free verse Archives – Page 13 of 24

Free verse poem: The evening spent waking up (Chicago)

October 4, 2022October 4, 2022 distantcaveLeave a comment

Free verse poem: The evening spent waking up (Chicago)

Tell me a fable
A pretty one
Lie if you can make it half-decent

It’s as if embers from my rotten tomb have come back to life as
Soft pink edges
Anatolic, seemingly vacant rings of fire
Undertones of bluish-grey with a violence that
Covers me in indifference
But I want it to be rapture, in evocative coincidence
A tint of reimagined tendencies
My scattered disarray of silenced opinions
And violet ultramarine hesitation

I try to be gentle
But I step on leaves that crack
Crossing my fingers, there wasn’t a snail
Underneath

Behind my trepidation
There is a vicinity with a lakeside residential view
I couldn’t breathe when you were holding me
I felt like I was becoming discolored
Wondered what part of that I devised

A satin grey globe where we
Envisioned our honeymoon
Picked out places, names that seemed familiar
A euphoric but decidedly shapeless language
A foreign body
Like tectonic plates
Smooth, but not comatose
On close on purpose
A bittersweet taste
A light that turns on when you want it to be dark
A fire alarm
That burns

A missed left turn
Turn the page, crash, and burn
And still I stand at the cashier, holding dollar bills that are paper thin
Like the epitome of a half-circle
Like the cigarette, you don’t put out
Because you let the street take care of it
Cherish it
Marinate it in the heat of October in Los Angeles
A vehemence down beneath that which can’t be seen
And is never spoken aloud

Imbued by a cityscape, I miss more than you can possibly imagine
The twinkling city lights
A cacophony of everything that was so right for me
Felt so good to me
And the plasm lost its charge, and the dewdrops disappeared
I never quite got over it

Chicago
I miss you
The way you held me close to you at night
Nobody ever did it better
Than you

I’m finding it hard to
Be like a daisy
In the breeze, that moves my hair
To the other side

I hold my head in my hands
I feel like

Coming apart tonight
To tell you the truth

Endless interlaced reflection symmetry to tell me I am not what someone wants to find
Not what anybody would look for
Unless they were as disillusioned as my perception of self

Though it seems that tonight is the night
I warned you
I told you
I’m coming apart just right

Nobody ever held me like you, forgetful city

Love poem: Drawing in a coffee shop

September 16, 2022September 16, 2022 distantcaveLeave a comment

Love poem: Drawing in a coffee shop

This is a love poem, and I wish it wasn’t.

I just want
To cascade over you like smooth waterfalls
Barely a blink
Come up for air
In the clandestine, vogue-painted closet tone-deaf chambers
Where satin and silk are interchangeable,
Even though the mechanisms stretch far past
What the modern seamstress can manage
Irreversible damage
To my hippocampus, and I think it’s making the horizon easier to navigate
Isn’t that a lovely thought?

Jolly ranchers for two, I’ll split one with you
I’ll split you in two
The grave filth that the manager keeps echoing in his 9-story apartment building
The couple on the seventh floor doesn’t know their floor has a leak
And I feel like I haven’t been asleep for weeks
For a prime suspect, I make a good candidate

And I make my bed
Before sunrise, or in the afternoon
I knew it was too soon to move in
And a panic started beckoning within
But if steel fences were like a goldfish that looks at you with a sideway’s glance when you’re paying attention to both his soft edges and the horror of your depleted reflection upon the opaque glass water chamber
I’d be able to dissolve my fears ambiguously
And not hold a ceremony
Because I don’t like being on stage

Nor holding a payphone
Nor sitting in an airplane aisle seat because I think that’s too far away that I am from blue
I don’t regret letting myself want you
For now, the trail has narrowed, and I’m even more sure of the concepts that my timid nature thought I knew from before

But hadn’t yet fully absorbed
Even though my nerves
Stood still with dawn’s headlights shining their vinyl arterial lining luminescence forward
Softly but forever remarkable
Diverging a separate path for a quiet evening amongst the vivid skyscrapers,
That spill vacantly flowing and simultaneously churning blood all over the paved city streets and their locked corridors
A lost art, I’m sure

I try not to step too close
I love my lavender bedrooms wall the most
I might as well write a poem about how they surround me, like silk cotton webs that disappear when touched

A new collection of elegant charcoal grey fine-point pens
With ink that covers the palm of my hand
A grocery shopping list
Paid my bills on the fifth
And ever since we split
I’ve been wondering if nostalgia feels different to different people
Or if there’s a place where one can collectively mourn
To feel part of a generational gap that
Splits into definitives
Like a blueberry raspberry sorbet cut into two separate wholes,
Both of which are for me

I turn the pages; I adjust my glasses
I picture my cat telling me she didn’t like you
And I almost laugh at myself, but then I think that would be strange
I didn’t like the way you tried to pull her off the bed
But it said so much
I was probably too hungover to think very much of it at the time, that very second in your transparent presence that awakens me now
But now, with my caramel espresso and my obsolete, filed manuscripts
I venerate how smooth of a current I created

Like the gentlest riverbed
That you could fall off your yacht into
And it would absorb you without agony
Without desperation or offbeat candor
A modern-day orchestration of a segment of contribution
You – to the waves
The waves to the mariner’s life
The ships to the tide pools,
The time I couldn’t find, the time to divide

If something bigger than you consumes you,
Without delineating a debt,
Without drawing a line

How close is too close before it becomes just fine
How fast do we absorb each other’s embers before we collapse in time

I still think of how I looked at you while you were drawing in the coffee shop

www.paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

Thank you for supporting my dedicated work. It means the world to me, truly. http://paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

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Free verse poem: Belongings

September 12, 2022January 29, 2023 distantcaveLeave a comment

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

Free verse poem: Replace the terror in me

August 22, 2022August 22, 2022 distantcaveLeave a comment

Free verse poem: Replace the terror in me

A free verse poem interpolating love and boredom, those mutually excluded. I write about my surroundings and how I respond to them; I write about you and how I’m feeling enamoured, but I won’t make this a love poem.
www.paypal.me/LilacDoveCA

I’ll slip like a satin glove
One abstraction over another, turn the pages, can’t stop reading textbooks on topics I haven’t reached yet in my academia
London print and soft pastels to remind me softness still exists
In little teacups filled with daredevil laughter

How do I
Distract from the blue light filter
I’ve got this covenant, this modern-day orchestration
A plate of cinnamon toast for two
With soy whipped cream and untouched, fresh blueberries
A breakfast in the comfort of our living room
With the television on,
Vintage advertisements
Try it for yourself, buy it, now!
We put our heads in our hands, switching places
Serenade me, serenade me
Run away with me

Impressed by my collection of 14.2 carat diamonds
I knew it wasn’t right, but I find it hard to stop myself from trying
When you hear me tell my truth, you think I’m lying
A country house’s ceiling covered in coral-buff-pink that doesn’t compete with the furniture and artwork in the room
I don’t believe I’ve lived this life before
I say silent goodbyes to the waves when I swim towards the shore
Never settling in life because there’s always something more

But I’m patient, I can wait
I know how to play this waiting game
But I’m patient, I don’t hesitate to hesitate
I know how to play this waiting game

You spend your life attached to the poison
You see the same things in every new person
But I – I find waves to weave my carefully knit spiderweb
The remnants of my being
(but I swore I could be tranquil)
I engulfed you like a macrophage
I brought you to the Heavens
They asked me for all my pennies and I said all I could offer were dimes
In an aster black & dune-white coin purse
With wild daisies in watercolour
Where I keep a ticket stub from our day at the ballet
Our day in the sweet vermouth from the South
Your shots of whiskey – endless, hopeless- almost!

But I found you out by the car, near the diner with the half-lit sun-kissed sign
That illuminates the grey tones of the weakened sky
I’ve yet to find a relation that feels like spiral twine
In due time
My dear one
It always takes time

Crumpets in bed, you’re so sweet; why are you doing these things for me
The back of your Carrera that you lean on when I find you
Down, downtrodden
In a medieval, Victorian garden
I found roses that smelled like the ones you once bought for me
I wrote secrets down on receipts for other people to find
And they’ll have no idea what I’m talking about
What I’m writing about
They always have no idea what I’m composing about
What I’m going on about
Often too timid to say what I’m handling out loud
(In the wild Texan landscape, I screamed without making a sound)

But you, cast like the sun’s sharp, contrasted rays upon the deep blue, dark steel water body that is
Where I swim against the current because it’s the closest I manage to get to what others feel from amphetamines
A satin blanket with a cushion for our picnic by the bayside

You, there, me – laughing when I look at you
Think I know why you do the things you do
But nobody is ever sure of anything, how can they be?
I’m the Chicago princess, the flat-rate bourgeoisie
Things that make most sense to you don’t mollify me
In the orbit of the moon
I am your apogee

How is your gaze so familiar when it’s just out of sight?
Inoperative like a 1990s old engine Civic brake light
But I’ll be the warm air watching your gunfight
With the resilience and nepotism of stunning graphite
Like the perfect backdrop
Like an ivory white snowstorm while indoors
I’m what the mosquitos won’t ever bite

I think it’s sweet, how people give you their time
In a palace where everybody always feels they’re running out of such a concept,
The ballgame isn’t enough
(Oh, you think you’re so tough?)
Pour me iced green tea
Show me you can be there for me
Tell me I’ve been disillusioned
Replace the terror in me

Satin-pink signature bowtie on the back of my tulle dress, and flower petals arranged to counter my dismay
I am a lovable girl
Who loves in the most appropriate way

The kind of girl that sends you straight to fame
Ambition my only pursuit, I write you love letters on the train

I am bored with how it hasn’t yet rained
In days
In days
In days
In days
In days
In days
In days
In days

Free verse poem: This is my castle (they built it for the queen)

August 13, 2022August 13, 2022 distantcaveLeave a comment

Free verse poem: This is my castle (they built it for the queen)

All I want is some wine
To know that you’ve tried
But I don’t get what I want, but in case you forgot,
This is my castle; they built it for the queen
I’ve gone by my nickname since I was nineteen
I picked the cherry stems just fine
Wrapped them around you in due, hazel time
Not unsettled by rage, only burnt by hot sunshine
There is a time and a place
For letting me go tonight
I can only live in shades of blue for so long

You’ll call when you’re drinking
But the rosemary and fever dream has me thinking
That in this warm abyss, I’m finally putting myself first
I’m the most decadent of late-night desserts
(I don’t care if I get hurt)
Moving like the Chicago Transit Authority that picks me up every fifteen minutes,
To sit and watch the downtown splendor, the people having conversations
The luxurious skyscrapers with their gleaming reflections on the river
My god, if you could see it
My god, if only you could see it
Reels of the same film run through my mind

I look at the lilac flowers
That I picked out for myself
You handed your credit card to the cashier and made my head hurt
You didn’t want to be there
You pinched my weakest nerves
But they fired back, like dropped bombs on a 1990s Cadillac
I was confused when I looked in the mirror, and I wasn’t blushing
Why, as a young girl, did I feel nothing?

I moved, so briskly
I held them, so close
I always hold flowers so deathly close to me
Can’t help having something in my life I don’t intend to have and to hold, as the evening unfolds
I’m mesmerized by the dusky, disorderly, crimson, secluded, and mechanical sky
I can’t help having something in my life without keeping it close-by
I’m a porcelain and ivory, soft-hearted girl
All you had to do was try
All you had to do was try

Ice cream summer popsicle dreams
Muscle relaxant mixed with white amphetamines
To handle the chaos that you collided with mine
I think there’s a right place, and a right time
But if you call late at night, know I’ve had some red wine
So the pauses are longer
When you hold your breath,
No longer allowed to lay your head on my chest
Coming to terms with what I’m led to believe
You’ve been lying to me
I saw it; I grabbed it; I wreaked some fucking havoc
Internally, always
Internally
No longer lying awake as you, beside me, breathe

An exemplary paradise for your magical thinking
She’s the one, she’s the only one
Who cared to ask about
Things you couldn’t say out loud
To anyone, anyone
She’s the one, she’s the only one
She’ll be the one, she’ll be the only one
To tell you the truth
To show you who you are
She’s the only one
She’ll be the only one

I’ve moved in a geometric possession to the interwoven mention,
Of “boyfriend,” and “happy”
And “I don’t want to,”
A passing thought: was I gentle enough
As if in my lifetime, I’ve ever been rough
Like a foreign identity
I’ve latched onto lately
To remove your hesitation with no A+ on my exam
I rest my heavy head in my pale hands
I pull you back and forth like a rubber band
I’m swimming and I don’t want to come up to breathe

But I have to
I have to

Like fine black metal branches, delicate though not brittle,
The uncertainty
Is damaging
It feels
Like tragedy
Knocking on hell’s door asking if I’m ready for some more
Are you ready for some more?
The peaches were more vibrant than I could have dreamt them up to be
But they’re only on a painting that was completed in the 17th century
Find myself alone in this maze of lost equilibrium
There’s an error in your calculations
The past has nothing to do with the girl standing before you
It’s taken me 26 years to learn the blind cannot be cured by me
Even though it’s my specialty
Even though it was real to me,
Even though I

Count blueberries and pick off their tiny stems
On a blanket, it rains; I am hopeful again
For a time when I’m sitting in a boy’s passenger seat, and he looks at me
And he’ll feel so free
The thought of belonging to me
They have led astray me, but don’t go by a day
That I don’t count the ways