Wordy workshops and ichthyology

From yesterday's Archimedes Screw workshop on using social media (etc) to create poetry. One exercise was to find a tweet or facebook status update, then use it as a repeated refrain. BTW, Sphoeroides is a genus of pufferfish...

Homo sphoeroides

Platy teeth crush shells and carapaces,
tetrodotoxin awaits unwary fugu-diners
with diaphragm paralysis –
bite me, I’ll bite your lungs,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

Hanging boxily in warm midwater,
unhydrodynamic, spines flat for now –
approach with caution,
spikes may rise like the sun,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

Slow but manoeuverable, comfort-built,
achieving surprising short-distance speed,
OK – an acquired taste maybe,
floating relaxedly rotund,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

I sit at depth, playing in the sand,
making submarine crop-circles,
supposedly enticing new mates,
but spawning’s done,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.