiance, golden in accuracy
Crisp like a wave’s current
Interjected with passing a cigarette lighter
Getting higher
From rays of the subtle light of day,
Muted only in temperament
Dulcet on the edges
I told you I was yours
I meant it, of course

Le Baiser (The Kiss) (commissioned by the French state in 1888, carved between 1888-98) by Auguste Rodin (French sculptor, 1840-1917)

We stop at the gas station; you run in to the corner store; you bring me honey green tea
For your girl (that is a friend)
Patient and kind
A dove’s brisk white feathers
Softer than mankind
Rougher than a woman’s fingertips
Comfortable in the chaos
Surrendering to a time when you could count the green specks in my eyes
And smell my white floral perfume

It seems as of now we have moved on to the Heavens
Where you call me Venus
And I mistake you for someone I’ve never known before
An oceanic climate to the boulders we create
When we feel inclined to say
Why do I like you so much?
Why do I like when you’re rough?
I do still find, thinking to myself, whether I’m good enough
But when the porch light comes on,
I move the thought along
To the binder where I keep my disarrayed opinions
Resolving to find
Some water to allow
My throat to stop tightening when I get up during the night
Patience, my ever-present accomplishment, finds its way to you
Presenting an elegance you couldn’t get from anyone else

Improvisation (1899) by Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935), oil on canvas

I find myself in spaces
When you are absent
Distress being transient
Because your face is

A discernment I couldn’t get from anyone else

The Aleutian mountains and the disintegrating cliffs
Couldn’t mask the foundation I thought we’d bring
Resolving to find
Some water to allow

My throat to stop closing when I sleep at night
I wonder if styrofoam composure could fail to observe my fright
To weave in serenity in light shades of pink,

On days like today, I’m unsure how to drink
Come, lay in bed

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Free verse poem: Spiracles of abdomens (your story)

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Free verse poem: Spiracles of abdomens (your story)

You, you
You
Almost make me melancholic
But if the symphony hasn’t heard of me
I’ll sit on cobblestone and write by the fence
I’ll engage, with soft-lit edges
Spiracles of abdomens
Golden youth, we marvel like
Ants in solitude
Separated from one another
But not for the entire evening
Not for the rest of our story

A smooth enhancement
A sharp critique
I step slowly, carefully
Catching my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror & readjusting my Chicago Cubs cap
That makes me feel like I’m home
In my skin
For the rest of my story

The white carnations are dying and they look almost more beautiful with acute angles cutting their dismay
I’m out of flower food
But a homemaker nonetheless, I pay tribute to my residence
I glide slowly through the streets on a white bicycle that has
“Seven Peaks” written in a cursive print similar to the tattoo on my right forearm
My tribute to a honeymoon that never occurred
My golden, sporadic sailing through a lake that ends in fleeting desperation
For water
For vengeance
And I withhold apprehension
As I look for a few more moments at my porcelain figure,
Beginning to admire the grace that I emit
On this spinning planet
Where God always knows if you’ve finished your breakfast
And thrown away your leftovers

To remind you of the fact that I
Am here, somehow, with a watch that is more beautiful than I could have requested
The cursive print is like the tattoo that reminds me that
Despondency in your wake is no reason for one to hesitate
An afternoon of slumber is fond of my delicate breath and the weight I put on my mattress as the bedspread confronts the curves of my legs
Dimly tan from summertime by the water
Cold and rotten is the fiber sheath that transcends what I’ve known to be
Detachment from minute frustrations and incidents that in my former being would have sparked marked uncertainty
And I, do, become uncertain
But find a cave to lay my head without needing feathers embedded in satin
On an August day, I am briefly saddened
Because his birthday is coming up and I won’t reach for the telephone

I’ve got to get out of here
I’m turning in western glances and forgetting romance is
Something to complement me, not complete me
A swan lake, a river with no riverbed
Flowers left at the gravesite because I, miss you in ways I hope you know
I hope what follows

Will give me more material to write, always
Reminding me that ants in solitude
Are only temporarily confused

And they find each other in the dark
Complementing each other

For they already felt complete

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