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Suburban Legend Sestina
Four doors down from your old house
there were two murders I don't think it was cruel and unusual it was just a husband and wife It didn't make it into the paper it was just considered local knowledge
Before I got married yes I had carnal knowledge
I wasn't used to living in just one house and I never cared for reading the paper Someone dies. Someone murders I was surprised when I became a wife Everyone said my dress was unusual
I noticed you because you too were unusual
You seemed so controlled and had good general knowledge ‘Name Napoleon's first wife’ You wiped the floor at that quiz and it was a full house All my answers were wrong. ‘Crows fly in murders’ (That's the answer you snuck me on that tissue paper)
So I wrote you a love-note on the same piece of paper
I watched your eyebrows crunch at my words, so unusual We both loved mysteries, Orient Express murders Over time I watched my version of knowledge get confined to this apricot house and all my poems became about the unsung hero, free the wife!
I was sensitive. Your friends knew you had an emotional wife
On the ground I lay down that newsprint paper I gave up cleaning the house It says pine on the bottle but it sure smelt unusual I read the fine print because power is knowledge Bored eyes cut through grease and best believe my stare murders
But to be the killing kind, the type that actually murders?
You know, that man who plotted against his wife? To live with that urge, even that knowledge So I did the ‘what killer are you’ quiz in the paper I got Manson, outlandish and unusual But we love each other, it's just this house
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