Category: Favourites

Free verse poem: Get over it (cream sweater)

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Free verse poem: Get over it (cream sweater)

This is one of the shortest poems I’ve ever drafted. Many people think my poetry blocks are separate poems, but they’re actually all one post – I think it’s in being ethnically Russian that makes me so verbose. Sometimes I think I’m entirely composed of words. Enjoy. – Elle

In a cream sweater, I lie polished in the sand
Me, right there, with just the right tan
Your diamond slippers
Soft chain-tainted, frozen and milky bite
Sweet medallion, golden skyline
Treasured and regarded
Held too tight

Never enough
It’s never enough
I’m never enough
Never enough
It’s never enough
I’m never

Like cobblestone paths that I walked along in the summertime
Sweet and concrete
Soft like the horizon
That falls like a ghost, which I warned you about
Not once, twice – not once, many times
Sweet, hazel eyes
Blemished skin
Soothing fireplace memories and lullabies in notebooks
Lined with crisp-white, apricot pages
Laced garments
Torn to pieces
Left for those who traveled never too far away from where they were raised
To lay down forever, at least in the garden
Until the fountain ceases to calculate its own mistakes

Tell me what it is you dream about

I flat iron my hair, and I separate the strands
They fall
I’m beside myself
And I think of diamonds
Gazing at the dandelions on my coffee table
I notice that the table leg is about to come apart

Never enough
It’s never enough
I’m never enough
Never enough
It’s never enough
I’m never

And I, too
Dissolve like the sea

And I, too
Wish you were over me

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Soundcloud poetry: 2 new soundcloud entries

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Soundcloud poetry: 2 new entries, listen here

Listen to “Belongings (how I want you to leave)” which you can find at: https://lilacdove.com/blog/free-verse-poem-belongings/

The second is titled “This time (Freshwater Lilies)” and has never been posted.

Support my work here: https://paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

Free verse poem: The ending of our story (bored)

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Free verse poem: The ending of our story (bored)

I told him he could have
Any part of me that he wanted
All the marble he envisioned
Chilled and defeatist, but forever unmoving
Sparkles that shape the tide of your marked ingenuity
Cold heaven, sacred
Worn out walls of fibers and satin sheath
At sundown, we rest and reprieve
Find solace in the mistakes that counted against us
One by one

Rosemary falls beneath you like evangelical riverbeds
Rainfall on a crisp white, bestowed meadow
Damsel in distress, sitting at Cape Cod
Breathing in the marine layer
Decadent, but desolate perchance
A personal favor for nobody
In particular

If you have a minute
Cos you always have a minute
For me
Save me some time
Buy mine sharply, but not robustly
Golden edges
Soft-lit amber haze that spins like a year of soft rock (lamenting, slowly)
Lightning
Moons that belong to seasons and
Seasons that belong to no one
In particular

If ownership is inconsequential of time
And we all have time
For other people
Do we, do we?
What is it that we desire?
If only
If only
I could have made my mark by now

I lapsed into a momentum where I could not shift my gaze correctly at the afterthought of
How I made sense to nobody
And nobody made love to me
Why would they?
Would they, even?
Would I let anyone see me in that still?
When my hazel eyes bend like the seas
How could I summon anything more glamorous than how the evening resides in a French solitude that complements my need for quality alone time

When I am not made of silk or marble but
Fragments of broken chamber orchestras
That cascade like I’m running away from forever
A soft drink on a Wednesday, in gloomy July
A honeymoon for your favourite runaway bride

On the flight, they asked if I wanted alcohol
And I erupted in a laughter that was
Seemingly inappropriate
For the vague informality of the occasion.

In rapture
I used to be unable to feel thrills because my being did not accept them as kind
One amongst the wolves
Rambunctious and heroic in nature, but a hero to no one

Don’t get me confused
I do find it amusing
How the symphony plays all of their longest songs just for me
And how nobody ever really takes hold of your name
Or your posture
When you’ve
Spent your life
Awake by pretense

An effort to be
In combat, like a dove,
A soft sparrow, seemingly longing for an ending to the illusion
With whom?
With whom do I share my fears!
What cave do I run to when I’m cold, covered in mud
Shivering and despondent

They know my face but haven’t counted the dots on my cheeks
They don’t know what I look like when I cry
Or why I do
If I ever
Decide to break the stillness of my figure
That makes me heavenly in God’s eyes

There is no reason to run
I say, I say to myself; I say it often.
Settle here forever in the dawn of the styrofoam melted cacophony where
I and you melt in two interchangeable pastel colours
Decide to go on a journey because we are
Bored
And so tired of being chained to our demonic vanity mirrors

Alone
But in plenty
Of patient, never-forgetting ambitions & daydreams

I lost the ending to our story
I just
Let it slip
Away from where I sleep at night

I let the silence consume my boredom

© Elle Silvestrov

Support my work! www.paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

Love poem: As vacant (mine)

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Love poem: As vacant (mine)

It scared me so
I knew
We were going down
I knew
You would not turn around
And still
Like a beat
I’m made of memories
Crystal castles
Made of ashes
My forgetful apprentice
With wrath like a vengeance
Misinterpreted my withdrawn
Glances at the sharp, flawlessly glamorized corners of the living room
(Mine)

Velveteen heart-shaped sunglasses
When I’m asleep, you know it plays
Again on repeat
The things
You said
When my hands were in my lap
I can’t
Even sleep
I can’t
Even sleep
I can’t
Even sleep

I can’t
Find a song
That makes you make sense to me
More than
The last
Few words you sent
And how
Fast I sank
My teeth
Into my hand
To keep
From setting my bedroom on fire

All the wires
All the while –
They surrounded me like filth
Carcasses of your hypnotic, granite, carbon imagination
An avalanche of insecurities, I thought I had
Swallowed
In a strawberry, lime, and gin cocktail
Held fragile

An escape would be too good to be true
Though it wouldn’t make me think less about you

Soft skin
In collapsing horizons
Pitfalls
Two doves on a swing
I’ll give you my everything
Every last piece of marble and copper

In the mornings, we eat vegan butter on toast
And our evenings of suffering remake every inhospitable, tarnished spider web
That fills us with a skepticism
Too delicate to absolve
(Mine)

In waves, so transient
A hospital bed
With white flowers for
For me, for me, for me
For me, for me, for me
For me

And I deleted my profile because
I can’t handle falling in love again
I can’t help
I can’t handle
I can’t handle falling in love again
I can’t help
I can’t handle
I can’t handle falling in love again
I can’t help
I can’t hang
I can’t feel

Anything that could get me close
Anything that could get me close

We were so close
I can’t help
I can’t help
Thinking we were so close,

Like an inopportune sky
Just there
Us two

Probably as vacant as each other

© Elle Silvestrov

Support my work! > > > > > https://paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

Free verse poem: Belongings

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Free verse poem: Belongings

This is a free verse poem about attachment and detachment – defeat on behalf of simplicity’s sake.

I didn’t expect myself to still feel like this
And my mother laughs because it’s only been a few days
But I feel like it’s dragging on
It’s dragging on
And we didn’t even come to the conclusion of what would become our song
So what am I here to do
Sitting in the corner of the modern, moss-green, vibrantly street-lit café,
A damsel in despondency,
A variation of your favourite four-course strings
A broken-down parlor path with a shiny diamond entryway and glass slippers lining the blizzard-sinking ships,
That match my cruelty
My taste for rabid tongue
The whispers I wouldn’t let you utter
And the hesitation you’d be lucky to never have suffered

Portrait of Princess Tatyana Yusupova (1850) by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, oil on canvas

A chance for melancholia to clash with the force of nature
To detract from a foreign film
A lost, aching still
An avalanche of surprise
Beguiled by sheer imagination and phosphorescent icing

That smothers a kingdom like the holiest ghost
Always bittersweet to the liking
Made for sharp, pristine vengeance

Sans Titre (Untitled) 115 by Eliane L. Guerin, oil on canvas

In my own reserved portrait of solitude
Gazing vibrantly at the majestic cars that drive by
The classics, the tragic
The ancient and recumbent
Reoccurring in stunning ways I could not even think to properly illuminate in due time
Typing
Silently
Wishing you were next to me
Smiling
The way you do
The way you do
So magnificent
Eyes glimmering in concave and crimson, blue
God, I was this close to being obsessed with you

I feel like
A teenager
An angry one
A bitter fool
Mad at myself because I brushed away the
The fleeting thoughts of nah, he won’t like me if I say that
Nah, he won’t like me if I wear that
Nah

The Bath (1874) by Alfred Emile Leopold Stevens, oil on canvas

I’m moving in circles because I forgot how to dance
I forgot how to feel alive
I trip over my own words
Everything is in disarray
I thought you were going
I thought you were going
I thought you were going to make it work
I thought you were
I thought you were
I thought you were going to make it work with me
I thought you were
I so thought you would have
Made it work with me
And that would be
Meaningful
Hopeful
Spontaneously planned
Crimson and clover all over
Soft rubber bands

Now you’ve got me in a pit and you
Hung up on me
I threw my cellular device on the street
I don’t want to talk to anybody
Anybody at all
Anybody at all
Anybody at all
Anybody at all

I’m not writing another poem about a boy that doesn’t have the strength to come
Tell me it’s not working
Stand there in your clandestine flesh
Stand there, giving me a real piece of yourself
Look at me with dandelions in my hair

Mending the Gown (early 20th century) by Adolphe Borie (1877-1934), oil on canvas, figurative artwork

Don’t say I’m too charming for you
Tell me I’m too alarming for you
Tell me I scare the living daylights out of you

And you’ve got other girls calling you
Answer the phone in front of me
Take the flowers out of my hair
Push me down on the tar-stained sidewalk
Bully me like you do on your bad days
Get your way

That’s how I want you to leave me

Not like
Not like
Not like
Not like
Not like
Not like
Not like
Not like

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Open-Air-Interior-barcelona-1892-Ramon-Casas-i-Carbo.jpg
Open Air Interior Barcelona (1892) by Ramon Casos i Carbo, oil on canvas

Worn desperation
Mixing in fevers of separation

But I thought I
Belonged

https://www.instagram.com/lilacdovee/

Thank you for reading, & be sure to visit paypal.me/LilacDoveCA to buy me a coffee for my birthday on September 14, 2022.

Thank you for your support – currently working on the cocktail party poetry collection.

xoxo