Hildetann

i love you where the waves cry out in vainand where my sisters comb their seaweed hair.here i love you: when i sing my siren songand you are hidden beneath the surf,your bones bleached white, your teeth pearls.i dispatch kisses to you likesunken ships, when the high starsare covered by clouds. my sisters' voices mount,keening, erupting. the harps in their handsdrip with blood, our mouths seethelike underwater volcanoes.no man tastes exactly like you.i love you still in the darkness of the wateras the gulls swoop overhead.my sisters sing for me, their dripping lips parted red,and the stars seem a little dimmer.a song falls deep into the sea...

i. sometimes when i wake up before the sun rises, when i’m all alone and it feels like i might be the only person in the worldi notice that my face is wetand i wonder if it’s because i’ve been swimming with you in my dreamsii. i remember you in the summer nights under the corsican stars and the warmth of your skin in the cold seawateri remember how the phosphorescence coated our bodies as we swam together,   the salty tang of the ocean and your fingers up my spine and us glowing like soft stars in the nighti remember how i wished it could last foreveriii. now i wonder if the tides and my tears were so different after all

i am no hydra. there is no poison-tipped spear, no angry torch to hold to my neck i may not raze your fields nor eat your livestock but i was born to destroy you.when i smile i want you to think not of wolves, but of girls pretty girls, with flirtatious red lips and teeth white as pearls not of monsters who lurk under grandmother's bed swallowing children for supper.i am no chimaera, no sphinx: no hero can vanquish me on winged pegasus i cannot breathe fire or deceive with words (it's all appearances, everyone knows that.)do not forget it was helen who launched a thousand ships, clytemnestra who slew agamemnon judith who beheaded holoferne...

I am a poet and I totally know it I carry a Moleskine just so I can show itI always try to use my rhyming dictionary Understanding my metaphors is playing Pictionary With someone who’s eyeless, who just cannot see I sometimes forget to count the syllables in my poetrySeriously, what’s the difference between metaphor and simile? I only write about first world problems which are killing meI always use phrases like “broken heart”, and I’m really writing about the singer in my favourite band (A band which was last popular in 2006) (I also throw some “indie” music into the mix) (It makes me feel more pretentious than I already am) (Someone told...