Tag: book

Free-verse poem: Simon & Garfunkel, truly terrifying (New York)

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Free-verse poem: Simon & Garfunkel, truly terrifying (New York)

My baby didn’t even have time to pack his suitcase
Left his things sprawled all over the floor
He told me he wanted to go to the city
Find the things he didn’t know he was looking for
He wanted more, he wanted more
He wanted more
Jars of honey, sweet fiber network
He wanted more
And I knew, across moments in space and time
That I had done my good deeds
And I could get my coat off the rack
He’s looking for more
In black tar and spiderwebs
He’ll find a new job in New York
A city that has too many important people in it for anyone to ask about

Gentle as the sea
Unbecoming as you dissolved directly into me

I cast the glow that tried to diminish my solitude
Playing Simon & Garfunkel deep into the night
To surround me in playful melody, and memories of nights in hotels
Where I didn’t know anybody
& nobody knew of me
& the thick, ivory, vintage & carefully sewn cloth that lay on the table where I had a drink (a mix of elderberry for immunity, and something with zinc)
I squeezed a lemon into my eye
(Just to try)
(Just to try it once)
I became like the night

Smooth in rapture
Rough like the ocean waves
Not asking anyone to hold me, because I wasn’t in the best company
Never understood why people use other people when they feel lonely
I find no solace in that regard
That kind of domination, to utilize temptation
What good would it do for me- my little, fawn frame?
My agony and stillness, harshly disillusioned
A maiden’s last words
A goodbye in a picture frame
Held up by safety pins for decoration of the living room, my sweet residence
Very far from New York

They read my poems and think they’re separate, short ones instead of long form stories
But at least they’re reading
It’s good for the brain
It’s almost a necessity to understand someone else’s pain
In my bedroom, I have roses on the left side of the bed
Audrey Hepburn on the wall
Reading a book, casually, a photograph taken & never explained
Who will ever take photographs of me?
Will anybody capture me in my own reserved solitude?
Press a camera shutter when my face looks nice from the angle the lens hits me from,
In the right light?
With a nice mannerism?
How cruel it is to live years without memories
Nothing to think about with morning coffee
Nobody to dream of when I’m feeling despondent

It’s not that I try not to, but I can’t stop writing
It’s like the medication hasn’t yet absorbed
You tell people you’re a writer and they nod their head
In agreement, almost
I think it’s an act of disregard
Find me a publisher!
Buy my book, whenever it comes out!
Support my dreams!
No, no
Nods his head
It’s an act of disregard
A repetition in disguised portrayal of an affirmation
Fleeting hopelessness mixing in jars of honey that fade to silk and an ambience destroyed by lightning in the dark
Making way for the gloomy inhabitants of New York’s city streets
As he neglects to pack his bags

He retracts
Shoulders back
Panic attack
Upright and tall, a self-preserved, startling enchantment
Eyes so sharp and clear but in my nonchalant mind I’ll still remember them as filled with fog
Some people- you can ask them a million different questions, yet fail to receive a hospitable response
A succession of worries
“What if the plane catches on fire, what will you do then?”
“Will you call me when you land? Should I stay awake?”
Fog, nothing but fog
Dove tails & tales of romance, swept like ashes falling from a neighbor’s cigar
An afternoon sky of abysmal disobedience

When we were young
We were gentle like the sea
And I was becoming something great, something to be remembered
But his benzodiazepines have no regard for memory preservation
So with every step he takes, every fragment of clothing he doesn’t arrange
He dissolves directly into me

I hear ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ repeating softly in my mind
Holding on to the melody in a way that
Truly terrifies me
As I dissolve
Repeatedly

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Love poem for a boy: Physics study hall

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Love poem for a boy: Physics study hall

There was a boy with a voice like yours in the physics study hall
I thought it was you
I could feel myself glowing
A little bit
But when I looked in his direction
I only saw my own reflection
In the clear glass of the windowpane
And I looked so gentle
So foggy, so full of you
So full of it
(Hope)

It comforted me
Me there, temporarily filled with bliss
Listening to a voice that was just like yours
Of a guy that was distant, too, but reminiscent in ways
That surpassed my expectations
But ruined them at the same time
(I wanted you, there)
(I wanted you, standing, there)

While I was editing my little daily tasks in my peony-covered black planner
Carbon black
Panic attack
So remarkable, engrained with tact
Grab me right back
Panic attack
Hold me like that
Crisp edges
Distant, so distant, so distant it seems

Lake Michigan, Chicago, Illinois

Take hold of me
Run with me through the pouring, strong but absently delicate rain
Ask me about my past
Tell me about back home
Where your parents are from
Where your sister lives, with her husband, and why you’re not married
By now
In your late thirties

Tell me about the years that you came of age
To blossom, to endure
Rabbit holes
Soft edges
How you became a man
Sharp, marked silhouette, dark fragrance
Cascading vision
Bold and crimson
Smooth and hollow
Ambient surfaces
Ribbons tied with cherry-lined trails
Puddles on the ground and clusters of snails
The stillness seeps beneath me so absentmindedly

I’m reading about
Restriction enzymes
Wondering what I’m going to say to you
When I see you
And I’m wearing my Chicago Cubs baseball cap
Because I know you’re a Dodgers fan
And I wonder
To myself
If you’re going to say something
About that
Fact

And you
Didn’t
And I’m alone now, in the car
About to drive the fourty miles home
Not vacant because I’m too whole to begin with, to be disembodied
But still
Not knowing
Which fragrance you wear
And seeing
Your long blonde hair
Falling alongside your bold, hardened face
That was not looking
In my
Direction

Like a marble that rolls far, far away from you
I thought I heard you in the physics study hall
But I only saw my reflection in a still-glass superficial surface

And that told me all I had to know

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Free verse poetry: Dream garden (dust)

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Free verse poetry: Dream garden (dust)

Avalanche
Dream garden
February twenty-nine

Too beautiful to me, it is
The way the truth falls but doesn’t diminish its overwhelming servitude
Grief like hollow images and stills
To be flawed and fawned with grey embers & soft wax
Rolled on Ireland’s greenest pastures
My dream garden
My avalanche

I wake up endlessly absolving my sins, unraveling for you
Tell me what it is you want me to do
I’m so aware of what I can and cannot be
And I think it’s best you not be there for me
I tire in my own sleep

Morning cereal
For four in the afternoon
You wash over me like an
Avalanche
Like my dream garden
White roses and picket fences, freshly painted
Soft tuberose fragrance
Dismantling me from within
Fabricated and built in great jeopardy
Soft and of the finest fabric

I think of you in waterfalls, that I’ve never seen before
I ask you to close the door
I’m impatient in the mornings but by evening so wrapped up in comatose fiber sheath
Toying with my own nerves
On purpose
Like a fever dream
Like ants unscrambled
Running out of fear, hiding beneath dust
Moving pollen and feathers to their corporate offices

When I pass by you on the street
With my kitten heels and utmost softness
Try not to
Try not to

Go back to your dream garden
Your avalanche
Beneath dust

Connected by the sheer composition that melts in broad daylight
Collectively held at
A disadvantage
Brought together in the Spring when the ambiance paints a different mood
For the dust underneath the conjoining ether
Without reserve
Still and unenthusiastic
Hopeful, yet without meaning

Find me in my personal dream garden
When the smoke clears

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Love poem for him: earthquake

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Love poem for him: earthquake

You know I stopped myself before I could love you
But
We broke apart
And I can’t help but stare
At your blank, sad face
And the only thing sad about it
Is that you’re not afraid to let me go
You’re not afraid to let

I tried to wake up
But I’m always on the wrong side of the bed
We never got to have that night in the hotel
We never got to have that heavenly first dance
The first and the last pages don’t make me too sad
It’s the way the world turns
Your fingers latched on
Not very tight
Like a blouse that’s unloosened
A foggy memory that never becomes clear

I’m trying to relive the skyscrapers and unraveling chaos
Though all that comes to mind in abstract vision and delusion,
Is you screaming in my direction
Telling me to stop
Telling me to stop
Telling me to stop

What makes you so afraid
To show love to an unloved person
The way you play guitar
It makes me so sad
It makes me so sad
Not for anything do you feel bad
Like grey, fallen embers on a cold winter night
Even though you’d say you’d never
Be there for me
Your sovereignty
Your power

And I remember you
Telling me to stop
Telling me to stop
Telling me to
Telling me to stop

Feeling the things that only I do
The distance that separates me from jagged, carbon you
In ocean waves, we grasp at what feels familiar
What’s underneath us will quench our thirst
Yours, preferably
Mine, isn’t regarded
Unless it’s four in the afternoon & the sun is piercing your nerves
Telling you that these antics are your last fatal curse
I’m far removed
To tell you the truth
I do only the things the boldest among us do

I don’t wait until there’s nothing left to take
In the distance between your brown eyes
And these soft, fallen embers of Victorian blue
Crawl back
Crawl back
Panic attack
Mesh and in pieces
Forgive me for grieving

All ends in love, and love has its reasons
Come find me
Come find me
Come find me
Come find me

It’s so unnerving
Like an earthquake on purpose
It’s so delectable
Like you’ve lost your ability to reason

I’m always portrayed as the one who leaves the throne
Gown is disheveled, porcelain skin intact
Like an earthquake on purpose
Telling me to stop

Feeling the things that only I do
What has become of rage has given its way to you

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Poem: Love it any less

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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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