Sirens in Suburbia

Currently notes more than anything but it will be a poem one day...

12) The Minotaur

Men have more bones than meat,
I do not understand why father
sends me them. I want an ox
but I have no mouth to voice my thoughts
and it sounds like roar!
I scream myself hoarse crying for horse
but of course they only send me men.

Sometimes I get lost in my own home,
the passages fold back and forth
like an accordian.
I do not know where to go
or where I'm coming from.

Let's play a game, you can be the minotaur
and I'll be the man.

13) Hull's Harpies

There are three of them
hopping in the doorway,
hair like static. Legs
as gangly as an ostrich,
ending in taloned feet.

They are harpies,
men-snatchers, body catchers
scritching and scratching,
cawing and squawking.

Buy me a drink. Buy me a house
and a car and the moon,
Flitting ahead of the pecking line.

Panda eyes, lips like the phoenix
tasting of fire, singing of ash
and the grave. Your grave
when the money is dry
and sucked from your flesh like the life-

life snatchers. Food grabbers,
after our bread and our men
smothered in a feathery kiss.

14) Persephone

The engine humming, she climbs in his car,
feet kicked up on the dashboard,
bare and green.
She teases a lollypop between her teeth
and a flower banded wrist wilts
in her lap.
Well? You said you'd take me home again.

He remembers the way she was,
brassy and bright like copper curls
But the basement is dark
and he has forgotten the shade of her hair.
I want to go home
is the only track on the tape,
fading out like photographs.

Uh, "Hull Harpies" is a hilarious phrase and I love it to pieces.

"he remembers the way she was" Um. Take this. And make it a series of poems. If you don't, i will. Or maybe I will, anyway. Because yes. I like it. Lots. <3

I really have to get around to finishing some of these...

15) The Theft of Mjölnir*

Forged in the summer of a winter storm,
the death maker made to serve the gods
was from the efforts of a dwarf hand born
and shaped and shined to turn a brother's odds.

That hammer strong and praised by Thor himself
and named Mjölnir* crusher of the sky
that then was taken, stolen in the night
and up woke Thor with thunder and a cry!

"Loki, you fiend where have you hid my bite?"
And Thor shook Loki harder than the wind.
"Not me, I swear, it wasn't but- alright!
If you will let me go I'll help you find-"

"My arm, my hand my wielder of the light."
And Loki groaned and turned to walk ahead
for Gods are all long-winded in delight
and Thor** would not leave any word unsaid.

"Freyja lend me your white and feathered coat!"
Loki had made a plan to put things right
(for of the two he had most right to gloat
of brains or any intelligent life).

So Loki donned the cloak and in a blink
became a raven, swift and snowy white


*Me-ole-near
**Thor most long winded of the Gods due to his lack of vocabulary and therefore repetition of the same sentences.

Four poem behind, I really need to catch up. Good thing it's almost the weekend!

16) A Quest You Almost Completed

Remember hiding under your bed
and finding yourself;
the yoyo that skirted
out of your hand;
a pound the tooth fairy left
after you stopped believing.

Remember here where you left your name
and lost it;
the unfamiliar curves of a vowel
you no longer sound;
the letters large and long
in the headlight of your torch.

Remember closing your eyes
to open them;
the landscapes of dreams
faded like photographs;
a quest you almost completed
before you forgot how to play the hero.

Remember this is a game
and not reality;
four... three... two... one;
found you.

This first is fragments more than anything.

17) Where the Phoenix Lays her Eggs

Out of the ashes did a phoenix rise
while I was mooching through the underground.
She spoke to me and tried to criticise
my meth green vomit and the spliff I found.

While I was mooching through the underground
I came across a train that was alight.
My meth green vomit and the spliff I found



While I was mooching through the underground
and buzzing from a spliff I found before
I came across a phoenix nest, the sound
of fire crackling like a roar

And buzzing from a spliff I found before,
I heard her talk and say to me come close
the fire crackling like a roar

18) Follow the Signs/ Sign on the Line/ Pisces

I’ve always followed the signs
and they’ve never led me wrong,
though the sign-post is often obscured
by scribbles and signs of teenage vandals.
I was assigned a placement at the office
after signing on and there I signed forms, answered phones
and told my boss she looked like the demon headmaster
(at which point I was forced to resign).
I thought I might re-train in maths
and have been practising my sine tan cos
but my sinuses are all blocked up
from trudging to the job centre in the rain.
So I’m having a day off.
The baby stuck my pencil up her nose,
I think this is a sign that she’s going to be
a rocket scientist. Or so mother believes anyway
but her sign is the fish so I doubt it.


Annnnd a collaboration with the wonderful Penguin, Cadi and Lavvie! <333 1/4 owned by each of us, created using the poetree word association game.

19) I'll Clean Your Rubber Ducky

I was always ugly but never mean -
my eyes were masked mirrors, twinkling
ghoulish monsters.
The rubber duck leapt into the laundry -
he wasn’t pushed.

I was playing sandbox and there were bones
clanking lazily next to my ears, grappling at my skull.
I was five. I dove under the bathwater - I saw a sea,
waves of blue sweep up the sand
an echo of cat’s bones
and space; the sea.

Where blue waves always lie concave
(and Zorro takes the top)
I’ll clean your rubber ducky
but he escapes my soapy clutches
and when I take a breath, there is nothing left but foam and airy bubbles.

If you got in a fight with a bar of soap; you’d lose.


Finally, a Pengu and Heather co-write:

20) First Meeting

I have few words to give today,
they fizzle on my tongue like acid
pops or ricicles, the sudden crackle-snap
of knowing what to say
but not how.

There is a silence captured
between my lips and my teeth
poised in the event of madness
the cold reckoning of sense still settled
in the back of my throat.

21) All for one and one for all

There is only one Zorro
which I why I’ve always favoured
the three musketeers.
Except that there were four of us,
like in the book,
only D’Artagnan was fat
and not much good with a pen,
Athos was so far in the closet
that he found Narnia up
Aramis’ trouser leg
and Porthos killed a man
last week.

(For Lavvie, Cadi, Pengi and Blue)

22) Second-Hand Smoke

Down the river bodies float
like life jackets, faces ballooned
and red
like puffer fish
sizing up the competition.
I’m more dead than you.
I’m better at the blues than you’ll ever be.

Roll up, roll up to the riverside
where bodies are bridges
and burning in their oil spill husks
like cigarettes, smoking themselves
at either end
like finger-traps, compressing
expanding and getting nowhere
in the dead-heat,
dead like dandelions plucked
from the ground and used
to tell the time.
How long, how long do we have?
Infinity.

The things that go through my head at 1:00AM...

23) Fruit Salad

mangos bananas
orange cantaloup

coconut date nonda plum
blackberry beet apple
snow berry avocado
tangerine

Elderberry Blackberry lemon


man gos bananas
orange cantaloup

coco nut date non daplum
blackberry beet apple
s'now berry av o ca do
tan ger ine

Elderberry Blackberry le mon


man goes bananas
arranges cantaloupe

cocoa nut dates nom de plume*
"Blackberry beats apple"
"S'no berry. 'av a car though?"
and yer in.

Elderberry. Blackberry. Le monde**.


*French for pseudonym
**The people/ the kingdom. Also the name of a French newspaper.

24) To Construct A Lyric

I am told ‘E’ is for casual participants so
I will abandon it from my vocabulary.
How hard can it ‘b’ to withdraw
my conditions of loyalty
from such a body as it.
I doubt antonym consonants
will miss it much
or supply thought on my point.
Dumb (not stupid)

My vocabulary is bankrupt,
I own words but no apparatus
with which to apply

I think I will omit 'z' in forthcoming productions.


I know, mostly just dislocated thoughts and word play. Six more and then it's time to edit.

To be played with more... (and credit to Charlie, Cadi and Demsi who all own one quarter)

25) Not all Shades of Black are Hufflepuff

At sunrise before it’s warm
Horses prance with hats on
while the dragons slumber and dream of Ascot.

Red Bull gives you wings. Tell that to Icarus
In Heaven. All the mice have wings and carry holy cheese,
Except in the dungeon with Detective Mittens
fresh from the freezer.
(Yellow flames, cooler than you might expect
in the shade of the greatest Hufflepuff that ever lived.)

Not all shades of black are Hufflepuff
We rolled down the hill in bodybags
Red Bull gave me wings - for a while
but the tower guard rained down hellfire on me
and the dragons burned up Ascot.

I’ll eat my horse if the hat doesn’t win
And race with dragons at Ascot.

26) In my Town

There are no bodies in my town,
they burn and crisp like upside down
cake, sausage rolls when they go wrong,
they’re fat or thin, they’re short or long
their names are Smith or Black or Brown

the colours spitting round and round
like loaves of bread turn golden brown.
Smells of decay drift in, so long
to bodies in my town.

There are no bodies in my ground,
no need to pass the tissues round.
The torch to you, now choose a song
and light the pyre where they belong,
for all the people here are bound
to bodies in my town.

27) Mannequin

My faded denim blues are mute
And muted like orange suits
Nibbled by hungry prisoners;
Niebla. Lo siento madre.
Everyone looks the same,
Queues of shop window mannequins but
Under the skin
I am different. The judges arbitrate like lunch time ladies,
No comprende. There are no understandings.