The things I see, the things I love
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
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
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
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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
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
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
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
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
Worn desperation
Mixing in fevers of separation
But I thought I
Belonged
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