Poem: Mid-18th century French (intoxicating you)

Poem: Mid-18th century French (intoxicating you)

I’m baby blueprint in grid print intoxicating you
I’m the Fourth of July, 3 summers ago when we got high
We asked when did we stop having the times of our lives

My neck is so hurt, it’s too much for me to look down
But I always do
Redirect to separate avenues
Skateboard to my house, I’ll come out for you
Green apple lollipop, sour
Teach me your tricks and make it rain for a half-hour
Just enough to get the grill hot
Just enough to get me to take the most bone-chilling cold shower
I’m coming in hot
But I always leave so cold
In the cab I sit there- forlorn, morose, staring at the floor
Letting the kids run by and do what they’re told
I reminisce about the days when to be elegant wasn’t to be bold, and I coughed like raindrops like saran-wrap covering old left-overs
If it rains it pours, well you’re leaving – I’m sure
You always thought your music taste was so obscure
If it rains, it pours
Well, you’re leaving – I’m sure

I’m melting into hydrocodone bitartrate so crystallized you’d sell me for my Chemistry degree and put my name on your white t-shirts
Spray mist on your face until you’re reimbursed
Like daggers, how smooth you are when fatalities aren’t your responsibility, and you make your way down to the ferry where the starfishes know your name and keep it a secret
Nobody cares anyway

I’m coming in hot
But I always leave so cold

It’s too much for me to look down
But I always do
Reaching separate avenues

I said, life is a gamble
But I’m covering my face with my hands
My life is in shambles!
Can someone help me escape from this nonchalant misery I’ve so gracefully pretended is how to live a life?
I don’t make sense to anyone
I’m always deleting phone numbers
Past lovers
The smothered
The weak and the downtrodden, England in the shade
Four in the afternoon
Crisp, deafening cave
When you and I were little, we loved to misbehave
But now the landlord is asking for payments for our graves
And it’s mid-18th century French and it means
“Go fuck yourself”

Somber
Oppressively sober in mood
He looked at her with this decadent tone that I’d almost call smooth
If it wasn’t for the violence we heard up the street
The night skies were starless
I fell asleep regardless
I just wanted to escape for a week or two
I never knew my nightmares would come true
I liked the dark and the dull in colour but honey, what happened to you?
What’d they do to you?
What are you so scared of?
Why do you still try to write songs out of my poetry?
Why do you recycle and reread my emails?
Why do you send me false compliments in the mail?
Why’d you hire an attorney when you’d likely be better off in jail?
I don’t particularly adapt to being hated
I just deal
Fifty-dollar bill
I have a white dress that makes me look like a ghost and I thought I met a new boy that would love me the most
But he’s slipping out of my fingers, of course
Tell me I’m not predictable

Grey daffodils, crisp July skies
I just wanted to escape for a week or two
I never knew my nightmares would come true
It’s November and there’s not much more to expect from the undesirable residue
I just hoped I could sit down and paint you
Make something beautiful
Capture a black button-down shirt

Was it good when it hurt?
I’m stumbling over forgotten words
Insecure (or in great difficulties)
He was miserable without her

All is not lost
There is still some chance of success or recovery
But me, haha, me?
Sometimes when a defeat has been sustained
It’s better for everyone involved that you don’t speak my name

Not that there is much to be ashamed
It’s just
Was it good when it hurt?
I told you over and over,
I’m not a good flirt

I’m not a good flirt

If it rains, it pours
And it’s mid-18th century French and it means
“Go fuck yourself”

Poem: The ones I love die

I’m getting better at glamorizing myself
I like my safety pins and textbooks neat on the shelf
Can I have your permission to be ambivalent
About my whereabouts?
Don’t ask me why
Don’t ask me why
Don’t tell me not to cry
Don’t tell me not to cry
If God is mean and bad, then that makes sense
Why does he let the ones I love die
Why does he let the ones I love die
Don’t tell me why

Don’t ask me why
Don’t ask me why
Don’t tell me not to cry
Don’t tell me not to cry

Well, I met with your father at the café
We talked about you, pretty much the entire day
He said how you’ll have it is how you’ll have your own way
I’m too left
I’m too left
Toughen up
Toughen up
Decay is pressed petals and sorrow intertwined within one membrane
The words just spill onto the pages
I’m not even thinking as I’m writing, maybe

Collapse onto me, I swear to god, I’ll let you love me
Don’t suck your thumb at me
Roses and thorns, yeah, roses and thorns
Roses and thorns, yeah, roses and thorns
I like the way you cross your eyes
Yeah, I only really hang out with guys
Since my best girl friend hung herself out to dry

I’m not even thinking as I’m writing, maybe
The words just spill onto the pages
The words just spill onto the pages
The words just spill onto the pages
The words just spill onto the pages

Poem: A hundred drops per second

When I met you, you hated yourself
Like you were afraid of yourself
As the storms went on,
You found it to be best to be by yourself
And there,
I was,
Watching a man crumble in front of my very timid but sparkling eyes
It was no surprise
You liked salt wounds and touching my inner thighs
But I –
I bask when I wake with the sunrise
And you –
You look down on me for loving everything until it dies
You hate the earth
And you wonder why
It doesn’t pity you back

I moved out, clean new apartment
Living with a friend
I’m working on my craft
No longer at my wit’s end
Looking forward to all the money I’ll spend
Me?
And you?
Will we ever make amends?

I care no longer
I wouldn’t bother
Oh, your poor father
He knows what’s in the water

I care no longer
I wouldn’t bother
Oh, your poor father
He knows what’s in the water

If I were to swim
To you
To build a new continent
I’d turn around
Find a river raft
You think I’m strange and daft
Never read any of my first drafts
Fell out of love just like that

Now you –
Hopefully you’ll remember the words I’ve said
But it no longer matters to me
Whether you’re alive or dead
Instead

Don’t lose your head
It’s not worth it
We were perfect
But we weren’t
And I’m gasping
For thin air like –

A hundred drops per second

©️ Elle Silvestrov

Poem: James Davies

When I threw away the dying white roses you bought for me
I almost cried myself to death
When I touched the petals
(They were so soft)
Like me
Untouched
Delicate
You robbed me of my own sanity
And it got so fucked I broke away from reality

You robbed me of my own sanity

Take your medication, baby, please don’t stop
Taking your medication
I care so much for you that my heart keeps breaking
Because you’re not next to me in bed and I can’t fall asleep because I’m shaking
I’m so afraid of you
But I’m more afraid of what I’m going to do without you
Do you have any idea how much I love you?

Sweet river beds
I leaned against your car smoking like I’m from Tennessee
And you weren’t even man enough to comfort me
You like to call it “enabling”
But a girl crying over you will only stop crying when you touch her
Hold her like it’s your last day alive
And you know the last memories are the memories we keep
But all I can think of is you screaming at me
You were screaming at me
But you said you were in love with me

You robbed me of my own sanity
But it was only because I was too insane to see
You weren’t good for me
You weren’t good for me
James Davies
You were never my safety

I’m so helpless, it’s scary

Though I know Monday morning I’ll wake up
Sipping my L-theanine-filled green tea in my Moscow teacup
I won’t text you
Won’t say wassup
Because you and I are no longer
Babe, I hope you take a seat and ponder

How weak you made me

Tears cover my cheekbones
I can barely read these pages
Felt I’d love you for ages
But you tested my patience

How weak you made me
This is what became of me

How weak you made me

Poem: Surface tension (poolside dreams)

I saw the skinniest girls at the pool today
They were all bone, with graceful flat stomachs
I started to hate myself again
And I considered if
Maybe I was going too far
Maybe they have scars to hide too
But I traced their gentle bodies with my disturbing eyes
And I couldn’t find a somber disguise
Or any evidence that they hate themselves too

Maybe I didn’t look deep enough
What’s on the surface conceals what’s underneath

I toss and turn wildly in my bedsheets
And maybe the spaces of my ribs and the lights in-between
No longer shine, no longer gleam
I look dirty even when I’m entirely clean
I try to smile, but I can’t hold back that I’m so, so mean

They splashed each other while in the water
I knew if I smiled I’d only bother
But maybe they were growing sick of each other
At that point, I’d be a newfound lover
But when it rains it decays what’s left of me
I only feel blissful when I’m swimming in the sea (I feel like it’s a part of me)
I am opalescent in matters of blue
Your favourite shades of Hunter green
Writing poetry with a ruptured spleen
I miss being a fragile and innocent young teen
Didn’t stop you from touching me

Didn’t stop you from touching me
You claimed that you were teaching me
But my skin turned dark like you were leaching me
I’d have the strongest, most bizarre of nightmares
Wake up sweating, alone, and scared
A modest, timid girl
Too small to be bared
You dragged my body up the crystallized stairs

What’s on the surface conceals what’s underneath
When the gun started firing, the bed I hid beneath
Is it always as rosy as the daydream makes it seem?
My God, being dead sounds so fucking serene

My God, being dead sounds so fucking serene

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