Love poem: Perfectly real (really perfect)

Love poem: Perfectly real (really perfect)

Suddenly
The impetus is on me
To be perfect, so perfect, for you again
Satin & lavender bedsheets
Fresh clothes from the dryer
Neurons that synapse when the clock resets

But I can’t
Withstand
Dissonance
I can’t
Bear to
Live with regret
I can’t
Break free from
This tangled fishnet
The wire digging its claws directly into my spine

Disengagement when separated
Disregarded how you said maybe
Perhaps it’s my own agenda that
I failed to write out in black ink
My own handwriting looks foreign to me
The flowers in my apartment have finished dying
I closed the curtains, but someone is waiting
To see me burn out like I’ve been on fire this whole time

Carving my name into my solitude
Changing the location of a confined venue
I don’t like this dress
Don’t like how I look in it
Want you to tell me I inspire you to stop playing make-believe
Wish you would bring me roses & be gentle with me
Not let me lose any more sleep

I’m not really writing
I’m scared of defining
How lazy I’ve gotten at building my self-esteem
The ships are all sinking
The pilot keeps blinking
& the leftovers have spoiled because real things are only real in real time

So I hit “unsend”
Spend the afternoon in my garden
Playing with my own hair, saying your name to myself

I can’t even ask you
What you meant when you said nothing
Because I know myself to get in the way of what could be

I’ll trace my ashes
In long cylinder glasses
Faking a proof-of-concept of a girl who takes pride in the way she carries herself

Now I’m scared of writing
Because I don’t like what I see
And that holds far too much meaning to me

I’m sick of trying
To act like I haven’t been
Crying myself to sleep

Tell me I’m perfect
Say that you missed me
Step into my four-chambered studio where the pianos lack keys
& the guitars have no strings
We can dissolve into anything we want life to be

Tell me you missed me
Without lying to me
Tell me I’m perfect
Because you can see how I dream
Tell me you loved how
I didn’t seem desperate
To find in my own self what you’ve found in yours

I’ll rearrange my bedroom
Work on shifting my patterns
So that the stillness in your settings can bleed into me

Tell me I’m perfect
Without lying to me
Reach for me when I’m drowning
In my make-believe sea
Allow me to realize there’s more to let go of
More in life to make sense of
More in this life to see

When you’ve regained stability
Found blue-green lakes filled with clarity
Then, you can come back to me

I’ll be in my garden
Telling myself
That I don’t have to be perfect to be something real

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Love poem for him: earthquake

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

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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Free verse poem: Belongings

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

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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

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

xoxo

Poem: How little I meant

Poem: How little I meant

Live in modest obscurity
Classic California beach living
Sunglasses, shades, Maseratis, fast cars, soda pop
A life that has been glamorized
Or so I had hypothesized
He wouldn’t even be reading in between my lines
Too busy thinking about himself all the time

Perhaps a few motels overlooking the coast
Empty parking lots
Paint a vision for yourself
Soft ice cream in all good health
Said you were sober, had liquor on the top shelf
Honey, I thought you loved yourself

Ladies, you know me for my diamonds
I’ll show you everything sparkly that’s designer
That girl you once knew, you’re right behind her
To enjoy the high life without mascara on
To come to rise with the evening sun
To know how to really know someone
Stay omnipresent – hot, wild, and young
Like every morning, a new life has just begun
Dark spaces for dark traces of ice-cold skeletons
Bones only fit like fragments
Do what you’re told
Let your dream love life in front of you start to unfold

Everything in the right order
Everything in the right order
Everything all the same
Everything all the same

Lying between last quarter and new moon
I figured when we’d talk, we would be with each other soon
There are words on my body, on yours – video game cartoons
You never meant to express how little I meant to you

I started noticing in conversation
When the focus was on us, you lacked elation
I quit my work for you, I gave up waiting
I became so exhausted not living, but waiting
I tried to show you I was patient
You hate yourself like you’re tainted
Letting of go of the dream that one day you and I would make it

Now I’m in the doorway, sort of half-naked
I’m alone, but I’m tranquil, and nothing you do will change it

I’m alone but I’m tranquil
Nothing you do will change it