Welcome to the twenty-third poem in my song-inspired series! As with a few of these poems now, I did end up writing around the topic of memory, and I think this week’s song (‘As The World Falls Down’ by David Bowie) did lead me towards that more pondering, ‘quiet’ tone, but I ended up having a bit of fun within that too, focusing on the idea of physical eyes. But anyway, I hope you enjoy this week’s poem!
Wherever You Are
The tone of this week’s poem and the tone of this week’s song might seem to be at odds with each other, but the idea for this poem came through really strongly while I was listening to the song (‘World War Now’ by Kreator) so I hope you enjoy this one despite the contrast. Letters seem to pop up a lot in my poetry (off the top of my head, Love Letter Penned By A Pining Princess comes to mind), often the handwritten sort–they just have that poetic feeling to them, I suppose!
Why’d You Have To Give Him A Name?
I think this is definitely one of the most fun poems I’ve written for this series so far – a little bizarre, too, but when the idea came into my head while listening to this week’s song (‘Freaks to the Front’ by Amyl and The Sniffers) it seemed like too much fun to pass up, so I hope you enjoy this slightly chaotic poem, featuring a rather lost and inexplicable dinosaur called Dave.
A Moment’s Show
I feel like I haven’t quite been able to have my usual focus on nature that often pops up in my writing recently, so I’m happy to report that this week’s poem veers directly into those cosy, comforting nature themes – with a splash of fairytale fantasy. This is the twentieth entry in my song-inspired poem series and it was inspired by ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair’ by Scott McKenzie. I hope you enjoy this one!
Living, Memory & Act
Interestingly, the nineteenth entry into my song-inspired poem series (this one!) was inspired both by ‘Lust For Life’ by Iggy Pop, which I’ve embedded below, and also another poem from this series. I’d consider this poem to be something of a ‘sister poem’ to Paper Memories, which was, in turn, inspired by ‘Mess’ by Real Friends. Both of them have memories and remembrance at the core, but I think they explore that theme in slightly different ways, while still being quite complementary to each other, especially towards the end of this one. In any case, I hope you enjoy this one!
Framings of Existence
This week’s poem marks the eighteenth entry in my series of song-inspired poems, and this one flits a little between the sci-fi and fantasy spheres, at least in my mind. Hopefully, you find it to be an interesting combination of some different elements and descriptions!
The Undead Youth Of Today
Welcome to the seventeenth entry in my series of song-inspired poems! I will admit, this one has a bit of a dual inspiration – I’ve had vampires on the brain recently (playing through Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines again, haha), but it was also very much inspired by this week’s song, ‘Party All the Time’ by Eddie Murphy as well, so I hope you enjoy this one!
A Hypothetical Expert
This week, I’ve got the sixteenth entry in my song-inspired series of poems ready for you to read, and this one takes a bit of a light-hearted look at the supernatural–specifically, the idea of there being ghosts haunting buses. Well, they do make some weird sounds sometimes, but anyway, this week’s poem was inspired by ‘Werewolves of London’ by Warren Zevon, and I hope you enjoy it!
Ghost Words Chasing Their Own Tails
Although my song-inspired poem series has been on hold for a few weeks (sorry – it was my birthday, and then I had a lot of beta reading/proofreading work to sort out afterwards!) I’ve got another poem in the series for you this week. This one is inspired by ‘Paint Me Red’ by Avatar, and takes a slightly more meta approach than some of the other poems in their inspiration, but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless!
Where Do You Go?
Unlike the last two weeks, this poem is star-free – but hopefully you’ll still enjoy it anyway! This one was inspired by ‘BCKYRD’ by Hot Mulligan, and, oddly, reminded me somewhat of the fantasy poem series I was doing – not in terms of the content, but more the tone that the speaker of those poems uses.
Oskar Leonard 