Tag: author

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: New York baby doll (cream sweater)

distantcaveLeave a comment

Love Poem: New York baby doll (cream sweater)

The type of girl that you want to meet
And to think that we met on the street
And you watched me tag my website on the grey, electrical box in black sharpie and cursive
For nobody to read, to not bother to glance
And you laughed not at me, but with me
Like we were on amphetamines
Like you aren’t as traffic-stopping, rush-hour-madness gorgeous as you are
How you framed a framework of genuine spirit
And the spirits on your golden side table
And the sweet drinks you made me because you store simple syrup
Little bartender in a black top
With hair like she just left the Manhattan salon
With a smile like she’s been happy all along

I don’t think I ever mentioned it at all
I was just
Struck
By the plants you have arranged on your glass windowsill
The cotton, white, dreamlike, lush bedspread
(I made your bed for you like a hundred times)
I wanted to show you I can perform acts of service
Because I clean when I get nervous

And my god, my dear god
My god, did you make me nervous
But not on purpose
Some people exude a confidence that inspires the same thing in yourself
But there’s still this nervous laughter of
How is she so composed
How is she hardly older than I, and so, so –
Full of experience
Full of delight
Worth talking and laughing from dark to the morning light
If this is fleeting, I can accept that
But some people
You want to know what lets them breathe
And I’ve got your clothes, I’ll give them right back
My New York damsel in sovereignty, too chill to be distressed
I’ll have you at your worst; I’ve already seen you at your best

But I’ll have you at your worst; I’ve already seen you at your best

I hope that you’re happy
I hope you wake up and fall in love with the world
I hope your parents love you
And if they don’t, I hope that in your head you tell them to go fuck themselves but keep them in your prayers every night
You deserve
Confetti streamers on your birthday
Someone to travel on the train for 2.5 hours with 29 golden balloons to
Surprise you with celebration

Something about you is so familiar
Something about you is so new
You looked at me with cocaine eyes when I grew solemn and blue
But I wasn’t tired of you
I was just tired- I was up all night!
This girl’s got a bedtime
And I slept well
But it might be my insecurity, for I can’t tell

If I made the right impression
God, I talked so much
Why’d you make me feel so comfortable!
Why did I have to enjoy your presence!
Under the city street lights when I first glanced in your direction, I thought “my god, she probably has everything”

The first impression
That you made
It is one that may partially come from you, and a portion from the book you lent me
Well, I’ll read it, and all that you highlighted – I love the little shades of blue hue
I’ll learn your secrets
I hope you’re living
A life you dreamt of
I hope to be
Someone you’ll send a message to when you’re
Stuck
Not knowing what to wear,
Bored and want to make me a drink, talk about the weather, don’t even have to think
Want someone to make you laugh about everything
Because I’m good at being that

My New Year’s resolution is to be accepting of myself
So I can stop second-guessing whether others accept me
And start living life as boldly and securely as you appear, you stunning avalanche of a porcelain doll

Think I’m starting to think
This year is going to be new for me
It’s only the seventh, and I’m on my pink bedspread in your cream white sweater
Somehow we’re the same size
Even though you’re smaller
Porcelain and clover, golden and sapphire

And you like luxury the way I do
And you don’t eat animals because you care
And we’re the same age but wiser beyond our years
Even though the boys would never tell us that our face

You’re awfully good at first impressions
Is there anything that I forgot to mention?
Shut up, don’t make fun of me for my apprehension

Make love to me under the twinkling lights
Let me give you directions

Porcelain skin, long princess hair
With plants on your windowsill
Downtown Los Angeles, May earth baby girl of nonchalance & sheer observation

Because being alive is just enough for you
Because being alive comes naturally to you
And you told me, not once- but twice
That you’re happy I’m here too
New York baby doll
You were a star in the fleeting night
While you’re in your studio, I’ll be right here
I’ll be right here
The things you said to me
They meant so much to me to hear

The plants arranged on your windowsill
I can’t wait to tell you their genus and species
Because I like biology
And you like theories
And your projector television screen illuminated a light upon your silhouette that made you look even more like a fever dream

In your cream sweater
I feel much better

So call me if you ever want to chat about the weather

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Free verse poem: Get over it (cream sweater)

distantcaveLeave a comment

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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Love poem: Someone new (pastel pink blush)

distantcaveLeave a comment

Love poem: Someone new (pastel pink blush)

You were a one-man show
Hardly feeding off the audience
And I was so afraid of ever letting you down
But when I think of last winter
I lose my train of thought
Like my body’s trying to tell me
Not to go back there
Not to stay aware
Not to send you a letter to let you know I’d be there

I don’t have
Any photographs
Because I thought I wasn’t the type to document things
And when you’d leave the table
To take a call
I’d find comfort in sitting alone at the bar
Like I showed up on my own
With nobody to remind me
The emptiness of staring in the corners of the eyes of my boy as he’s gazing away
Not taking notice of the blush on my cheeks
That I re-applied several thousand times
To paint myself as
A happy girl
A happy girl
The corner of your deep brown, vacant eyes

I stayed awake, most nights
Couldn’t bear to turn off the lights
Had stunning pink visuals running through my neural fiber sheath
Racing our cars against each other
Through the wind and never without
Asking about your day because that, to me, was the most important part of mine
How I grew so tired sometimes
Wondering if I had
Mistakenly locked myself up in a basement surrounded by mirrors
I could never bring myself to look in because
I knew
The light pastel pink blush on my cheeks
Wasn’t quite right
Wasn’t quite right

Sometimes I hear a song
That I think you might like
I guess I’m still wondering how to make you feel better
It wears me out
I turn off the sound
Because of this, it just doesn’t feel right
It just doesn’t feel right
That it’s a Saturday and I’m alone tonight

But it’s like I’ve arrived at my desk so that I could sit with the silence
Wondering the count of the distance between us in miles
Ripping the Christmas card I bought for you into small pieces
That was old news, old news, old news
Maybe next December
I’ll have gotten over you

And that could feel
Quite right
And I could turn off
The light
And I could get my blush
Just right

By being with someone new

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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.

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