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Sticky summer evening,
Warm, young, beautiful.
Flitting throughout the night,
Bountiful bundles of fireflies.
Flickering in the breezes,
A soft golden mist.
New summer's evening,
Graced by the lightning bugs.
The Eire canal in Pittsford is home to many lightning bugs.
Lizzie Bevis Jan 30
This morning brings another count
of ailments that have attacked me,
as viral matter drifts unseen in the air
impossible to keep track of.

The mirror shows my tired face,
so pale and paper-thin,
while symptoms wear my body down
and make my poor head spin.

I am too weary now to catalogue
each ache, each pain, each sigh;
The simple truth is all that's left
and I'm barely getting by.

This not-so-wonderful existence
drags its feet along,
my routine is all out of tune,
as I snuffle a half-forgotten song.

I'm death warmed over, so they say
though warmth feels far away,
as I shiver through the unbearable hours
of yet another long and miserable day.

©️Lizzie Bevis
I started writing this a week ago when I was unwell with the flu.
I spent today fine-tuning it and I think that it is good enough to share...but I'll keep my germs to myself!

I'm beginning to feel much better :)
MetaVerse Sep 2024
The crow in the tree
    is actually
a black trash bag.

Squeaky bike brakes
      sound like chirping
September crickets.

The bug on the sidewalk
     casts a long shadow:
September sunshine.

I open the front door:
     a fly I didn't know
about flies out.

Francie Lynch Oct 2023
Zombies are waddling toward their door.
Witches are cackling, black cats are scratching,
And the ghouls want brains and more.

But Brig and Ophelia aren’t scared yet,
They’re waiting inside,
Gobbling strange snacks while they hide.

It’s bugs they like to chew and gnaw;
And they love to eat their spiders raw,
Not fried with onions, like Granda;
Or served with broccoli, like Nana.

Not boiled with worms and creepy crawlers.
Ciaran eats those,
Not these crazed daughters.

Ophelia and Brig
Eat them raw,
Alive, not dead,
With wiggly legs and sharp jaws;
And wrapped up with mosquito heads
In white sticky spider webs.

They eat Black Widows soaked in goblin blood
And wicked witch’s poo;
Made from bats and rats and unschooled fools,
That witches eat to soften  stools.

They eat fat spiders
Floating in soup,
That slide and wiggle
Down their throat.

They eat them with their mouldy cheese,
Melted over wasps and bees.

The girls fork down spider stew,
They love the taste “Tres beaucoup.”

The gravy’s made from a mummy’s spit,
And sweat that drips from a ghoul’s armpit.

They like their spiders spread on bread,
A feast to feed the risen dead.

When their snack is finally done,
They’ll pick their teeth and scrape their tongues
For Daddy Long Legs they didn’t eat.
The long legs caught between their teeth.

They'll use those legs to weave a wreath,
To trick flies and bugs and lonely spiders
Into their hungry House of Horrors.
Wrote this for my twin grandaughters, Brig and Ophelia. Ciaran is my grandson. The girls hate spiders. Probably moreso now.
Thomas W Case Oct 2023
I hate these
******* gnats.
My apartment is
clean, not
sterile, but it's
where the heart is.
The floor is
swept, the dishes
are done, but these
******* gnats bother
me constantly.
I clap my
hands together,
occasionally killing
one or two, and then
I'm grateful that
God doesn't do that
to me.

I'm trying to
write, and these tiny
flying buzzards won't
leave me alone.
Then, a moth
bombards me,
fluttering around my
head and ears,
and I think,
what's than son of
a ***** going to
do to my Irish
whaling sweater?
It's 50% wool, 70 bucks.
I **** it.
Dusty *******.
I feel gratitude that
God doesn't do
that to me.

Don't these flying bugs
die when it gets cold?
I open a window.
Late October, maybe
there hasn't been a
frost yet.
I **** a gnat.
Perhaps I'd be
safer outside.
I need to do
some research.
marshay lewis Sep 2023
Where are the ants trying to go?

The ones littering my bedroom floor

Skittering in crevices unwanted

Finding their way to my skin

What do they want with the scars and marks

Sinew and dirt tainting the surface

Unfit for habitation

Nowhere to go

Nowhere to cling to

To sink and burrow and build

My body is not a home for you

Any more than it is a home for me

Your little bodies traverse the surface

Like hands and fingers never have

I itch with your touch

Sting with your bite

And you choose to stay

In a way no one ever has

Unrelenting

Unceasing

Unsavoured
monique ezeh Jun 2023
days crawl by
and humidity stills the air.
the black flies are late this season,
though around here, most things are.
below the gnat line, girls like me
seldom get to die easily,
perfumed powders
masking the scent of illness,
flushed cheeks and damp foreheads donned
as our feeble bodies recline on fainting couches
to delicately languish away. we know that
there’s a certain beauty to decomposition,
to fungus gnats invading potted soil,
to fruit flies nesting in sink drains. we know that
rotting is a clock that never stops,
tallying each unflinching, humid second while the
days crawl by.
a fly, bloated, buzzes
trapped between the window and the curtain

i hear it bump against the glass
the wings crumple
the fly falls
landing unceremoniously on the windowsill

after a moment, the fly is once again airborne
returning to the window
to continue its exercise in futility
Madeline Hatter May 2023
There is a dead beetle on the floor in the bathroom.
It has been there for weeks.
Someone must have noticed it but paid it no mind.
More than someone.
Someones.
No one has bothered its carcass.
Its legs are curled in at odd angles, not unlike an infant sleeping.
Someone would notice an infant sleeping.
An infant sleeping on the floor of a bathroom.
Or an infant dead in a bathroom on the cold, grey tiles.

The color of its dark body is in stark contrast to the light floor, but still it is ignored.
Have I been bright enough in this life to stand out?
Am I light against the dark?
Or dark against the light?
Will I be remembered?
As I slide through the experience of living, I don't know what impression I've made.
Am I the dead beetle?
Will I be the dead beetle?
My life has not been bold.
One may only presume the same of the beetle.
There are too many people in this world for me to be a true stand-out.
I merely exist.
No matter my color against the background of life, I am simply waiting to be swept away.
As inconsequential as a dead beetle in the bathroom with little attention paid.

There is a saying that everyone dies twice.
First when you leave the mortal realm.
The second time when your name is last spoken and your memory ceases to exist amongst the living.
What if you never live and are paid no mind.
Can you really die then?
What if I am not even the beetle?
What if I'm less than a drop in the bucket in the universe and I slip through the cracks of society?
At least the beetle gets a poem.
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