Cave Dwellers

Give it all to me:
white light, intense fear of whatever slumbers in the dark
Give me the wet cavern of your flooded mouth
opening always to places much bigger, darker, wetter, and less tame

We are inhabited by unseen
forms of life that squeal and squirm and leave
trails of slime behind them as they move
Here, hidden deep within the bowels of earth

Moan for me, your satisfaction
lifting like bats to fly — startled,
majestic, blind — deep into the soul
of a hollow, abandoned poet

Cum my love, chalky minerals drip
from tips of stalactite syllables
Crystallizing here, in the echo
and footprints and tufts of fur — our hibernation

Plunging me into the near future
I am waking up; give it to me
Give it all to me: hunger, claws, teeth
Meeting me here will be the only truth you will ever need

Not every lost has a found

Lytton Bell has published five books: A Path before Winter (1998), The Book of Chaps (2002), Nectar (2011) Poetica Erotica, Volume One (2012) and Body Image (2013), won seven poetry contests and has been the featured reader at many California literary venues.  Her work has appeared in over three dozen publications. She is a founding member of the poetry performance troupe Poetica Erotica. As a teenager, Lytton won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts, where she studied with Deb Burnham of the American Poetry Review and the late Len Roberts, author of The Silent Singer.  Lytton graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College. She is a civil servant by day.