Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
924 · Sep 2021
The Lies We Tell of God
Elle Sep 2021
The lies we tell of God
Are no baptisms in a dripping moon
No cleansing in and of sunlight
No anointing me of Earth

The lies we tell of God
A mark of mortal rage
A mourning that glows and devours
The fingerprints of our ancestors

The lies we tell of God
are the lies we tell of ourselves
908 · Jun 2019
No Matter
Elle Jun 2019
We slept on the spare couch
A half remembered dream that I have bled for
My eyes drenched in slumberous salt
Dewy eyelids threaten to close
And yet we chase sleep into the desert
With bells dragging behind our backs
To have rest rob our pockets
A tsunami in the grave
A half remembered dream of rooftop travels and serenades
Hushed giggles in the dark
This dream that I have suffered and died for
A dream I have given my life for
Starts to fade anyway
659 · Oct 2021
Poems
Elle Oct 2021
There's an abundance of wild, suspended poems hanging above our heads but there's hardly enough words to describe them down to earth.
Elle Feb 2022
From this fragmented stretch of time
from my strange heart away from this monotonous dream
I can feel myself exist
not in any tangible or beating form
but in the occasional breath that sails in from distant, trembling summer winds
in the moonlit and barefoot dance
a symphony of sun flickering on the forest floor
my lovers eyes
all of these places which are separate and fleeting
are the only places I ever am
435 · Oct 2019
You were
Elle Oct 2019
To encounter you felt like a tragedy
felt like a bewitchment
To know you was luck itself
To love you was a benediction
You were passion, artistry and fire
To everyone but yourself
400 · Sep 2019
Numb
Elle Sep 2019
A black and blue ***** solitude
that falls off the side of the couch
Stasis evoked by strident abandon
Nightshade drips from your mouth
As you begin to slide and slither down the drain
you imagine a sailboat at night
An insouciance glide atop water
your dilapidated plight
371 · May 2019
All That There is
Elle May 2019
The storm howled and growled and demanded to disperse pieces of us across the horizon. It felt like the last breezes from the Garden of Eden.

Suddenly, I was grinded into dust and you were melted into rain.
As I fell, I learned to feel. It felt like a life all at once.

My dust was everywhere and I was the dust.
The storm shoved me in all different directions but I was still whole.

I touched the ground.

I now know the wind as if he were my own lungs.
I know the sun as if she were my hands.
Know the ocean as if it were my own tears
And know your rain as if you were my own soul.

But I still miss you.

Now whenever it rains, I feel it again, the feeling of learning to feel.
I soak you up. I can't tell the difference between you and me.
It's messy and we turn into mud but we bask in it.

Once the sun comes again, I feel you evaporate from me.
I hold onto you until it feels like a drought.
I've always wondered what it feels like for you to rise back up to the clouds.

After a few of your rainy days, I hear the echo of muffled words.
A few more, I feel the bluest of blue poems tearing through me, towards the sun.

Day after day, it blooms and rises closer to the clouds, your home.
And when you fall, I feel the petals open just a bit more.

As the blue sinks its roots into me, I weaken.
You seem to be falling less and less, only dripping to make a sound.

Although we no longer have the words, the words we use are as if they are spoken from the lips of God.

I hear the howling and growling again.

What was I before the storm?
256 · Oct 2019
Transparency
Elle Oct 2019
Uttering praises upon your fair skin
Your dark hair hallowed as sacred
These half deserted dawns mean nothing underneath the weight of your alabaster palms and wrists
Looks of a foreign tragedy without translation
You are sacred transparency
An unknowable thing
Just as we are beneath ourselves
256 · Sep 2021
Like a Leaf
Elle Sep 2021
What you've done to me is like autumn to the leaves
You've lulled me down onto the ground
And cast me into slumber
There I'll lie
All dull and dry
What once was green is umber
Elle Dec 2021
Sea foam and moss covered rocks
sing thick songs of sad rage in solitude
I'm tangled and tossed in their sound
236 · Oct 2022
Between Earth and Sky
Elle Oct 2022
I cannot go on hanging in the suspension between Earth and sky -
caught in the perpetual pull of dark stars
and drawn back down again into the twisting roots of the Earth
I'm laid out, **** between them
soaking with rainwater and scorched by the swelling moon
The wind shivers and daydreams tremble to white
craving some fleeting outline or living complexities
I would like to be carved as stone to put an end to this floating
but I'll wait here until you let me live as human
234 · May 2019
Light and Dark
Elle May 2019
It stays dark
Even in the light, it stays dark
It encapsulates you and me
And you and me
Until light tumbles upon us again
It gets so bright that the world turns to milk
And we are forced to bow to the sun
But it stays dark still
224 · Jun 2019
A Dance
Elle Jun 2019
I sway with the trees through my window
Ivy climbs up the bark
I play with the leaves through my window
A wind gusts through the night

Branches pick me up and play with my curls
They giggle and set me down
The trees have taken me from my window
Soot and sap covers my gown

I look back up at my window
The ivy has shallowed my room
Their leaves and poison look down through my window
Singing their gleeful tunes

I try to climb back to my window
The forest plants me in the ground
I sway with the trees staring up at my window
My window... my window...
217 · Dec 2019
Depart
Elle Dec 2019
Where I dwell now
Beneath the busy streets
Inside jealous palms
Atop of an echo
I'm still in the solitude of spring
and like a spider curling in on itself,
I depart
Elle Dec 2019
Sad eyes of scribbles underneath your furrowed brow
Weather beaten, masticated, bashed
The lines of your face burrow and settle in to dwell
They check their mailboxes, set up lemonade stands
And drudge up demons beneath pores
Once you were alone in your purity
The occasional blemish or two
Nothing to make into cities
Nothing like decrepitude
212 · Dec 2022
In spite of everything
Elle Dec 2022
In spite of everything,
I arranged flowers over my skin in a great effort to be worshiped
made myself into a garden for your plucking

I didn’t know how much of me was woman
and how much was girl

But you knew what I was
and what I would become under your caress
In spite of everything,
I offered up the entirety of my being to you
gave your selfish hands each blooming flower that you desired
For I was half asleep with longing for you
A cooing dove to your touch
and only yours
201 · Jun 2019
Borrowed
Elle Jun 2019
Sorrow stings my borrowed eyes, for now they are dark blue
Rage and lust woven into my borrowed world
A world that has love too
Forgetting my impermanence, I beg for more borrowed time
I wonder, I search and I feel through this world
This world I long to call mine
189 · Jul 2019
Tonight
Elle Jul 2019
The moon looked so cold
It grew quieter and quieter still
And yet I wanted nothing more than to reach out and feel its chill
No disturbances from the light
No face stitched to rock
Only a sliver and a shiver
Circles of glow rung around its neck
And the distant cry of a crow
189 · Jul 2019
Untitled
Elle Jul 2019
My footsteps, the only sound within sight
Small travels from there to here
And here to there
That rolls over the other
Stepping through the blizzards and fallen leaves
Which are forgotten until the next
Some listen for the sound
Some litter them across a page
And others rest their feet
185 · Dec 2019
Like Branches
Elle Dec 2019
Our hands, like branches, reach toward the sun
Fingers stretched, curved and twisted to avoid shadow
And, like branches, our relentless journey to warmth
Makes us intricate and familiar
185 · Oct 2022
Don't cry
Elle Oct 2022
Don't cry, strange beauty -
The river and the wind listens
And cries gently with you
180 · Oct 2019
Omnipresent
Elle Oct 2019
You began to coil around me by first placing that scarlet flower into my mouth
A renegade chevalier
Unshaken by the trembling of my hands
Eyes closed through the night
You were
even where you were not
175 · Jun 2019
Grey
Elle Jun 2019
To be alone with him is to be alone with myself
He floats like a wisp of fog in the corners of my eyes
Asking where to go next
An impenetrable fog that manifests and multiples
I'm slightly unnerved when I see what else he veils
The dock past the brook
The edges of the corn field
The ends of my fingers
And all that I know
His season of fog after springtime
Breathes still
As I stare, transfixed
He trickles from the places he has possessed
Slithers up my spine, over my shoulder blade
And I inhale
174 · May 2019
Torn
Elle May 2019
You lay in the battlefield of a Great War
Again and again
Reintroducing yourself as the rubble leaves scars on your cheeks
As your palms splinter and cleave
Those you have lost
Those who have lost you
There's snow piling on your lashes like powdered sugar
It is something you've written with a song in mind
A testimony, A prophecy
But if you were to squeeze your black eyes open
You'd see your red door, tire swing and toy box
170 · Oct 2022
Sculpted Heart
Elle Oct 2022
I did not have a heart to love you
until you sculpted it out of stone
and somehow you still could not understand
that it was made for you alone
168 · Oct 2019
Trance
Elle Oct 2019
Blossoms rose beneath twisted limbs
Wrapped around still bones
Still in the encagement of a clock
Shrouded monasteries left stagnant on your dried up lips
As our blood vow lay fallen on this sleeping Earth- that lulled us to sleep with it
What were the words of the sermon that led us barefoot in the night?
That sermon that spilled off the windswept lips of Zephyrus, who carried this light
164 · Oct 2022
shy love
Elle Oct 2022
until then, we shared a shy love
the kind of love that did not yet have a voice to speak
we lingered in those silent gardens
dandelions, snow drops and jasmine
we lingered longer in those gentle traces of fingertips over soft skin
those quiet, dimpled glances in the stairway
and i wish we lingered longer still

until we spoke, our love was shy
and then we were frightened of the voice
i had only hoped to love you
unabashedly & gently love you
but the sound rang and rang in our ears
and now our love is a different animal entirely -
it gnaws away at the soft flesh that it used to trace

until then, we shared a shy love
but now, we don't love for the quiet
we love for the hunger that must be fed
163 · Mar 2020
Spring
Elle Mar 2020
Spring grows louder here

Here where moss licks my toes and where the Earth breathes below
Torn through frost and fallen leaves
A golden and divine light that grows and grows and grows
Spring, take my soul, possess my eyes and bury me in soil
Do all of these things to make me a part of spring
159 · Oct 2021
Moonflower
Elle Oct 2021
When the lavender and bluebells sleep
You bloom to the moon
When the stretching morning doves drape their songs over sunbeams
Your dozing and banished petals are lost
What sacrifices would you make for the night
For the wolves
For those great and dying stars?
Moonflower,
How many more would you make?
How much more would you miss?
158 · Oct 2019
Nights in Daze
Elle Oct 2019
Resting in the curve of your cupid’s bow
A lullaby in limbo
The high, like ******, slays
A yellow melancholy daze
Stars that look of bubbles in champagne
Rising, bursting and dying all at once
An idyllic, delirium game
The faraway voice of Kurt Cobain
Your doleful and sulfurous song
Travels on blistered feet
on the backs of motorcycles and mist
through this flickering and tired street
156 · Jul 2019
How I see you
Elle Jul 2019
I wanted you to tell me about the books you've read
To recite the sentences that made life seem kind
But your words got caught on the sharp mountaintops
And blended in with the snow between your lips

Your name stood thin
Sprawled out in front of me with a bruiseless form
I wanted to reach out and tear at the milky flesh
To find something beneath that resembled home

Once you were as I have said
A lamb that followed the light
You only dreamt of days within your sight
When I see you now, you are battered

Your sagging flesh, sick and dying
A stranger to the world
A world that insists on pushing you out
As it pushed you in

When I think of you
A flash of satin and violet
A lamb underneath the claws of life
And a woman who lost her story
155 · May 2019
You
Elle May 2019
You
It's in the ballot beneath your brow
It's in the breathless chorus you sing
The agonized clarity of thought and expression
And the night that you bring
152 · Jun 2019
Supposed
Elle Jun 2019
It is there - in a poem I have yet to write
Hiding under the bed
It shares my spheres of sorrow
Fragrant and unsaid
It is there - my story to utter
Underneath the brush
Spoken from my unconscious mind
Constrained, pithy and lush
151 · May 2019
Untitled
Elle May 2019
How I began to uncoil my love from you
like bits of a cloud dissolving into daylight
the ombré from a dark blue sky to baby blue
the gentle ***** from palm to wrist
151 · May 2019
Far From Here
Elle May 2019
Over there, past the valleys of knowledge
Far from the seamstresses gaze
Where night and day are letters
Written on a page
The host drew in a sharp breath
That dispelled the arching trees
Nothing shook the dream of death
Not even the sight of the seas
151 · May 2019
Another Life
Elle May 2019
Far from the shoreline
There was a moment your hand was in mine
My mind is weighed down by the thought of it
I bear an untouched story
A story of emerald that longed to be scarlet
A story of fire that thirsts for rain
My hand can hardly write of it
I close my eyes and hear an echoing of the sweetest song
A song that belongs to another world
A world where emerald turns to scarlet
And fire has its fill of rain
150 · Oct 2021
Places of Autumn
Elle Oct 2021
Autumn almost feels like it belongs to places like these
Places that lounge in the waning maple sun
Places that graze on slow, foggy hymns of October
It's like they are quiet testaments to the dream that is Autumn
149 · Jul 2019
Phases of the Clouds
Elle Jul 2019
Phases of the clouds
Gently and heavily they pass
With the day in mind
And a breeze at hand
That shatters my heart of glass
Elle Oct 2022
I had only hoped to love you
to get lost in the center of the storm of you
to live on as an atom of your heart
146 · May 2019
A Dream
Elle May 2019
Soft spoken and cloudy
You remind me of a dream I've been trying to forget
A dream that begs to be remembered
That pounded its iron fists on my collapsed chest
And yet you flutter and glide amid the space where flesh used to be
Gently and quietly you pass
I try not to hold it against you
But the resemblance is too striking
The sunlight beamed off of your hair
Before the rot began
146 · Oct 2019
Parting
Elle Oct 2019
The river wrapped around your ankles
As I willed you to stay
Tilting over the drowsy mountaintops
For just one more winsome glance
You stumbled over canyons, fell over forests
And the river let you be
146 · Jun 2019
Cursed
Elle Jun 2019
The curse you've set upon me
Summoned through a blade
Words you have stitched into stone with ****** fingernails
The conditions of my soul
This is what you have bestowed upon me
Not hymns or hydrangeas
Not a cradle or a kiss
But words that bury me beneath a opaque myth
From me you will receive no benediction
No utterance of a prayer
No- All you will receive from me is varying hues of hell
144 · May 2019
A Morning
Elle May 2019
Early between the dawn and sunrise
A house within the woods
Ancient creaking floorboards
Stilted brotherhoods
A sparrow begins its song of shade
A mahogany table chipping dried blood
A faint and resonant snoring
A day before the flood
142 · Oct 2019
Untitled
Elle Oct 2019
I’d crawl inside the breath of you
Drown beneath your milky skin
And entangle my bones with blue veins
If it meant I could exist a second somewhere within you
141 · May 2019
A Place to Hide
Elle May 2019
When you showed yourself to me, you expected fog to fall upon your shoulders, to disembody your definition.
As I was lolled into slumber, the sun shone upon your snowy bones. And the soil on which I laid threatened to rise me skyward on the back of silver grass and swaying wind.
You kept me anchored to a tree that smelled of jasmine and moonlight. You led my eyes once again to your skin which was flashing recognition. There, in the space around me- the song of a sparrow, a garden, a weeping and a whisper.
I went down, down, down into the fire.
I floated into the golden light and chose the snow that rested between them.
140 · Oct 2019
Bruises
Elle Oct 2019
The paralysis of your force inscribed invisible bruises
Their hues of purple and blue
Your spirit of **** greed lingers, consumes these moody October nights until there’s nothing left but bloodless trees and even those turn their bark inside out to avoid your everywhere else eyes
But still you howl and growl,
snarl and slither
All to convince yourself of your power
that is as useless as these corpses you’ve carved
140 · Jul 2019
Photographs
Elle Jul 2019
I remember you through photographs
Glossy and flammable
One where you’re smelling aster in a field
A dagger through my chest
One where we languidly rest by the waters edge
A reign of desolation
Another your eyes stare from behind the photograph
I want to cradle you through this photograph
Summon you through this photograph
But how can I reach you through paper and ash
138 · Oct 2019
Dual
Elle Oct 2019
We found a home in the fortitude of the winter
In the voyage of a nightingale
Benevolence in abomination
and percipience borne of pandemonium
How, then, do we absolve the transgressor?
Remove the stain from white cloth?

We do not
137 · Oct 2022
Out of the Airplane Window
Elle Oct 2022
I was surrounded by strangers as I looked out of the cruel airplane window - your horizon fell back with agonizing ease
and my soul became an eroding cliff
Bits of dying rock tumbled back down onto your shores
by no will of their own but by the natural grace of gravity

As i recall this now, feet chained to the under side of the universe,
part of me celebrates that half of my soul is missing from my chest
because it means that part of me still lives and breathes somewhere within you
135 · May 2019
A Poem
Elle May 2019
I felt a poem within me that desperately clawed at my throat
But each word dissipated as I opened my mouth to speak.
Next page