Category: Favourites

Poem: Drowning

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Poem: Drowning

Minnesota in the hot, hot sun
I’ll write a memoir, like I’m a film star
Like my words are fiber nectar & galvanized tar
I wish I could join the assembly line
Not to find out, not to decay, but to come out bright white & crystal, grey clay
To become transparent in the grand scheme of things
Be able to extrapolate meaning from my own devices
Tell you how I find human beings so lifeless
Wrapped up in their due process of mind
Fingertips on roses, your hands on the arched back that is mine
Fever dreams
Amphetamines

I know the road is farther than it seems
I’ve seen the bitter resemblance of what’s paved underneath
My eyes blur, I can’t see, I can’t see a thing
Wouldn’t you like to have a dance with refined me?
I’m mesmerized by nothing at all
Nobody pays attention to what I want them to pay attention to
I’m violent, I got this, I’m gutless, I’m thinner than the fabric
Screaming my insides out, I’ll eat you alive
Won’t find me on your bedside
You said, you said
You said, you said
Your goodbyes so hazily
Tell me, how do you wish to be portrayed?
When they paint you wrong, are you dismayed?
What are you proud to take to the grave?
I’m taking the dreams I made

I have this one song, I get a lot of meaning from it
The way it blankets me in security and
A freedom I’ve never found in a single human being
They’re tar-stained, they’re charcoal remnants
They’ll gaslight you and then say that you’re gaslighting them in return
The apprehension is near, I told you the car was far away
I didn’t see it coming my way
Somehow I didn’t mind
I had this dream, I saw the glass-slipper ball gown
The one I wore when
You said, I swore, you said
You said, I swore it, I swore you said
Wouldn’t be there
Star-crossed lovers
Awake with hesitation
Marvel at my presentation
Scattered in assembly, grief like parasites
Do you know anyone who sees you in the right & softest light?

I’m thinner than fabric, I’m tougher than fossil fuels
If it’s confusing, it’s only confusing to you
Me – I know what’s going on
Write you a grocery list of things to bring
A sustainable sparkle, a delicate sapphire
An element of surprise to add to the details and decor
Horrors of society seem to fade when we turn the television on

Melt me like aspartame in Coca Cola
Ignite a funeral home
Tell me what you find transparent
Covered in frost, I’m not vaguely processed
I’m rarely understood and I think I know why
I think this life is mine to apprehend and find
I lose my keys over and over again on purpose
Locked out so I can write
But I thought you said, I thought you said
But I thought you said, I thought you said

I have this one song that makes me feel more like myself than anything else
I play it on repeat because I’m sick of hearing about my diminishing health
Drown out the noise, fiber-glass, can’t see, my vision blurs
The ocean is my lord & savior
I’m not even surprised by their behavior
The evidence is real because it’s written on parchment paper

It always ends
It always ends like this
I’m in the shower, white roses and pink carnations, I feel true bliss
You’d be obsolete
In a thousand years
We’re connected by the fabric
The sheer and hazy stillness
Do it on the daily
Hate you a little, just maybe
Match my evening glow

If you hate me, that’s not a well thought-out decision
You have your fears and I have this one song
That makes me feel more like myself than I’ve ever felt before
And I play it
I play it all day long
When the noise drowns me out, I sing along
You wouldn’t say, you wouldn’t say
Anything to conclude the grime and the dirt you brought to my doorstep
A cave’s internal diameter
A concave, arching sky
The exact shade of your brown eyes
My skin is softest on the tops of my thighs

I don’t hate anyone
I don’t hate anything
I don’t hate anyone
There’s just nothing left to sink
Drowning in the deep end because in the water I’m completely occupying my body
I don’t hate anyone
I don’t hate anything
I’ll let the water have me, on purpose, on purpose

Does drowning make you nervous?
Does real love make you hesitate?

Does drowning make you nervous?
Does real love make you hesitate?
Does drowning make you hesitate?

Does real love make you nervous?

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Love poem: God’s favourite flower girl

distantcaveLeave a comment

Love poem: God’s favourite flower girl

I want to
Lay beside
The edge of your bedside
Realizing I can’t say the words I wish would fill my mind
Out of the fabric from my lost and heavy fingertips
I have
This weight
Encapsulating me in tragic divinity
When you don’t
Look
Me in the eyes
I feel something akin to death to fate’s memory
Are you fond of me?
Tell me,
Are you fond of me?
Please tell me

You smoke
A cigarette I gave to you
Outside
Before the rain starts to fall
I look up
At your broad shoulders
Cream, silk face
Your grandfather sweater and the way I
Don’t think you’ve quite forgiven me yet
I’ll drive home
Gripping the wheel
Trying not to
Trying not to
Trying not to cry
Envisioning me by your bedside
Soft and golden, starry and hazy
Would you let me trail
My fingers
Along your head
In the
Right places
To make you feel

The white flowers at the edge of
My bedside
I bought them for myself
They weren’t given to me
But I wanted
To find
Flowers
On your desk
When I came by
I know expectations are futile
I know they will be the death of me
I think I’ve already lived this lifetime

I drive
Deep into the night
Gripping the steering wheel
My vision blurring
Me chasing
Created memories after each other as they create marked trails in my mind
I can’t see
What colour the light is, or whether it’s telling me to go
And I don’t mind
Because nobody would care
Or know
What flowers
Are appropriate
To bring

For a flower girl
A flower girl
I’m a flower girl
Yes, I’m a flower girl
And there weren’t
Flowers
For my arrival
And yes,
I am a flower girl
I’m God’s favourite flower girl
Always bringing
Flowers
To other peoples’
Weddings
And goodbyes
And celebrations

But what do I have to celebrate?
When I drive deep into the night
I begin to close my eyes
Gripping the steering wheel

Would you get me flowers
If you knew how that would make me feel

I’m God’s favourite

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Poem: Love it any less

distantcaveLeave a comment

Poem: Love it any less

He tells me
Not to get too excited
As we sit alongside the deep-blue riverbed
But me – I’ve been counting down the days
I saw my chamomile flowers bloom, then close, and fall apart in the duration of one week
As I hadn’t changed the water
I was distracted by the sparkle
Of the morning’s horizon
As it painted me in shades of pink I couldn’t quite capture on film

California outlawed flavoured vape products
I know, I’m mourning it heavily
Now I find myself smoking non-menthol cigarettes in my parking lot
Like my father did, in his
Amber tones of his skin shining like
Diamonds you pick back up from the jewelry store
That line your blue-tinted watch with a brand painted in cursive ink
Like your mother’s Russian handwriting
Soft in all of the
Roughest places

My afternoon gaze is
Thick with gloom and hope, both at the same time
I’m wrapped in my navy ‘Windy City’ sweater that I bought at a Walgreens
Where it took four cashiers to properly ring up my alcoholic drink, too
Because the cashiers were mostly underage
But we were on the same page
Laughing about how liquor makes the turbulent flight go smoothly
And how I’ll wrap myself in bridal magazines and read the new Forbes “thirty under thirty” list
Knowing I won’t make it on there in less than three years
Cutoffs are so harsh, isn’t it maddening
Life is so funny sometimes, at the right times
I’ll fade to November grey like a collapsing sky
I’ll lay my head down and never, ever wonder why
I’ll endure the gradual passage of time

He adjusted his collar
And we laughed about who is taller
Because me, my small frame, I take up so little of space
Though I feel like if I spread my fingertips, they’ll reach the mountains
Surrounded by cherry stems and cascading fountains
Waterfalls along the trail where my senior terrier walks on her own self-created path
My glimmer of hope in this brittle, dark night
Made for a hollow tin of little coloured cards stolen from the paint store
Where we wrote our biggest dreams on
Gathering the courage to set them on fire
And not intending to burn down the park grounds down with our miniature vision boards

I found a poem I published for a boy three years ago
On his birthday
It was called ‘I wrote you a poem’
My mother laughed at how cute that was
I did too
I think back to those years and how he never came through
And somehow that didn’t make me love him any less
Probably even more so

I have to get better with taking derivatives
Along with the vitamins in my medicine cabinet
I finally bought a parking permit for university so I could stop
Getting tickets
Even though the traffic cop is such a sweetheart
He asks about my navy ‘Windy City’ sweater
Things like “so when are you going to finally end up there?”

The piece of rose-tinted, painted card-stock
That I’d never set on flames
I keep it in my wallet
To know that
I’ll get there

I’ll get there
Until I’m at the drugstore again with the cashiers
That are of-age, by that time
And I’m buying wine

And Chicago will treat me like it’s been mine this whole time
And I won’t love it any less
Probably even more so

© Elle Silvestrov

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Free verse poem: Things I’ve found out (the right season)

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Things I’ve found out (the right season)

a free verse poem about finding stability & self-acceptance

I know
That things won’t work out as planned
I know that
Because my mother taught me how to be a man
But there are
Parts of me that won’t let someone hold my hand
Because I
Because I
Find graveyards appealing
Harsh winter thunderstorms healing
And the chaos within you is quite often revealing
Of the doom and dismay your surroundings convey
The filth
The agony
The dreams others built for you become destroyed
I’m my own person

But when I drive home at night
I don’t feel alone
I just know I am

It was cold in Chicago
And I wanted to lay down
In the snow
My frail body
Seldom appears melancholy
Singing you songs, breathlessly, to you in your sleep
Though my voice is never the right pitch
Maybe that’s why I wait
Until you hit your steady dream state
An abyss of perpetual ignorance to moral obligations

The impatience
Is testing me
Like a ticking clock
Telling me
I
Haven’t painted
The sky quite right
Haven’t gotten the stars
To my audience’s delight
And I think
I might combust
From the tainted, porcelain figure I often wish to set on fire
Because what burns
Feels so warm
In winter

It’s almost
February
The anniversary of
A thousand slumbers
A rainfall that struck me like
Lightning on the fast lane on the highway
Swerving between cars with my eyes closed
Thinking I’m oh – I’m just so composed
But me, parchment paper thick, practically comatose
Wouldn’t keep anyone up at night
When you haven’t
Made a name
For yourself
And nobody
Gets the intonation
In your full name quite right
Maybe it’s not
The right time
To say

That what burns feels so warm
In winter
My god
The shades of blue
How I’d devour the skyline
Like an arsonist,
I fade to grey
Along with the trembling cityscape

I encapsulate all the seasons & am easily forgotten

I only hope to properly portray
The vacancy light in this hotel I occupy

Me,
Against the wall
Cold, doll-like, confused
Fingertips
Painted the lightest shade of pink that the nail salon could offer me
If only,
I could be elegant
I could like parts of myself that others don’t
I could live my life like
My father envisioned

When he said to me

That I was born
In the perfect season
For a girl who prolongs
Finding a reason
To burn this place down to the ground

Hollow
Cave
Where my old journals remain
Where ex-boyfriends mispronounce my last name
They never remember the best parts of you
They never really knew
How to get through
How your eyes turn dark green when your favourite song comes on
Or when the colour temperature is five thousand Kelvin and
I feel ashamed
That I woke up to find
Myself
Not in embers
But filling a body
With wholeness that only

Real self-acceptance could develop and create

Something permanent
Is never
Found

I’m no good with directions but I don’t believe I’m lost
I’m exactly
On my own two feet
Waiting
To leave a message after the beep

But I hang up, because I remember
They can’t pronounce my last name
The intonation
Is weak
And I
Am so
Much farther than I thought I would be
At this time of my life
Are you, at all, surprised?

When I look
At the cars
Passing me by
On the highway,
I wonder
If they’re going
Somewhere warm and inviting

I don’t know why
That
To me
Feels so terribly frightening

Like a cradle filled with endless lightning

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Love poem: Sweet nectar

distantcaveLeave a comment

Love poem: Sweet nectar

It’s the waves of sadness that trickle with madness
As I cascade onto the lost heavenly golden shore,
Like a goddess from a stolen shipwreck,
I swim upstream, like an airplane in the wind
I won’t press send yet
I’ll leave you diamonds and all of your belongings, arranged into their definitive but transient places
Sprawled amongst my living room
Garments, piles of yarn & cotton
I thought I had it, but my god I’ve lost it

The breathtaking splendor
Of an afternoon in November
When you cradled me like a little baby in your mariner’s arms,
Like a tomboy
Like a child
Like with you, I’d happily run wild
Any day of the week
Do you mind if I speak
Or leave love letters, here and there, for you to read
When your eyes are
Closing
In-between somber nighttime
The stillness I could never objectify

A smooth transition
Won’t you pay attention
I’ve got my hair in curls, a floral neckline
A passerby’s time
Glance at the clock
I almost forgot
I have to let the sheep out before the wolves come back
From hiding
They do like to do that
So rambunctious and eerie
They paint me quite freely

I do love their art – I go to all of their showings
Even when they take place on a Tuesday, or Wednesday, and I’ve got more work to do than I can account for

I’m a lady of charm
And you’ll always find me armed
That part you can disregard

Glock 23 G23 Pistol Semi Auto Firearm Handgun Schematic

I won’t shrink in your presence
I occupy a throne
I go to places where most would be too scared to step on their own
It’s my afternoon glow
When you find me on that smooth soft-stoned path,
The dismay leaving my eyelids as I cast you not an ember of a doubt
But a becoming smile
Welcoming
Almost
Briefly
Weeping
Holding to you closest, what you want most

And that is?
That is?
Something to never be replaced
Something I won’t touch lightly on
Whispering to those in particular who have the patience to sound my vowels and consonants out, deal with the aftermath
Elegantly
Soft in the evenings
Rambunctious – they all are
Their witch hazel broiler room ticking clock
Like apricots at a wedding
In the middle of February
For no reason, no reason
For no reason at all

I sat down with you, there, close to the prisoner’s fence
I wanted to inquire whether you loved me
I can’t remember what I said
But I did
And that’s that
You’ll run me a cold lavender bath
Finding my hazel glow a little too appealing
Hopefully, I hadn’t been too revealing
The room is spinning
And I am thinking

You’re like sweet nectar from a flower that’s never been held

© Elle Silvestrov

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