Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass Read online

until it sounded like the sea

  and it felt like the ocean was the sky

  and that i was flying because you were two feet taller than me

  until you took me in your arms

  and i could touch the stars

  and they all fell down around my head

  and i became an angel

  and you put me to bed

  happy

  People think that i’m rich and i am but not how they think

  i have a truck with a gold key chain in the ignition

  and on the back it says: happy joyous and free

  happy

  and when i drive

  i think about the last time my friends were driving with me

  how the radio was so loud that we couldn’t hear the words

  so we became the music

  happy

  They write that i’m rich and i am but not how they think

  i have a safe i call the boyfriend box

  and in it every saved receipt

  every movie theater ticket just to remind me

  of all the things i’ve loved and lost and loved again

  unconditionally

  You joke that i’m rich and i am but not how you think

  i live in a Tudor house under the freeway

  off of Rose Avenue 12 blocks from the beach

  and when you call i put your sweater on

  and put you on speaker

  and chat for hours underneath the trees

  and think about the last time you were here lying next to me

  how the noise from the cars got louder and louder

  during rush hour

  until it sounded like a river or a stream

  and it felt like we were swimming

  but it wasn’t just a dream

  we were just

  happy

  Sugarfish

  Lemme stick to something sweet

  sugar on my hands and feet

  Sugarfish San Vicente

  sugar sugar in my teeth

  from your kiss you texting me

  from the movie theater seat

  Dodger Stadium Slurpee

  white confection in the sea

  powder waves froth over me

  A fortune teller once told me

  do things that you think are sweet and a sweet man is sure to

  follow.

  So I made a bath that night of honey

  dipped my toes in rose and money

  stayed all night in that bathwater

  even some I swallowed.

  Now there’s so much sugar on me

  I can’t keep the bees off of me

  even most of my thoughts are charming

  some are blue and borrowed

  Sugar sugar lips and teeth

  fingertips touch emojis

  hard forever

  hearts on fleek

  bb please come over

  ringtone

  I put my third phone in the waistband of my leggings

  only u have this number

  6 plus vibrates with your own ringtone

  i smile when i hear simulated children laughing

  cause i know it’s u

  it’s the little things that make me smile

  i keep them just for myself

  i like u so much

  but it makes me nervous when u don’t call

  under my breath i say

  Don’t make me be resilient

  i so want to be soft

  if u let me be myself

  u will be the first one who ever did.

  In the flats of Melrose

  What will it take for me not to feel like the train will

  run away with me bound up like the sad heroine tied to the last

  car

  What will it take for me not to need you

  so I can just have you for fun

  and for who you really are

  Not you as the savior

  not me as Ophelia

  not us putting our faith in the public’s dark art

  Topanga on Sunday?

  two cats in the yard

  NPR rumbling quietly

  a fire in the hearth

  me with a knowingness deep in my heart

  that nothing could stop me no valley too far

  to walk through in darkness to keep us apart.

  And that we don’t need fighting to find resolution

  that not every marriage ends in the dissolution

  that I don’t need you

  but I want you

  because you’re so cool

  and I’m not that damaged

  and ur not hell-bent on being some indie director

  or whatever pipe dream you and your friends are smoking

  That it’s enough just for us

  to be sitting in the flats of Melrose

  my heart on fire

  a tallboy cracked open

  I love you Josiah

  I’m sorry I’m still broken

  but I could still make you happy.

  Let’s pour one out

  to knowing

  not hoping

  Thanks to the Locals

  I ran away from you to Lake Arrowhead

  I didn’t tell you where I was going

  I knew I had a 24 hour grace period before you were done making

  your film

  I went to an aa meeting

  And my share read like a tale of a battered housewife

  I felt everyone’s eyes on me

  The rehab kids in the back row stopped throwing spitballs at

  each other and stared at me

  I fucking hate my life.

  I waited after the meeting in the parking lot for any of the

  local ladies

  to come up to me

  Only one did, Kira.

  “I don’t really have much advice for you” she said

  I was in over my head

  out of my league

  In the wrong place wrong season wrong time wrong face

  and I knew it

  But I didn’t know what to do

  You asked me to marry you

  You said your mother was dying and you couldn’t fathom your

  life without a woman in it.

  I was tempted but it didn’t seem like a good enough offer

  I wanted more than that

  even though I’ve never had anything.

  Not one person to call if I changed my dollar in for quarters to

  ask what they thought about it.

  But there’s always been just a little tiny piece of me inside

  the size of a small slice of angel cake that knew

  somewhere somehow

  That I deserved better than someone like you.

  So I got back into my truck in the dark

  my little yellow pamphlet with two numbers on it that I would

  never call crumpled up

  Kira with her local area code and gratefully also her

  sponsor, Gail from Palmdale.

  I didn’t feel better and I didn’t use the numbers but I thought

  that I had been very brave that I did the best I could, sharing

  in a big room, tears streaming down my face in my high school

  flannel

  just to say

  “The man that I love hates me.

  But it would be easier to stay.”

  As the last person’s lights flooded over my windshield

  the night became very quiet

  and i thought-

  If I go back and I end it

  How would I handle driving down your street and it becoming a

  distant memory

  not reality

  no longer sweet.

  Sweet the way it tastes in my mouth to say your name

  sweet like when I was young, driving down those roads before we

  were done

  before any big battles were lost or won

  unbeknownst to everyone

&nb
sp; except for you and me.

  As Sweet as a junkie’s limited concept of love can be.

  I thought cause u were clean u were a lot like me

  wanting to be closer to something big and free.

  But some people need their secrets

  And now my greatest battle will be

  this unchained melody

  In my heart

  From not having you next to me.

  To shut the door on the past and step

  blindly

  into the abyss

  no destination intact

  the only direction set in the Compass - to move forward.

  So I drove

  back and forth

  on the Rim of the World Hwy

  and the beauty of its name reminded me

  That I was beautiful

  That some things are beautiful for no reason.

  Not everyone needs to pretend to love their girlfriend just

  because their mother is dying

  or because they’re afraid of a change in season…

  Anyway

  I don’t have a pretty couplet to give resolution to this poem

  nothing very eloquent to say

  except that I was brave

  and it would’ve been easier to stay

  I’m writing my future

  The universe exists

  because we are aware of it

  Paradise is Very Fragile

  Paradise is very fragile

  and it seems like it’s only getting worse

  down here in Florida we are fighting toxic red tides.

  Massive fish kills

  Not to mention hurricanes and rising sea levels

  Back in Los Angeles things aren’t looking much better

  my tree house that had been standing for 60 years succumbed to

  the Woolsey fires

  who would’ve thought this year at 33 you would be taken out

  from under me

  after all those years

  built from the ground up by hand by your very first owner.

  Quiet World War I aviation pilot

  I tried to save you

  but the horses and german shepherds were more important

  Paradise is very fragile and it seems that it’s only

  getting worse

  Our leader is a megalomaniac and we’ve seen that before

  but never because it was what the country deserved.

  My friends tell me to stop calling 911 on the culture

  but it’s either that or I 5150 myself.

  They don’t understand

  I’m a dreamer

  And I had big dreams for the country

  Not for what it could do but for how it could feel

  How it could think how it could dream.

  I know I know -who am I to dream for you

  it’s just that in my own mind I was born with a little bit of

  paradise. I was lucky in that way

  not like my husband- who was born and raised in hell.

  I always had something gentle to give-

  all of me in fact

  it’s one of the beautiful things about me

  it’s one of the beautiful things about nature

  But lately I’ve been thinking that I wish someone had told me

  when I was younger more about the inhabitants that thrive off

  of paradise. That should they take too much there will be

  nothing left to give.

  Not everyone’s nature is good or golden

  and you can’t fight what’s in your nature.

  That’s all I kept thinking as we were fighting the fires

  in Agoura

  That I’m tired of fighting you.

  Tired of you taking from me

  Paradise is very fragile and it’s only getting worse

  and every time you leave I seem to think about the curse

  bestowed upon Eve

  that faithful eve

  she took that bite

  from that fruitful tree

  You breathe me in

  kundalini

  on this summer night

  you in front of me

  And you take and you take and you take and you take

  but you taste like the beach in a kiss

  candy for my watery eyes

  in my veins that roll you run citrus

  watercolor images of serpents on orange trees quietly arise

  and grow sweet in my midst

  And I keep thinking I could do this forever

  just like this

  but my heart is very fragile

  and I have nothing left to give

  Salamander

  Get out of my blood salamander

  I can’t seem to blow off enough steam to get you out of my head

  SoulCycle you to death

  run you out of my blood to San Pedro

  and yet everywhere I go it seems there you are.

  And there I am.

  I don’t want to sell my stories anymore stop pushing me.

  I want to leave them underneath the nightstand to be forgotten

  or remembered should my thoughts come upon them in the middle

  of the night after a beach day

  or by you some afternoon-

  to thumb through- with your worn warm after-work hands.

  I love u

  But you don’t understand me

  You see I’m a real poet

  My life is my poetry

  my lovemaking is my legacy

  My thoughts are not for sale

  they’re about nothing

  and beautiful and for free

  i wish you could get that

  and love that about me

  because things that can’t be bought can’t be evaluated

  and that makes them beyond human reach.

  Untouchable

  Safe

  Otherworldly

  Unable to be deciphered or metabolized

  something metaphysical

  Like a view of the sea

  on a summer day on the most perfect winding road

  taken in from your car seat window

  A thing perfect and ready to become a part of the texture of

  the fabric of Something more ethereal

  like Mount Olympus

  where Zeus and Athena and the rest of the immortals play

  I love u

  But u don’t understand me

  You see

  I’m a real poet

  My life is my poetry

  My lovemaking is my legacy

  You can have a life beyond your wildest dreams

  all you have to do is change everything…

  all you have to do is change everything

  All you have to do is change everything

  all you have to do is change everything

  Haikus

  Jasmine in the air

  the burden of fame is real

  never felt so clear

  You in the soft light

  the 405 from Venice

  a river of red

  Wondering if it’s

  astronomical twilight

  or civil twilight

  Every night I die

  when I give myself to you

  sad but beautiful

  Poets- like comics

  are inherently quite sad

  better off alone

  I stepped on a bird

  cried in my new boyfriend’s arms

  to live is to kill

  For years I begged you

  to just take me in your arms

  you wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

  Babe let’s go to town

  buy something sweet - pink grapefruit

  eat it with sugar

  No big decisions

  to the lake or to the sea

  My only question

  Open the front door

  hello I say to no one

  I know no one’s home

&nbsp
; notes for a poet

  A Note on Images

  All interior color photographs by Lana Del Rey © 2020

  Black-and-white photos for the second, third, sixth, and ninth haikus by Lana Del Rey © 2020

  All interior black-and-white archival photographs are found and anonymous images excerpted from the artist’s book Voyagers © 2018 Melissa Catanese and The Ice Plant, edited from the collection of Peter J. Cohen

  Cover image: oil painting by Erika Lee Sears © 2020

  Cover typography and design by Ellie Benuska © 2020

  Back cover author photograph by Lana Del Rey © 2020

  Endpapers meteor image courtesy Melissa Catanese and The Ice Plant, from the collection of Melissa Catanese

  Six oil paintings in the NOTES FOR A POET section by Erika Lee Sears © 2020

  About the Author

  Lana Del Rey is an American singer, songwriter, artist, and poet. Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is her first book.

  @LanaDelRey

  lanadelrey.com

  SimonandSchuster.com

  www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Lana-Del-Rey

  @simonbooks

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

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  Simon & Schuster

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously.

  Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Lana Del Rey

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.