Category: Blues

Free verse poem: Replace the terror in me

distantcaveLeave a comment

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.
www.paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

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 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 poem: Spiracles of abdomens (your story)

distantcaveLeave a comment

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

paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

Poem: Payphone (the curtain falls)

distantcaveLeave a comment

Poem: Payphone (the curtain falls)

A generation’s ills
A dazzling medieval palace for my deep affection for bridal gowns
With pearly white coffins moving mountains to tell me that
Someone more important has taken my place
With a soft-haven silhouette
She has the loveliest face
For a world where nobody remembers your name

A cave where I kept
A bibliography of sorts
I spent days citing sources to be able to go back
In time
To find
Myself locked in gates I never swallowed whole
The vicinity was clear and
I, so struck by fear,
Lost my train of thought on the train where I forgot
My passport and my engagement ring
The prettiest doll face
The saddest little thing

If death is an escape, why isn’t anybody telling me where those people went
They only let you in to certain places if you know certain people
And I
Found something very dark
About the way, he got away
With crimes in broad daylight
The pigeons wouldn’t wait
I think I’ve passed Hell now
But now I’m insane
And I don’t know
When it’s too late to be too late
I set it on fire
Such a beautiful gate
It poured like peroxide
The same bitter taste

It’s a terrace for evenings that run like wire circuits
It’s so terrifying to look back
I’m young, I’ve got this
I can’t think like that
I have to stay on track
Summer’s passing by in too fleeting of ways for me to react
Every other person seems on the verge of collapse
I cannot find reason
Living in Timelapse
Memory for memory’s sake
Is such a sad fact

‘Within reach’ says my lavender bedroom wall
I believe it most days
Some days I don’t think
I think in this chaos we’ll unwind and then sink
Into the pavement with the solace that comes with
Holding eternity for eternity

I was so close
It passed me by
No lexicon is sufficient to surrender what I’ve hindered
Crawl under the bedsheets for the sheer familiarity
The cotton, like childhood
Is lost by the evening
I can’t focus on anything when I’m thinking about everything
And if you saw vividly through me and felt I was sinking

Would you be forward, address it
Ignore it, regret it
Pay a debt that nobody else is around to pay
I really thought I had it but his look was so
Cold
It startled the aseptic daylights out of me
It felt a lot like tragedy

And if someone more important has taken my place,
Do I want to know his name?
Or which face
To look for when I see thousands looking for someone else

If an entire life could be a regret
How is my small frame to persevere at all
The show has ended
The curtain falls

You stand at the payphone
With no one to call

The show has ended
The curtain falls

paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

Poem: Growing up (I’m a grown-up)

distantcaveLeave a comment

Poem: Growing up (I’m a grown-up)

I wanted to be all grown up
I wanted to be all –

In the summertime, I’m ravished by a thousand medallions
Fragrances of June feathers and soft remembrances
Sparkling streamers commemorating my absence from the Heavens
And credit cards saying they’ll spend all their worth on me
All their worth on me
The flowers are wilting just for me
I see you put up walls to cover your misery
You know brick and mortar can’t overpower me

We knew we’d eventually separate into two
Composite values
For which an absolute is not a resolute conception
And my evening dress is
Too sophisticated to mention
An evening made for redemption
I can tell you’re apprehensive
Always having bad days
In your chosen remote location for being pensive
He said I was filled with love, his daffodils only turning up lust
So much that I’ve gathered has turned to dust
And I’m waiting, praying, I don’t combust
Memory’s spears have had enough

In trying times, we cut the lines that separate your horizon from mine
And we’ll get through this, every little moment
Is a chance for us to know what we didn’t before it
I’m afraid but I don’t show it
I have to pay, but to whom do I really owe it?

Next to paradise canyon and the dooming, glooming waterfalls
I look across a thousand strangers’ faces
Crisp and green, tinted-pink eyeballs
I’m made of riches
And I think this itch is
Giving me a headache like when you lie in your bed awake
And you don’t know how much more laughter you can take
You don’t know where Eden’s best diamonds are made
And whether your loss is a loss, or if it’s fate
I chose not to eat my birthday cake
I almost threw up from the bitter taste
You said honey wait, yeah okay, I’ll wait
A thousand streams in my mind for me to paint
I love making you melt, watching you cascade
When is too late, really too late?

I want you crestfallen in an amber honeypot from Hell
I want to bathe in the remaining residual prime numbers from orthodox haven
I want your miscalculations to sound like compliments
Watering my house plants
Completing my silly little routine tasks

Your lies are a chore and your cradle is where you were born and this city is what we will go on to forever mourn
Several traced pathways to the kingdom we couldn’t seize
Drinking strawberry soy ice cream milkshakes
Like how much more is it gonna take
Like how much more time am I throwing away
How many more birthdays to memorize for the sake of remembering dates
I lost my sanity somewhere where I said goodbye
To all the people that died slow deaths begging for me to stay
I made it to the pink, comforting, but swollen cave
And I thought about my biggest mistakes
Days passed as I made my way through the trenches
To find your favourite New York City bench, which is
The place of sentences interlaced back and forth
In a crochet-knit paradise of conventions
Where you were too handsome for me to mention
Any hesitation or break in my thought patterns

Like whether love was all that really mattered
When I’d stay up late, crystal daisy-filled vineyards I would destroy before you rose with the sun
I could have sworn I was coming closer
But I was the only one
And I am the only one
Calling you from this telephone booth
Telling you I think I’m ready to grow up now

Do you have some time to find me now
To figure me out
To spend days with a girl in a blue satin dress
That took several hours getting dressed
Because inherently she thinks she’s a mess
And romance can bring impending stress
When you don’t feel that you are, the portrait of your complete best

Can I come home now
I’ve been alone now
In this telephone booth with a line forming around the corner
And if I were yours, I’d put everything in order
But twice is too much, and you thrive on disorder

I’m all grown up now
Can I come home?

I wanted to be all grown up
I wanted to be all –