elsbeth-poe
American
Born and raised in the California Central Valley, I am an artist currently based out of Davis, California. I've been putting on plays, singing made up songs, telling stories, and writing poetry since I was a little girl. Here's some of my grown up work.
Sometimes I stay up all night cleaning
And when it come 3 and 4 AM I think more clearly
Cause collective consciousness shuts way up
When everyone around me's sleeping
It's called the witching hour
When I finally get the ground below my feet to stop moving
And I can see that I've just been busy proving
I'm enough!
Or maybe not...
And my broomstick tries sweeps my past away
Till I'm remembering that its no tangible thing
Yet I live like back then they cursed me
Like every moment I don't have the ruby slippers
To click my heels right back
To now
This moment
It's all we really have
Yet inside our heads we live in future and past
Like this idea of me that was there
Will undoubtedly be there tomorrow
But a meteor could be only seconds away
To wipe us clear off of this planets face
And how the hell do I win this race
With all these definitions they gave me to carry
And this closet of clothes they think define me
I keep purging and redesigning
Imagine if we saw souls not bodies
Our definition of beauty would be
What?
Not something just comprised by constructs built by society
In which we buy into
Seriously…what the **** is beauty?
Everywhere we go it shifts shape completely
Morphing with each place and time
Just look at fashion over centuries
So what makes all our ideals seem so true?
How bout we stop with the seeing
and start hearing what the skin bags are saying
What are they committed to?
**** then maybe it's the words I said that comprise me
That I didn't even mean when they came out of me
And look at that!
I just brought myself back there to then
In the time machine inside me head
And so I keep staying up through the night
To wash the crap that builds up on my mirrors away
Calling up the past to finish the mending that I gave up on
And magically the spell is being broken
The wicked witch is under the house it's true
But instead of making an excuse and stealing her shoes
I call her sister to say I'm sorry
All my reasons are what I'm clearing
Justifications and excuses
That keep me smaller than my circumstances
Me-
The call and response stimuli machine
Calculating how best to survive
Is this threat I perceive
One where I run
Or one where I bare my teeth
Yet we don't see that today and tomorrow are still living out yesterday
But in 100 years will ANYONE remember what happened to you on that day?
Seriously, it's time to hose down the pigsty in your mind
Get down on your knees and scrub that **** clean
Cause your reasons for being the way that you are
Get old
They start to mold and stink the room up for the rest of us
Taoism speaks of constantly letting go
Lau Tzu wasn't talking about a garage sale
What's bogging us down
Is the **** we make up and let run our lives
But to us it's the truth and its real
But we don't live like that
To live right now
Like there's no someday to go to
Like this is the practice round and I'm just warming up
For my real life
The one where I'm gorgeous, and rich, and everyone loves me.
The one where I have a perfect childhood!
Oh wait… that's completely absurd
But it certainly doesn't feel like we're living like that
When the dramas of our lives seem so significant
And we give them permission to keep our dreams from coming alive
Aborting what's possible the second it sparks into being
Reasonable living is suffocating your happiness
And that's not just going to change
You little dust speck
You minuscule blob of atoms that will soon evaporate
In an infinitely expanding universe
Now
What are you creating?
E. Poe
February 2016
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 1:31 PM UTC
I have a terminal disease
It's called being alive
Every day I wake up
I get to decide
To thrive and to grow
or to wither and die
To see beauty and truth
Or ugly and lies
Of no more days
Is there guarantee
So I'm done being dumb, stubborn and mean
And choose to give love
get honest, and complete
To really live everyday
Like there's nothing to lose
It's truly the way
That's why I refuse
One more half assed yesterday
E.Poe
Sept. 2015
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 7:02 PM UTC
How best to confess
My love to somebody
When love
Tastes so foreign on my tongue
I've been swallowing my feelings
Words caught in my esophegus
With a burning in my chest
From staying blocked for so long
After years being trapped
With a bully for a brain
Continually kicking that selfsame ***
Instead of standing up to and for me
Filling up on negativity
Cooking up a whole buffet
A refrigerator full
For a glutton for punishment
Binging when life began feeling too easy
…
I'm going on a diet
Self hate
It got me all sorts of out of shape
Wheezing while my heart is squeezing
Air masks dropping from above
Remind me of that thing
Inhaling
Scrambling hands
How did I become so blue
I've got to be able to breathe
To help you to do it too
And you can call me a hog
But it's the same with love
How could I be so blind
When there are mirrors in your eyes
This confession's first meant for me.
And ******* it
I'm taking the time
Giving me a grateful minute to gather myself
Arms filling up with bushels
I can secondhand over to you.
E.Poe
July 2014
Aug 23, 2014
Aug 23, 2014 at 10:50 PM UTC
I hear the crows
...Or ravens?
Whatever they be
They shout their songs
Like impatient mothers needing sleep
I hear the cleaning of her feet
With sheets below her and above me
The kitten bathes between my knees
I hear the bus hiss down the street
Static strangers attend this church on wheels
Moving together with each bump that they feel
I hear a soccer game on TV
Roommates scream with loyalty
I hear myself as I keep typing
Same as my mustachiod dad's
What with the wall that we shared
Unaware
As he lulled me deep into dreaming
E.Poe
June 2014
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 2:50 PM UTC
You seem confused
And in such seeming
Or seeming as such
You appear to touch
On sadness
Tickling melancholy
As you drown out
The overlapping, overwhelming thoughts
With deafening, hollow silence
The brittle backbone of that
Olympically-shit-giving-less ego
Has snapped
The dam cracking
With forceful cascading
Imprisoned emotions
None other at the helm but fear
Write out what weights heavy on your heart
And calm this anxious, growing fervor
Combatting calamity as you stop to hear
Those countless rolling trains
That seek potential problems
And simplest solutions
As they echo through the caverns
Of your restless mind
You are the only one with access
To the encyclopedic truth inside
Help yourself to find
Where your discomfort swims
On those distracting tides
That when ignored
Become enraged
Engulfing from behind
E.Poe
April 2014
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 11:16 PM UTC
Hey,
You're an ******* Darkness in my heartplace.
You think that property's for rent, mon frere?
It's ******* not, you ***** Get out of there.
If you smear your **** on the walls again, I swear.
I say it like it is. You're a ******** **** you.
Merde.
E.Poe
Feb 2014
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
Feeling highjacked from within
This body curls into a ball
The balanced burden of the world
Built on my shoulders starts to fall
Now with shadows closing in
I trap myself inside these walls
Where unraveling me lies tangled
As every thought is caught and strangled
This darkening it starts to scare
I've lost control
I'm well aware
Paper thin
I feel so bare
Multiplying rips, cuts, tears
Am and was
There's no compare
No, not again
Get out, despair
E.Poe
Feb 2014
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 10:47 PM UTC
Label guns drawn
They force us into boxes
Blindly yelling who we are
Consumed with pointed fingers
Looking for easy answers
Categorizing
For strategizing
Who they want for fraternizing
Humans prepped
Know it's just a broke machine
Those aware
Come from what we choose to leave
Hard hats worn
To protect
From their obscenities
They work so hard
But can't define
Who we decide to be
E.Poe
January 2014
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 2:20 PM UTC
Stand up
Stand up for something
Anything
Sing out about the way
You want the world to be
Learn to listen
Learn to look for people
Desperately in need
Learn to love to read
Learn to love
Expand your mind and empathy
Be brave
Stand up and speak
With as much a voice inside
This your precious body
As Jesus, Budda, M.L.K.
Five foot five Mahatma Gandhi
"Be the change you wish to see.."
A world full of people
In much greater need
The things you say
And things you do
Can effect the world
Not just a few
Every person's
A link in the chain
Not thinking you matter
Causes disarray
Everyone has something to say
Especially sensing one's
Prone to feeling pain
If you don't speak up
And make a stand
It won't just go away
Beliefs don't make you better
Behavior makes that change
Speak for the weak
Not next week
Now
Do something
Feel proud
Not for you
But for the good you do
They'll try to shoot you down
Action scares those prone to shunning
Often those who surround
Are rut stuck, change haters
Trying to share their frown
They'll work to make you drown
Those efforts will abound
But anything that's worth the fight
Is not easily found
E.Poe
January 2014
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 10:46 PM UTC
Closing your eyes
You hear a blonde
With blue eyes
American born and raised
California Valley girl
One nation, "Oh my God!"
Where women are invisible
Without a body deemed pleasant for all
You have no excuse
The sun's up there to lighten your hair
To darken your skin
"Why are you staying in?"
"Reading Sci-fi? Is that like Twilight?"
A mind full of worlds of fantasy
Where I went to escape this society
When other girls were in bikinis
I was in shorts down to my knees
Hiding thighs I felt ashamed by
******* in my belly and chin
Before I reached the age of ten
With numbers jumbling in my head
Given constant reminders
Of how dumb I was then
School meant stress
And tests
All those systems
Based on competition
Made my insides squeeze
Confidence was something foreign
I could not achieve
Words like "ugly" and "stupid"
Inducing tear soaked knees
Or was my hazy brain and pain
From the lack of food in my stomach those days
For years I continued to throw it away
While my girlfriends would eat and eat all day
The same amount was weight I'd gain
"You should go out for dance or swim!"
Full of formfitting uniforms I was made fun of in
Maybe that's why I have a soft spot
For all our patriotic jiggly kids
Especially round little girls
In a man driven world
Of "achieve and succeed"
Led to believe
The worth of a woman
Only lies in her body
In beautiful eyes
In perfect teeth
And long thick hair
In her physical potentials to make males stare
Comments about my perceived beauty
Never made me feel at ease
Why would people choose only to see
All of the things that do not make me me
In youth
"She's so cute!"
Then suddenly
You're a ****** object
From the age of thirteen
"They're compliments!"
"Say thank you"
To cars that shout
And men that stare
To whistling lips
And grabbing hands
Taking Innocence
With these my widening hips
In patriarchy
The Land of the Free
Has yet to mean equality
My country made it clear to me
Girls and boys don't start side by side
Like my bother I wanted a skateboard to ride
Not his face
But his interests
Were how he was defined
While I was told
My mind was of a different size
Still I never stopped running
And managed to find
This hidden word
"Objectified"
-To regard as a thing
-Disregarding feelings
This societal demise
Violent crimes on the rise
With women not often the ones taking lives
I almost can't blame them
When they do as they see
When men are taught they need power
Not regard or empathy
At fourteen
A tall man in leather
Chased me
Kidnap or ****
I was his for the take
Though I managed to flee
That fear cut me deep
And I knew in that moment
Strength was something I'd need
Now as girls we're taught we're fragile
But let's go back again
Back as far as I remember
I longed to roughhouse with men
When I wanted to join the wrestling team
They thought that of course I must be joking
Laughing at the idea of a girl with the desire to do
One more thing
Meant for the boys
"Not you"
To this day when I strike my Rosie posie
Riveting muscles put proudly on display
They chuckle at my love to do push ups each day
"It's not ladylike to show you have strength"
"It's not **** to be a woman who's strong"
"Muscles on girls look weird and wrong"
"Don't intimidate men"
"They prefer women thin"
But we all know that's not how it's always been.
Just take a look at Marilyn
American curves they used to define beauty and grace
But Hollywood only gave her the role of young blonde with no brains
In the melting *** of the U.S.A.
A melding of women of all shapes and age
A stew that's consistent of quite the array
But yet there's just one type of girl on display
And it's ******* time that ******* change
America's the beautiful?
What a stupid form of praise.
E.Poe
Dec 2013
Dec 27, 2013
Dec 27, 2013 at 9:58 PM UTC