OK, so here is the latest, and definitely the most nauseating, of my band of crime fighters. It's not his fault, I think he's just a bit naive...


Is it a Bird, or is it a plane?
Or is that just a cliché, rolled out again and again?

Neither, it’s something a lot more inappropriate,
It’s Boy in Spandex,
his age
indeterminate. 


Seventeen or eighteen? Perhaps even younger.
it’s so hard to tell these days.
Jesus Christ, it looks like a plunger. 

A strapping young turk,
helping victims of crime,
at home or at work,
if he gets there on time.   

Bringing to bear all his abilities
to mainly white guys in their fifties and sixties.

In May 2014, prepare to feel slightly uncomfortable and question your own sexuality with:

Boy In Spandex!

Next in line, please: Drone.

I know, right - I've never been so prolific. Whatever - here is an introduction to the latest member of my superhero fraternity - Air Freshener, who will soon be the subject of his own poetically epic conflagration of action scenes and 'Nikolai Gogol' levels of satire.

Air Freshener

A crime scene in a dirty alley.
Suddenly smells like Lily of the Valley.

A corpse, four days dead.
A waft of cinnamon and gingerbread.

A motorway pile up,
many injured.
An essence of lavender lingered.

A fart released in a crowded lift.
Hot chocolate and strawberries sniffed.

Whatever dire danger for your nasal passage,
He’s gonna save you from permanent damage.

Coming 2014,
Which smells like lime, and tangerine.



Coming soon:
Boy In Spandex

Hold your breaths. 

Following up on my promise to release a trailer poem for each of my 'main event' Superhero poems, here is the next one. I know there has been a frenzy of anticipation about the release of the trailer for 'Balance Man', even more so than for the new Marvel 'Guardians of The Galaxy' film, and so I am slightly upset that they have tried to cash in on my popularity to generate more buzz for their meagre effort, but there you go.

So without further ado, here is the trailer poem for 'Balance Man':

In a world,
Where crime rules the streets.

There’s only one law
obeyed without furore

Or fuss.

It’s
‘No standing on the top deck of the bus’.

Unless you happen to be:

Balance Man.
He’s not like us.

Coming Fall 2014. 
Or ‘Autumn’, if you live in the UK.  



Next up:
'Boy In Spandex'

Try and contain yourselves.

I have decided to create my own band of magnificent superheroes.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but in the last ten years or so there has definitely been an uptick in the number of superhero films being made. Could be just me. 

The most recent one I watched was Man of Steel, which essentially was a load of cobblers about Kryptonian dragons that you can fly and two almost invincible people hitting each other and causing untold millions worth of property damage.  And Kevin Costner, who to be fair I would watch in practically anything.

And so, as per the first line of this post, which I moved up there solely because it’s the one that comes up on Facebook, and which would have fitted much better right here, I have decided to create my very own band of indomitable superheroes.

Unlike The Avengers, the Justice League, the Guardians of the Galaxy, 7 Against Chaos, the Minutemen, Teen Titans, The Boys, etc. - wow there are lot of superhero team-ups out there - my heroes will almost certainly leave the world in the exact same shape, if not worse, than when they found it.

As a team, they are completely inept. Individually they are utterly incapable of operating on an even basic social level.  My superheroes are uniquely British, tackling the sort of urban crime (and in one case, inadvertently causing it) that blights our fair isle every day.

This is ground well covered by Mystery Men, Super, Kick-Ass, Defendor and so on - so what will make my band of indomitables really stand out?

Well, since you ask - I’m going to write them as a series of terrible short poems.

Individually, they are Balance Man, Air Freshener, The Agreer, Drone and Boy in Spandex and will each have their own poem, followed by an ‘Assemblage’ poem. Collectively, they will be called ‘The Throng’.  This will be my Phase 1.

I am going to write a ‘trailer’ poem for each, bigging them up months before I release the final poem to an almost certain critical drubbing and a global box office in excess of USD 500,000,000.

Phase 2 will be almost identical, but with each hero ‘coloned’ with a strange, meaningless subtitle.  ‘Balance Man: Spirit of the Cimarron' or ‘Boy In Spandex: The Cradle of Life’.  You get the idea. Or rather, the rehashed idea.

So over the next week prepare yourselves as I will be releasing the short trailers for the actual poems, due Summer 2014, unless radical rewrites are called for after disastrous test readings.

To whet your appetite, here is the first trailer, for ‘The Agreer’:


Trailer #1 for The Agreer.

In 2014,
He’s finally here.

Believe every rumour
On the blogosphere.

Complain all you like about deviation from the comic mythology
Because you won’t hear 
any argument from…

The Agreer.


Next trailer:
Balance Man.

Bet you can't wait.