Bare Feet on Linoleum

[Elle 121,278]

Original Version

Stay on your path Sylvia Plath

Don't fall away like all the others

 

Don't take all your secrets alone to your watery grave about

Lovers and mother

 

The secrets you keep will keep you in deep like Father and Amy

& brother

& all of the people you meet on the street will reiterate lies

that she uttered

 

Leave me in peace I cry

Late at night on a slow boat bound for Catalina for no reason

 

Tiny beads of sweat dot my forehead

Could be mistaken for dew drops if this were photo season.

 

But alas this is a real life - and it's been a real fight just to

Keep my mind from committing treason.

Why you ask?

Because she told the towns people I was crazy and the lies they

Started to believe them

 

But anyway - I've moved on now

 

And now that I've gone scorched earth

I'm left wondering where to go from here.

To Sonoma where the fires have just left?

South Dakota?

 

Would standing in front of Mount Rushmore feel like the Great

American homecoming I never had?

 

Would the magnitude of the scale of the sculpture take the place

of the warm embrace I've never known.

 

Or should I just be here now

In the kitchen

Bare feet on linoleum

Bored - but not unhappy

Cutting vegetables over boiling water that I will later turn

into stew

 

---

 

Spoken Word Version

Stay on the path of Sylvia Plath,

Don’t fall away like all the others.

 

Don’t take all your secrets alone to your watery grave about lovers and ---

 

The secrets you keep will keep you in deep, like Amy and ---  and brother.

And all the people you meet on the street,

Will reiterate lies that they uttered.

 

Leave me in peace, I cry in the middle of the night

on a slow boat bound for Catalina for no reason.

 

Tiny drops of perspiration dot my forehead

They could be mistaken for dew drops if this were photo season.

 

But alas.

This is a real life. And it’s been a real fight, just to stop my mind from committing treason.

Why, you ask?

Because she told the towns people I was crazy.

And the lies, they started to believe them.

 

But anyways,

That’s all over now. 

I’ve moved on.

 

Gone scorched earth.

And now, I’m left wondering.

Where do I go from here?

To Sinoma, where the fires have just left? 

South Dakota?

 

Would standing in front of Mount Rushmore feel like the great American homecoming I never had?

Would the magnitude of the scale of the sculptures take the place of the warm embrace I never got?

 

Or should I just be here now?

Bare feet on Linoleum

Slicing vegetables into water

That I will later turn into stew.

 

People love my stories.

People love my stories.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Elle

[urgirl 5,747]

may jailer back from the dead I missed her

[maxthehitman 1,729]

I liked this poem  

 

Thoughtful poetic words and story telling

[Liz Taylor Blues 18,738]

I feel like this poem is depicting the NFR cover

[Blue Rev 3,015]

her best poem

[WhiteHydrangea 4,216]

This was an interesting poem, but I don't feel as much as poetry as it is storytelling. I think the writing is beautiful, it completly made me feel as her... I completly drifted away in thought like her, only to come back down to earth to keep on doing the simple things of the day. That is the most typical things we as humans do, or at least what I tend to do. When there are so many things holding you back from the past and you just don't wanna be where you are you think about all the possible things you could do to get away, but without being able ignore the things that haunt your mind.

 

I feel like the poetry book is still Lana Del Rey landscaped, you can see all the touches of failed fame, death and love but through a more realistic side, no as much fantasy added.

 

In this one I believe she is yet again referencing the way she was treated in the press in 2012  with the whole SNL perfomance and her authenticity

"Would standing in front of Mount Rushmore feel like the Great

American homecoming I never had?

Would the magnitude of the scale of the sculpture take the place

of the warm embrace I've never known."  (Is she saying she is deserving of a monument such as Mount Rushmore in her honor? I also think Grammy's are not enough Lana haha)

 

Photoshoots for magazines or Paparazzi chasing her (once again)?

Tiny beads of sweat dot my forehead

Could be mistaken for dew drops if this were photo season.

...

Leave me in peace I cry

 

The thought about retiring yet again (Do you guys ever wonder how many times Lana will make another statement about retiring from music? She's been going about that since 2012 before Paradise, came back to it after the Paradise outtakes leaked, she wrote Swan Song, and has since the Honeymoon era made claims about touring just enough, and releasing just enough albums, and not promoting that much to be left alone little by little... (I think she's just waiting to start a family so she can retire)

And now that I've gone scorched earth

I'm left wondering where to go from here.

 

What is surprising is that I believe she's touching on suicide(Stay on your path, don't fall away like the others) for the first time since her "I wish I was dead already" thing haha, ever since Get Free, Change and Heroin she proclaimed to be wanting to be a better different version of herself. In NFR (album) we see her claiming to be stronger than ever (see Mariner's Apartment Complex) and she concludes in Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have to not being happy and yet not being sad either, just as in this poem

"Bored - but not unhappy"

And she is once more relating herself to Sylvia Plath  

"24/7 Sylvia Plath" - "Stay on your path Sylvia Plath"

 

I'm glad she's doing better now, I wished she didn't identify herself as a tragic poet tho 

 

(Also, what do you guys think are the lies she's referencing to here

 

"But alas this is a real life - and it's been a real fight just to

Keep my mind from committing treason.

Why you ask?

Because she told the towns people I was crazy and the lies they

Started to believe them"

 

And when Lana says it's being hard to not commit treason isn't killing someone (the she that spread the lies) or herself, committing treason would have been to accept the lies that were spread about her, and giving up on music and disappearing from the spotlight. She chose to keep releasing songs, to prove she was a real artist and that her creations were art. And yet after all that, there's nothing left to do, where to go from here? I think it's really the theme of the poem

[Elle 121,278]

I've updated the OP with the spoken word version of the poem, transcribed by @@takeitdoen who is able to listen to it in Australia.

 

It's interesting to note she changed around the poem a bit, especially with excluding certain words with the place of long pauses. I've left both versions in the OP x

[Dominikx4 25,404]

:/ i liked the original version more, for this segment:

 

Or should I just be here now

In the kitchen

Bare feet on linoleum

Bored - but not unhappy

Cutting vegetables over boiling water that I will later turn

into stew

[takeitdoen 10,627]

There is some interesting audio samples that play throughout, and are most present at the start and the end, a couple of men and women overlapping with these kinda things:

• "I have plenty of witty anecdotes"
• "Your stories are mesmerising" 
• "I always have the most interesting stories"
• "I am an interesting person"
• "People love your stories"
• "You are a fantastic person"
• "You have plenty of interesting stories
• "You are an interesting performer"

There are lots of variants - it almost sounds like they're practising Meisner? It gives the work a sort of terrifying dimension - the coolest part is at the end Lana starts to slowly speak along with them, like she's hypnotised. 

[UltraHeroin 8,803]

There is some interesting audio samples that play throughout, and are most present at the start and the end, a couple of men and women overlapping with these kinda things:

• "I have plenty of witty anecdotes"
• "Your stories are mesmerising" 
• "I always have the most interesting stories"
• "I am an interesting person"
• "People love your stories"
• "You are a fantastic person"
• "You have plenty of interesting stories
• "You are an interesting performer"

There are lots of variants - it almost sounds like they're practising Meisner? It gives the work a sort of terrifying dimension - the coolest part is at the end Lana starts to slowly speak along with them, like she's hypnotised. 

Woah, that's so cool wtf 

[MargaretThatcher 1,331]

Lana sure loves referencing Sylvia Plath and this one also explores the issue of a woman’s place.

 

This is beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. Sure makes you think about a lot of things at once.

[pin up galore 18,996]

fuck this was my fav poem when she posted it on insta and what y'all are saying is just making me more excited 

[DCooper 36,914]

OMG this was terrifying. What a brilliant ending.

[naachoboy 7,993]

OMG this was terrifying. What a brilliant ending.

it really was, like a suspense movie 

[Elle 121,278]

This one is so visual to me, like a scene in a horror movie or mind thriller.

I visualise her sitting in a chair in large, cream-coloured, empty room with one glass wall she's facing that we're looking through while she's reading the poem out of her book. Then behind her are these faceless silhouettes, almost like robots but more human-like (slenderman-esque?), that stand behind her reciting the lines heard in the background. Then at the point of the poem where she says "& now, I’m left wondering, where do I go from here?" she looks up towards the glass but her eyes glossed over as if she's what she's looking towards is just one-way, mirrored glass & the figures begin to walk towards her, until at the end when the poem stops they are surrounding her - some playing with her hair, smoothing her dress, adjusting her ankles - and she closes her eyes, leans her head back, and begins to recite back the words they had been saying to her - "people love my stories."

 

(I feel sort of ridiculous posting this strange visualisation, but it's just what I see!) x

[paradisetropico 7,916]

this gave me CHILLS.... WTF its STUNNING... 

 

also who is Brother? could it be Jim Morrison? 

 

god I hope she doesn't hate us fans, im sure we all say the " Your stories are mesmerising" "I always have the most interesting stories" "People love your stories" "You are an interesting performer" 

 

it must get exhausting,  lot of psychological points to this poem wow

[99centlips 8,519]

this gave me CHILLS.... WTF its STUNNING...

 

also who is Brother? could it be Jim Morrison?

 

god I hope she doesn't hate us fans, im sure we all say the " Your stories are mesmerising" "I always have the most interesting stories" "People love your stories" "You are an interesting performer"

 

it must get exhausting, lot of psychological points to this poem wow

the secrets you keep will keep you in deep, like Amy and Father (she doesn’t say it in the audiobook) and brother.

 

i think she’s taking about Amy Winehouse, her father and her brother.

 

if it was a metaphor and she wasn’t talking about her dad, why not say Father?

[nevada darling 541]

The "voices" in this are just text to speech, no? They sound like GPS voice navigation

[Rorman Nockwell 56,701]

I think she took out the words "mother" and "father" because this was too personal re: her family. The LA one is personal but it's more just generalised complaints about them, rather than specific details as to why she hates Patty.

 

So she took out "mother" and "father", and put "people love my stories" at the end to imply that the entire thing was never based on reality. In fact, she probably forgot that she already published this in Vogue Italia.

 

[PARADIXO 32,940]

I hear one of the voices saying "There are monsters under my bed" right at the end. This one is breaking me