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Lily Priest Apr 2021
Are we broken babe?
Unmade
By all that remains
Of what made us.
Lily Priest Nov 2020
What do you see?
Dollops of dreams
Ink blotted on my retinas
As they escape me
Pulled in splashes
And dashes from my chest
Where they beat their wings
Restless.

What do you feel?
Weightless
Unreality, coloured
All psychedellic
And bleeding
Rainbows.
Flowing from the
Secret spaces of my soul.
Lily Priest Jan 2021
Honestly, I was paralysed
Quick breathed, chest choking kind
That numbs to the tips of fingers
And the bottom of the heart,
Feet spread wide apart as if I ever stood a chance of taking the blow.
Its stings,
bleary eyed I'm blinking and rubbing at the skin, massage the redness away;
All that nasty shame and the ridiculous burn of guilt
That has me wilting round my shadow.
I think I might have seen something,
Hints bleeding into the beauty of blissfull ignorance and dulling the gleam,
Blinkers just a little skew-wiff
To let the light in and shine on your bare ***
Going to town between someone else's legs.
You dont look half as nice now,
Your flesh is pale and hair curls darkly
And its gross, like those meaty moans
That make you sound like a boar.
I can't call her a *****, not really,
But shes enjoying herself with the lie of one
Screaming obscenities to God
As if hed take time out of his
Busy schedule to fulfil her voyeristic fantasies,
Deity bowing his head to watch
You smash into her and smash us to pieces.
You're shuddering and shes faking those screams
There"s no glee in her eyes, just the simpering emptiness of making you feel like a man.
But your not, you're a coward
Who's **** is fond of flattery,
chases it like a puppy, perking up hopefully to be petted.
I dont think I'm upset anymore.
I'm out the door and rain falls cool on the ground
I'm crunching down the gravel,
shedding my committment,
It's has a satisfying sound that dies
Beaneath my boot as you stumble after me.
'It's not what you think'
It's funny because I honestly
Hadn't thought anything except
I'd never never seem you like that before;
Not so raw and pasty
And ugly.
Maybe you'll meander back into my mind
As divine as you have been before
But right now I deplore the memory.
I dont love you
Because I dont know who you are.
That breath stealing moment when you realise someone is not who you thought they were.
Lily Priest Feb 2020
Sometimes I feel like we're connected
Heart to heart
String between
Held in place with safety pins.
Lily Priest Dec 2020
Lopsided look
On maizy trail
Rich with sunlight.
How he wished
He didn't scare away
The songbirds.
Lily Priest Nov 2023
Silly that my heart should
Be a secret,
That my love should whisper wishes
Than wear them wilfully
On his sleeve.
But my soul only sours
In silent sharing -
The eyes meeting in mischief
Across a room busy and unassuming,
Of the quick lift of lips,
The stifled snicker, the cheeky wink
That makes something wonderful
Flicker in my chest,
Caught breath at the beauty
In the boon
Of being the only two
Who know -
Without obvious touch
Or flamboyant show -
The all of each other.


Silly that my heart
Should be a secret,
Given in confidential agreement,
But I only give all
For those who would take silently
The big and the small,
And shelter those morsels
Like a treasure,
Never measuring their worth
By grand shows of splendour,
But by the tender
certainty of together
In the quiet.
Lily Priest Nov 2023
Last light on the bay,
The sky stained red
By a butchered day,
Dying with the grace
Of a sinking star.
All of its charm
Chastened by the waves
To its grave.

Because their sharp rebuke
Would be swift
And angered outburst be sound
'That thou should not sail
Where the sky meets the sea
If thou dost not wish
To be drowned'


Out there on the unsound
Ground of a different galaxy,
Where aliens have no right
To be,
And salt bleeches bones
Right down to the grain
Leaving lost,
unfortunate stowaways
Scattered like shells on a beach.
The brightest star
To ever grace the waves
If only she'd stayed
In the sky.
Lily Priest Jan 2021
The burn, icy in the throat
Flaring up constellations as it goes,
Spitting up supernovas that blast in puffs
of grey air and curl into the ether,
like an afterthought.
Tongue tied, lightly listless in the snow
Glowing white with the wonder
Of nothingness in the mind.
Denied the deafness,
Dreary doubts and thoughts of morning, where sunlit and blinded fumbling take hold,
Knowing devolves, unknown.

Synapses sizzle like taut guitar strings,
Plucked with the pining of the in-between,
The nameless dimension
Where everything is and isn't.
No, box.
No cat.
Schrodinger, doffs, tips cap and theory
To the bountiful bleakness of being.
Explanations die,
Shoot stars behind the redness and the glassy-eyed smile.
Words fail, burnt up frozen
And flailing in their mediocrity.
Silence spins, giggles fill its spaces
And gravity grounds the freedom.
Lily Priest Dec 2020
If we were never here
left no mark
And disappeared
How could they ever say
That we were wrong?
But are we songbirds
Whose tune will echo on
Heavy with the hope
That all we are
And all we were
Is never done?
Lily Priest Apr 2021
The sun shower you special,
speak sparkles
Into your soul
Till you are whole
With all the hope
Of new growth.
Lily Priest Feb 2020
The world awaits
And I travel side by side
Where weary steps
Did mark the ground anew
Sunrises to sunsets.
Patron saint
Of wandered worlds
Colours dark and light,
My feet
My hands
Know foreign day
Know of foreign nights.
To see each land
Soil and sand
Lives changed along the way
Tis why I walk
Tis why I leave
Because the world awaits.
Lily Priest Dec 2020
Mischievious whimsy,
knee high flare
Loosely lifted
On warm summer sighs
Pink on paleness
Lilting with each
Light step
Of bare feet
On burnt grass.
Dainty matchstick
Wrists, turned quick
And ringed with daisies
That drop their petals
Like wishes.
Hair all caught sun
And caught sky
Above cheeks
The colour of flowers.
Lily Priest Dec 2020
Had me, held me in verse,
hynonotized me with the lines
he mumbled into the shell of my ear.
Rainbows laced in the vibrations
that quivered, shook within me
As I shivered and he smiled.

They were wild green,
thick foliage of possibilities,
mild mossy tone, that was young and old,
Untold and untamed.

They were gold,
Honeyed, syruped on my skin,
with lashings of sweetness
That sparkled like sugar
On my senses.

They were red
ripe and passionate,
hanging low
ready for my want
to pluck them from the air,
carry them close,
***** pressed, heart racing and tempted
to all that he offered.

They were were white,
Light on the air like whisps of smoke,
quietly sneaking and closing the door, disintegrating into distorted colours
Whose sound I strained to hear,
in the silence.
Lily Priest Apr 2021
Eyes open into newness
And find a smile
Dimpled giddy
With the happiness
That took only one look to awaken
And one little life to nurture.
Nine months worth of waiting
Melt into a promise of forever.
My love for you is an endless
Beautiful thing.
Bigger than the both of us
Loud and bellowing.
But I whisper it
because I want to let you sleep.
My sister recently had her first child and I wrote this for her. It doesnt do the moment of moma meeting baby for the first time justice, but its something.
Lily Priest Apr 2021
It's a bittersweet thing
That makes me out of moments
I only half remember.
All those moments are you,
Tuned to the melody
Of how we used to meet,
Twirling together like syncrinosity
Was our name
And every other defining feature
Had died in the face of our love.
It wasnt enough,
Life takes as often as it gives
And we just had to live with it,
Disjointed and jarred,
Stepping on toes as we tripped away.
All the mistakes are
Sharp stones clutched my palm
As I make a fist
Revisiting every step and dip
Every wondrous lift and fall.
You are all
And the ache,
The sweet, profound pain
That makes up the whole of me,
Now that you're gone.
This was for a competition somewhere but lost the link before I could send it off.
Lily Priest Mar 2020
We are here
Whiskey addled
And full of quiet
Smokily cigaretted in the after.
Every touch
Taps a nerve
That shivers across
Our pillowed universe
And meets in our gaze

Puckered lips
Kiss eyelids to close
All our fervour
Now to sleep
On bed sheets and skin
Tangled toe to toe
And palm
To heart.
Lily Priest Jul 2020
He wrote me
wondrous
charmed with
child-like innocence
and soft
with safety

But close the book,
creak of wood
and crawl
of thieving
fingers,
off with the
innocence
let it settle
on the floor,
as stony cold
as all that
softness has become.

He wrote me brave
proud in the way
ladies
should be,
unafraid
and lovely

But turn the
page
and all is fear
and fretful
dreams
soak skin
to awakeness
when footsteps
mark the hall,
and rattles
turn to the
dooming click
of entry.
He hears
every silent
scream.

He wrote me defiant
unreliant on
conformities.
social standing
was just
weakness
dressed prettily

But end the
phrase
and compliant
limbs
fall exhausted
from the fight
and tear-stained
cheeks sting
rosy red
against the pain.
Lily Priest Jul 2020
Hold me like you held her
The one I see in your eyes
Whose name you cant disguise
On your lips.
Cherish me as you cherish
Her memory
Dusted off and revisited
In your mind
Kept alive by your
Reluctance to let go.

Share our stories
Like you share hers
With unrehearsed
Adoration
And small smile secrecy
Those moments meant
For only you
And only she,
Smile like that with me.

Love me
Like you loved
And still love her
With that infinite
Reserve of softness
As light as touch to cheek
But boundless in meaning.

Want me
As needily as you want her back
With that
Grasping desperation
That would never
Let me leave
Or let me be
Without you.


But i am not her
The one you
Cant let go.
I am always
The she
That came after.
Lily Priest Dec 2020
Night weep the weary
words that he said
quietly to her heart
as she slept
Lily Priest May 2021
High were the hills
That will climbed
But
My love, 
how spectacular the view.
Lily Priest Nov 2020
When the storm abates
Not a single trace
Remains of its lashing
Upon the senses,
Or the dredged up drowned
Tatters of a conscience
That was peppered
By the relentless sting of doubt.

The calm peaks through the gloom
Into the unassuming eye
And hypnotises.
Wiped clear are thunderous
Clouds, all grey with self loathing,
Deprecating droves of icy
Words that circled tornado-like
In the torrential downpour of your world
As it crashed round your feet
Its smytherins the pieces
You used to open old wounds
And soothe the ache within.
Gone are those tell-tale tracks
Upon the arm, upon the heart
The route to all your evils.

Because the sun is out
And clear skies mark the mind
In shades of sweetest blue
All calm and cool in the aftermath
Where nothing is all that bad,
And you cant be sure
There ever was a storm.
Lily Priest Jul 2020
Weep for me willow
Loose and low
With aged tales
Of travellers
Tuned to the melodies
Of song birds
And sleepy streams
That sigh their way
Through the centuries.

Wave willow
With the winds of change
Root yourself
In soil as aged
As your dreams
Lily Priest Nov 2023
Her heart could heal
the heather,
Even in the colder weather's grip -
snapping the bony, brittle twigs
And sparkling sharply on abandoned leaves -
She could find her ease
On the downy carpet of the diseased,
Gather their lost limbs
Like a forgiveness-
That warm welcome of forget.
She could rest her head,
And bloom,
Bright blossom gazing up at the moon
More often than the sun,
Her fire blazing on -
A little hearth, among the heather
Warming roots in the
Colder months.
Lily Priest Jul 2020
When we wished
Wells rippled with the
Echo of their insistance
To be real.
When we dreamed
Days were seamless
Endless in their possibilities
Boundless in their magic.
Lily Priest Feb 2020
Workers boots are full of voices
Melodies and words
Never sung, never spoken
Never written
Just steel toed and ordinary.

Put them on
Tie a knot
Workers boots are heavy,
Heavy with ordinary.

Workers boots are full of dreams
Incredible things
They go by unknown,
Unlived and outgrown
Filed away for ordinary.

Put them on
Tie a knot
Workers boots are heavy,
Heavy with ordinary.

— The End —