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Michael Tyldesley, ‘Ballad of the Siren Song’

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“Come closer and I will tell you a secret
To you, to you, only to you.
Come Closer.”

You’re perched sultry on a craggy cliff,
curvy on a windswept rock
with red dress clinging to your breasts:
you play that tune, that tune you play
it’s calling out to me.

And I’m sailing, roving, lost at sea,
bedraggled by the ocean spray
and changing course for you.

Because, that tune, that tune you play
it jolts me, hooks me, reels its prey:
from silent waves to violin,
from moonless numb to sun-kissed-skin
from topsail calm to snatching whip,
from steady course to daring trip.

I hear that tune, that tune you play
it takes me further, far away:
your spiral smile, your whirlpool lips,
they whisper songs to rolling ships.

That tune you play, with gravity
hypnotic moonstruck melody,
there’s no escape, the heavens swarm
electrostatic pulses form –

I’d love to be your thunderstorm,
whipping up the specks of you,
teasing you; perplexing you
not pleasing you; just vexing you
yet needing the effects of you,
a feeling that projects on you,
it’s squeezing me and sexing you.

And yet, that tune, that tune you play
it leads me on in some strange way –
I see beached skulls and broken hulls
shadows changing, screeching gulls,
till I’m marooned, a castaway,
a shipwreck in your taloned splay.

*****

Michael Tyldesley writes: “The poem was inspired by the trap of damaging relationships earlier in my life and the metaphor that sits behind the poem and continues to burn in me is the irresistible lure of hypomania. The poem structure was inspired by the freeform rhyming style of Jenni Doherty and the language of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. It’s been gathering dust in my drawer over the years and it’s quite an old poem. I wrote most of it at 26 and I’m now 42. It’s slightly raunchy and I suppose I didn’t want to be judged negatively due to that but it’s always been a very popular poem when I shared it.”

Michael Tyldesley works in British submarine design. At the time of writing this post he is in Australia, doing performance poetry at Melbourne’s Vibe Union. ‘Ballad of the Siren Song’ was published in this month’s Snakeskin.

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Susan McLean, ‘Morbid Interest’

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How unpleasant to meet Mr. Poe.
It gives a young lady a chill
when, just as she’s saying hello,
he asks if she’s lately been ill.

It was mid-afternoon, yet he seemed
to be tipsy or mildly sedated.
How oddly his mournful eyes gleamed
when he heard that we might be related.

He muttered some rhymes for my name,
saying nothing could be more inspiring
to a poet desirous of fame
than the sight of young beauties expiring.

Then he asked if I had a bad cough
or a semi-conversable crow.
I informed him of where to get off.
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Poe.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “In my teens, I was a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe‘s short stories and poetry. I loved his eerie subjects and crooning, incantatory lines. I memorized his poem ‘To Helen,’ and I parodied his iconic ‘The Raven.’ But in grad school, I read his essay ‘The Philosophy of Composition,’ in which he wrote that “the death . . . of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” Hmmm. At that moment, it occurred to me that all of those dead women of his stories and poems might be less an outpouring of personal grief and more a product of an agenda. Years later, when responding to a challenge from the British journal The Spectator to write a poem modeled on Edward Lear’s ‘How pleasant to know Mr. Lear‘ but about another author, I imagined how Poe might seem to a young woman being introduced to him.
This poem, which was originally published in Light Quarterly, was later reprinted in Per
Contra and in my second poetry book, The Whetstone Misses the Knife.”

Susan McLean has two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
https://www.pw.org/content/susan_mclean

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