Best Lissom Poems
I’m no longer lissom
And I'm no longer thin
I can see the growth
Of my second chin
But i check the mirror every morning
Hoping to avoid the despair
Of discovering my head has started
Growing through my hair.
Written: May 29, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Brian Strand
2nd place contest winner
***********************
Renaissance style of Botticelli’s Flora and the Zephyr painting?
I weave my garland, fragrant, fair,
around your lissom, radiant frame;
my whisper joins your answering air,
a hymeneal wind, aflame.
I wrap you in the zephyr’s breath,
that stirs your bewitching grace;
my swelling tide, your supple depth,
rise radiantly, leaving no trace.
You swell with gratitude and song,
to my opulent lullaby;
your crimson vestal, festal strong,
my flowered liberty.
The bloom I lift, it quivers light,
its pulse a tremor, soft and shy;
silken whispers surrender bright,
to spring’s eternal sigh.
Enchanted echoes link and flow,
no gate in holy clasp withstood;
from the seeds of vow florets grow,
never deny your silken hood.
Your splendor sparkles, Flora, bold,
our forces paired in flame;
woven warmth the west wind holds,
and breathes your blooming name.
Coupling offers both spring and wind,
Profoundly linked, empathetic, and divine.
Fates forge ties with the affluent and kind,
Flora and Zephyr an intertwined sign.
I know you would come to my poem
Like a tree, being fully clothed
With spades and measuring lines
To dig for roots in syllables of mine
Unearthing the buttress to shine.
Making a mess of the ground is how
You prove the tree where beauty grows.
I have watched you with it a full hour
O what a regular baby you are
Banging for its entrails like a toy
Shredding it limb by limb and making
Sure it never bear fruit differently
After you are done. I am enjoying
You enjoying the violence done to it.
Some came here tenderly before
To pick its bloosoms as gifts for love
Or fragrance the tomb of death
Where petals wither stemless and poor
Dissected from the discourse of my life.
You must never pick a flower
Let it die upon the stem, and seed from
There, the earth with poems again.
I come to you like a lover, a bringer
And not a taker of others joy
Sniffing your body on its stem
Lissom on the cool curves of wind
I come to you naked to feel
Your soft kisses of dew on my skin
To let your balmy aroma heal
My sensibilities broken like a kite.
We are two poems, O let us speak
Aloud the taste of words upon the tongue
And feel the magic of meaning swell
Beyond the verbs of what we seek.
Let us expose our breast of colors
Upon the milk of thirsty eyes
Let us give the old traditionalist shivers
And fondle only with our surprise.
I knew him before they shackled him to chair
I contend, none knew him better than I
He's tall, charming, quite an elegant air
An athlete lissom, a kite in the sky
What happened you asked, what so deformed him
Crippled his independence, left him ill?
The doctors said osteo-arthritis
But a disease is never its own cause.
I will tell you how he told me, listen
There is a madness meaningless in us.
The happy night I went to sleep, we lay
Like children in each other's arms, snoring
The cockcrow and bird call woke the new day
Fresh air and old love, and life adoring
Shall we breakfast with family today
Or to some lake, picnic paired, wander free
A vehement no, a tone for the fray
I rose for the bathroom, shocked at lost glee.
I would return in silence, let her speak
The calf gets more milk just by being meek.
One step from hallway and into the room
I felt a sharp pain announcing my doom
A shadow from behind a door, a groan
My loins exploded in my head, nothing more.
How long was it, I cannot tell, a moan
Of pity, a kinder hand to restore
Consciousness again. The back crumbled then
Degenerated more and more with time
Things smelling salts and linament can't mend
He functioned well in intervening years
Running, swimming, the ardent athlete
A few interruptions, grimace and tears
For wasted life and love and great defeat
You do not start from bottom starting new
Again, but from a deeper hole of doubt
A deeper fear. It crippled him he knew
Not how, nor how deep the scar remain. Out
Now, you must go; leave the great spectacle
The man who prayed without miracle
And yet still believe this end serves some cause
Some greater purpose than himself. I pause
To reflect, then limped away, the sick loin
Begins in the old sickness of the mind.
What could he not have done, the great lovers
He denied for honor, the high esteem
Of wealth and fickle praise, but love covers
More than faults in the mangling of the dream.
The scholar, the poet, the statesman too
Wears shackle invisible on the heart.
Love measures the height of what we may do
Yet men go all the way in, not in part.
See your great spectacle bound to a chair,
Crippled, defeated ... perhaps, something there
Strangely smiling, beyond the eyes of fear
He's tall, charming, quite an elegant air.
He did not feel the hot summer heat,
For at night the boat was his retreat.
A lissom breeze gave him a great treat.
Smell, the fresh air was fragrant and sweet.
His lass slept quietly at her seat.
Then the sun will rise and both will greet.
Quickly got up and their lips did meet.
Their breakfast prepared so they did eat.
The large boat kept steady, quite a feat.
But time was up, they made a retreat
To the port, a manoeuvre complete.
There the perfect berthing place so neat.
Their big boat so large was like a suite,
It was air-conditioned, they slept sweet.
The bright-eyes breathless girl barefoot across fields,
Fading sun in her eyes and her straw hat clasped
With one hand, a sculpture of flawless definition,
Supple animation, spellbound as summer collapsed.
Grey skies spilled chains of rain that melted her dress,
Patterned with daisies until against her lissom figure
Hugged with moisture, a fabric of growing transparency,
She splashed on sodden ground with youthful vigour.
She laughed at nature’s soaking of her golden tresses,
And with balletic grace, her mind absolved of all care
Hurtled gasping through the barn door and fell upon
New mown hay, bright-eyed breathless and laughing there.
Do you remember yesteryear,
with memories so fresh and clear?
That little note, the billet-doux,
for fleeting chance to bill and coo;
a partner free and debonair,
who shared your nights - without a care?
A brunette here, a Greek au pair,
the Nordic Queen with tresses fair,
on picnics, with the weather clear,
al fresco wine and rustic fare;
in dappled den or shady lair,
that very sweet discreet affair?
I’m sure that you remember Clare,
of lissom limb and tousled hair;
a tummy tanned, a torso bare,
provoking all to stop and stare?
Do I remember yesteryear?
Oh no, you see, I wasn’t there!
~
For Frank's Competition.
the lissom sea lily a testament at your death
feathered petals left in memory
but are you dead, Neptune?
I am no longer reminded of
the spotted watery wedding veil along the edge
it has now become a frozen blue veil
around a beach ball
hung or strung
in the black nowhere space
who threw you, brother of Jupiter and Pluto?
is there a rebound from the toss?
is there another dolphin to find again Salacia in the deep
to see the foaming equine ride
to find the white pin-spot veil of your jouissance
fringed again on the sands
but what dolphin can fly so high
no flutter or stutter or flop
but a high forced flipping
wings instead this time
Pegasus, (mindful of your exalted bloodlines)*
your duty
*Pegasus born from Neptune (Poseidon)and the Gorgon Medusa
A seed lays on the ground
by and by it sprouts
clawing into the soil
digging in deep its tap root
energetically spreading its roots
from its husk a stalk emerges
growing fast it reaches up
harvesting the sun and rain
in stature it climbs skywards
jaunty petals blow in the breeze
kicking out more stems it flourishes
lissom blooms begin to sprout
magnificently they turn to flowers
nurtured by the rich soil
opening they dazzle with colour
quaintly, shyly showing their faces
radiantly reaching for sunlight
soon all too soon they will fade
turning brown as they dry
until the pods open and spread seeds anew which
venture forth to form next years flowers
wise nature sowing her harvest of
xeranthemum flowers that keep their colour
zany in vases retaining their shape for years
"Here Runneth the Path of Fairy Feet"
by Rachel Heffington
Where childhood fancy and twilight meet
Here runneth the path of fairy-feet;
On shadowed road and misty bend
Here coldsome facts of "real life" end,
And the simplest thing on earth would be
To find a dryad 'neath her tree.
She'd comb her locks like shimm'ring ferns
In that hour where the daylight turns.
And you'd never stop to blink your eyes
and say, (Because you're oh, so wise)
"Dryads aren't real--they're quite a myth"
If once you'd been in comp'ny with
A creature like her--lissom fair
With willowy limbs and leafy hair.
Where childhood fancy and twilight meet
Here runneth the path of fairy-feet.
In dusking woods at evenlong
You'll chance to hear an Elven song.
Like beads of dew on honeyed string
The notes, elusive, dip and sing.
And lamps we now call fire-flies
Can one more dazzle in our eyes.
Then we shall learn, as children do,
the things we thought we surely knew.
Fair beings that we'd long forgot
May weave with us a dreamy knot
Content, within this half-light time
To feed us with their storied rhyme.
Where childhood fancy and twilight meet
Here runneth the path of fairy feet
And those who spent the day in bed
Now tip-toe with their soft wings spread
And dance within the brilliant sheen
of moonlight and the summer's green.
The grown-up cares of life must fade
When pondered in that purple glade
Once more we change to half a child
Perfumed with scent of roses wild
And honeysuckle like a crown
That we'd been used to crushing down
Until twilight and fancy met
To tread with us this minuet.
the lissom sea lily a testament at your death
feathered petals left in memory
but are you dead, Neptune?
I am no longer reminded of
the pin-spotted watery wedding veil
along the edge
it has now become a frozen blue veil
around a beach ball
hung or strung
in the black nowhere space
can you bounce back from the throw, Neptune?
who threw you, brother of Jupiter and Pluto?
is there another dolphin to find again Salacia in the deep
to see the foaming equine ride
to find the white pin-spot veil of your jouissance
fringed again on the sands
but what dolphin can fly so high
no flutter or stutter or flop
but a high-forced flipping
(have we built one so tough?
Pegasus, your wings and strength ... aaaah
you psychopomp, you Charon,
be mindful of your distinguished exalted bloodlines)
will you come so far?
As of a chrysalis
the beneficent breakage
exfoliation
emergence from
isolationism
into a mosaic of group dynamics
a centring of regard
a new diagnosis
a lissom beginning
departing an empty goblet
full of peppermint concern
sbaquie 2000
I have a favourite type of girl,
But it’s not like I am facile
Nothing wrong with preferences
I just like my girls to be gracile
Sinuous and willowy
I don’t look for a pretty face
But they should have about them
Some elegance and grace
It takes the like of Nimble Kimble
Or the lovely Lithe Blythe
The aptly named Bendy Wendy
Or Lissom Blossom to feast my eyes
Before that day splashed everything with light
I played in solitude with cuddly clouds
And watched them form changing figures, blight
The sky or bring the sobbing sludge of rain,
Or etch your portrait
where the spindly sparrow fly
looping your beauty with the breathless sun
We watched them
fall like shattered diamonds
once from a window battered
with fragile
dreams
of tomorrow
And you said they were our prancing children in the water
Little Shangos you called them, and we kissed
In passion, filling love with lissom lilacs of laughter
For life was an eternal summer then
Winter was barred from where it had never been
Barren landscape scarred by the lecher, not the sun
Shrivelling petals and prayers, lynching the hearts like trees
Barren
and scraggy
shredding the eye
Brambled
fingers clutching sky
Tolling voids of air like a crucifix
Self important because of the importunate
Castling citadels of calamity against the hearts fear
The wind exploits the calamity of leaves
Only a shell of sultry shadows was left
And I bereft
Tented my exultation
To wait your coming again
And the annihilation of pain.
Clouds are drifters of the sky, I am enfolded in cerulean blue
Dark indigo of heart on the promenade
Children feet splashing the frazzled dry of sand
I shriek like a gull slant against the wind
Where the splashed sand grits the eye
Summer seas are all of winter's tears rinsed in light
Itinerant birds frolic here: innocence excited emits delight,
For lovers are children
Too trusting uncarefully
Undermarcated wrong or right
As summer splash them like sprays
Glinting the eye Where the starving eagle plays'
I slant away to reminisce alone.
Watch as lissom snowflakes rappel the air,
From afar alike yet never the same,
On sojourns quiet or with much fanfare,
A passage lonesome or lit with love’s flame.
Lasting place ‘tween clouds and plains none can claim,
From the sky they came of low or high birth,
In a heartbeat to melt into the earth.