Tag Archives: Herakles

Day 10 – The Ferryman + buggy love buzz

Played with a couple of Charon-related poems today. Big O pleading with Charon (& then from C’s POV). The one I found myself finishing was Dialogue poem as he connives a way to cross the Styx.

This excerpt is the last lines of the poem.

The Ferryman

You will not take my coin?

You cannot cross, coin or no.
This is not a place for mortals.

Herakles crossed.

Herakles is a brute. He beat me up.
I know you’re not like that.

No, I’m not.
I start to sing.

I’m even more brutal.

Day 10 – TIL about cicadaian mating calls

buggy love buzz

over-aroused (if a trifle confused)
female cicadas sometimes mistake
roaring power tools for mating 
calls, occasionally even 
swarming sweaty men 
machoistically mowing lawns

— oh well, there’s one thing 
i’ll be safe from at least

Day 7 – The Tartatus List + a lollipop lesson

Today’s prompt was to write a poem that plays with the idea of a list. The example poem was a list that isn’t – it never gets beyond the first entry. I somehow mangled this with a challenge from a couple of days earlier write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.

Just for today (given I don’t think it fits tonally with the other poems I’ve written) I’m including the whole thing.

*****

The Tartatus List


trying to prepare 
for my assault on Hades
torches to scare away 
   the damned darkness ;
my life-restoring lute ; 
an obol for the ferryman ;
three bones for the guard dog
   in case Herakles’ trick
   doesn’t work a second time


— but it’s impossible 
                                  to focus
given all i hear 
                       is my mother’s 
         voice
carping on at me to 
                              pack 
          my cape cos
she’s certain            it will be
COLD!  down.  there…
   &  she knows   what
i’m like … when the
weather
       turns 
                                   chilly

Day 7 – TIL something strange about a lollipop

sweet stuck on a stick

Chupa Chups are Spanish
(the name means something 
close to Sucky Sucks) 
& were designed so they didn’t 
melt in Iberian summer heat. 
They originally cost 
a single peseta each. 

But none of these
are the poetic factoid
that blew me away.
Their logo of brand 
name inside brightly 
coloured daisy
was designed by
— Salvador freaking Dalí 


Aside: he also once sent Harpo 
Marx a supremely surreal Xmas gift 
— a harp with barbed-wire strings