Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 4d lyla
Sappho
Awed by her splendor
stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces
when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver
 4d lyla
Sappho
Cleis
 4d lyla
Sappho
Sleep, darling
I have a small
daughter called
Cleis, who is

like a golden
flower
I wouldn't
take all Croesus'
kingdom with love
thrown in, for her

---

Don't ask me what to wear
I have no embroidered
headband from Sardis to
give you, Cleis, such as
I wore
and my mother
always said that in her
day a purple ribbon
looped in the hair was thought
to be high style indeed

but we were dark:
a girl
whose hair is yellower than
torchlight should wear no
headdress but fresh flowers
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.  i like what it does,
i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new
In the wildest place,
my mouth stopped with stars,
I came to the end of words;
the parched mint, bitter
paper plank

where I lost my balance,
on one foot teetering
along that roadway where gold-
flashing fireflies stand effortlessly
on air

to send their fragile signal
out,
every night a nocturne
of one less
til I and the last firefly

danced alone
in the wildest place
sending our last ignition
out
to find our kind

or else fall quiet
and one
with the wild that
will neither be spelled
nor known.




©joyannjones June 2023
If
If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn’t a lie,
Life would be delight,—
But things couldn’t go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn’t be I.

If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I’d be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn’t be you.

If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,—
Yet they’d all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn’t be we.
 7d lyla
Teemers
I only write,
when
I am in love
or
Falling apart.
 Jul 31 lyla
Foogle
colours around me
fish me up to the light
when i clawed myself
down this deep hole

i feel the sun
i feel the “after you”
i taste the glory
everything
i missed out on

i brea
th
i
brea
l
th

in and out

take my breath that you stole from my lungs
put it back in my rotting stomach
swallowing hard
you sleep
in a nightmare
piled in the
trash out the back

i keep stepping
in the place with no bridge
head up high up so tall
there’s nothing to see beneath

you become tv static
a pedestrian
at the streetlights
a name
recycled
 Jul 31 lyla
Mike Adam
Plum ripe from windowpane
Meets enamel

Two drops
Blood-red juice

New shirt
Baptized
Next page