It's been so long I've wondered Would I even recognize the rain? But the signs are unmistakable And waken primal knowings. Pores open up like plants The scales of our hair sip moisture And stand tall in attention Our noses know the smell of rain Ears can't unremember thunder Our skin flinches with the electric shock As lightning scalds the sky The sucking void of warring winds Winds the breath up in the chest The tactile call and response Between barometric change and body Forms precious proof that what's forgotten isn't gone It's merely biding till the time And when the deluge finally falls You can't remember That you did not remember -Elena Nola
900 nights
One hundred fifty nights ago I counted the time between, The week the star-tellers told me to; The answer, then, was 750. They warned me not to count again. I should have listened, Because now I know 900 nights have come and gone Since last I felt the rain, And though I'm drowning in the numbers, There is no water here. -Elena Nola
“Siren’s song in a bottle”
I am very pleased to announce that my poem “Siren’s Song in a Bottle” is included in the Summer Solstice 2021 edition of Eternal Haunted Summer. The issue is available now – go forth and read!
This poem is part of a trilogy I wrote from the perspective of a siren…what might have been the words to her song that were so irresistible? What secret longings in the hearts of men did she whisper from a spark into an inferno?
Or was she speaking with them in mind at all? Perhaps it was just the truth of her own soul that set their…um…passions ablaze.
What would a siren do if she had no voice but that of ink? Would her magic still work? Would it still lure in what is hers?
“Siren’s Song in a Bottle”
Everything I write, I write for you
Words the only voice my siren soul can find
Written pictures, ink-trapped tears
Longing bound in rhyme and meter
Cosmology of metaphors
To hold the formless up to sight
I write so I can know myself
I sing so you might find me
If the garden of my soul
Grows black and silver flowers
It’s because the nights are long here
Alone, alone, alone
I shine a light into myself
To manifest a meaning
I write so I can hold my pain
I sing so you might witness
Paper roses, blooms eternal
As fresh in your mind as from mine
If the petals drip with poison
It’s the alchemy of art
Denature pain and push it out
So better things can grow
I write so I can heal myself
I sing so you might understand
My heart I replicate in verse
And yield it to the currents
To float through space, suspending time
To reach the distant shore of you
Displacing your reality
With co-hallucinated blossom
I write so I can use my voice
I sing so you might hear me
A resonance of souls
Allows for recognition
I speak in dreams, between the stars
All I am is words
A line you’ve heard somewhere before
Echoes of a memory or a future not yet lived
I write so I can feel hope
I sing so you remember
~Elena Nola
Destiny
What is that you're holding? He asked as her fingers Covered silver charm My fate, she said, with irony A map I cannot read But nonetheless must follow -Elena Nola
From Time
PERFUME NO. 28, NARCISO RODRIGUEZ FOR HER (EDT)
From time to time I like to skip ahead Into a life I don't yet live Like picking up my journal And reading pages bare of ink Within the blankness there is everything All possibilities contained therein The things will be, the things that won't The paths that I can't even see Time is, by nature, nonlinear Our form is all the limits us To clarity of hindsight Some day a man will burn for me Musk and flowers stoke the flames I'll wear this then, to feed his fire Today, to free myself from time -Elena Nola
Sonnet for an unnameable emotion
Far easier to say what it is not! It is not fear, nor apprehension bleak; Anxiety is likewise term unsought; Too negative those words all sound to speak. Pain fills the gap between what is and what Is wanted. I am open, free of need, Held unattached to any outcome but Still hopeful for the sprouting of the seed. If staring at the edge of the unknown Is standing on a cliff debating depth, Uncertainty of fate I hold alone As company to take that plunging step. I feel as though I'm screaming without breath, Embracing change as life, and stasis, death. -Elena Nola
Perhaps
I want to matter most to someone She confessed Shyly and a little sadly All I could do was Tell that lost little girl Inside myself You matter most to me Perhaps, someday, It will even be enough -Elena Nola
Come Down Loneliness Like a Friend
You never used to come alone Your ways all mingled up with theirs A wild, wicked trio, bad boys one and all Loneliness, Abandonment, Despair You’d crash in unannounced And leave my house in shambles You’d take and take and take Take and never give You’d take my time and steal my peace Destroy hard-built contentment Palm my hope and thief my joy And leave me colorless and crying I have learned to lock my doors Against the ones would hurt me As I have learned to keep an eye On what my visitors encroach Perhaps, you, too, have grown and changed Cut ties with dark companions Learned to knock and learned to go When the hour grows too late So come down, loneliness, like a friend Bring news of what I’m missing Put an arm around my shoulder While you tell me where you’ve been Help me remember how to yearn And long for something more Give knowledge for the time you take Change nothing but awareness And kiss me gently on the cheek When soft you take your leave -Elena Nola
Barbie Girl
I'm not a love-bot anymore I no longer have to hide Behind dead eyes And a plastic smile It's over I'm safe now Never again Never Ever Ever Again -Elena Nola (circa Sept. 2018)
Nirvana Bourbon
Another perfume poem. This one was published in the spring 2020 edition of Thimble Literary Magazine, volume 2.4.
“Nirvana Bourbon”
The smell of the glue I used to repair my shattered self Isn’t the carcinogenic burn of polymers, but vanilla Not the pods, but the extract, boozy and opaque Sharply alcoholic but too thick to be a cocktail A tarrish smear between broken edges The scent pervasive because I used a lot of resin Not from overapplication—there were just so many pieces The drying fumes were many things to my mosaic soul Warmth and beauty, the comfort of familiar The solace of tradition and the escape from memory Deliciousness, exoticness, expensiveness, permissiveness I used them all to tether mind to body, heart to chest For a time I was more glue than woman, more dead than living The channels of adhesive no substitute for veins I hovered in the cloud above my curing skin Taking refuge in vanilla, and hiding in the lie That if I could still find beauty, then I must be all right -Elena Nola
Elena Nola, Poet 