English Poems From Wylde Cattie Poem by Sheena Blackhall

At the Photographer's
Roll up, roll up an watch the birdie!
Queen Victoria, Munshi, Tsar
Weir yer kilt, yer braws, yer gee-gaws
John Milne will makk ye luik a star!

Circus, cricketers an curlers
Princes, shepherds, counts and mair
Stalkers, fishers, tableaux vivants
Cyclists, picnics en plein air

Roll up, roll up an watch the birdie
Click! A flash! Yer famous noo!
Frae Abyne tae cauld Braemar
Snappin fowk an bonnie view

Roll up, roll up an watch the birdie!
Queen Victoria, Munshi, Tsar
Weir yer kilt, yer braws, yer gee-gaws
John Milne will makk ye luik a star!


In the Pool (2)
Families bob like seals
Heads breaking through blue water
In a glitter of liquid scales

Surfaces mirror each other
In snake-like ripples

Gravity's defied
Legs tread light as astronauts
Bouncing over the moon

60% of man is made of water
Skin is the boundary line
That stops us dissolving into the pool's embrace

So easy to drown
In the slipway of sky blue waves
Into the welcoming lullaby of death


For Clare
For a life half -lived, remember
Take a break in your busy day
In the month of cold November
Death cruelly stole her away

She was loved as a mother and daughter
She could charm the birds from the trees
And many who met her loved her
Her dearest wish was to please

She was pretty and full of laughter
Was kind to the old and ill
She will never know age or its burdens
At rest now, calm and still

From the great to the least of the land
Death knocks on everyone's door
And grief is the price for loving
For Clare, who has gone before


Chutzpah
I admire the chutzpah of the Callanish stones
5,000 years old, grandfathers of Stonehenge
Breasting the gales and storms of Lewis
Down punishing ages

Men say they are petrified giants
Druids who refused to convert to Chrisianity

On Midsummer morning, it is told
That a Shining One walks amongst them
Heralded by the mellow call of the cuckoo

Mapping the Moon
With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy? (Oscar Wilde)
The Sea of fecundity
The Sea of serenity
The Sea of cleverness
The Sea of crises
The Sea of showers
The Sea of islands
The Sea of moisture
The Sea of nectar
The Sea of the edge
The Sea of knowledge
The Sea of vapours
The Sea of clouds
The serpent sea
The sea of tranquility
The sea of cold
The sea of waves

Mapping the Moon
Do not swear by the moon, for she changeth constantly (W. Shakespeare)
The lake of goodness
The lake of happiness
The lake of softness
The lake of forgetfulness
The lake of solitude
The lake of hatred
The lake of fear
The lake of winter
The lake of joy
The lake of sorrow
The lake of excellence
The lake of luxury
The lake of death
The ocean of storms

Mapping the Moon
There are nights when the wolves are silent & only the moon howls (George Carlin)
The marsh of epidemics
The marsh of decay
The marsh of sleep

Mapping the Moon
The moon stays beautiful with its craters. So why are you afraid of your scars? (Zubair Ahsan)
The bay of roughness
The bay of success
The bay of rainbows
The bay of harmony
The bay of honour
The bay of dew
The bay of trust

Three things cannot be long hidden, the sun, the moon, and the truth (Buddha)

The Nettle (Urtica dioica)
The common nettle is a vicious stinger
A global horror. It's nobody's best friend
Its hairs can act like hypodermic needles
Causes contact dermatitis. Guaranteed to offend.
Scotsmen use the dock leaf to ease that pain
(A leaf in use to clean the nether end)

The nettle's used in medicine
For food, soup, textiles, tea,
It likes to grow in graveyards, sinisterly

It's three to seven feet high, that dreadful species
Its presence is found where humans have left their waste
Soil watered by urine, or fertilized by faeces

Caterpillars feast on its leaves
The larvae of butterflies and moths
The larvae of the ghost moth feed on its roots
It spreads like wildfire, it's an old slyboots

It can survive fire, is well-nigh indestructible
With uses multiple, an irascible warrior
Plucked before sunrise, good for feeding cattle

Cook it- it tastes like spinach
Soaking it in water removes the sting
In Cornish Yarg, nettles are used in cheesemaking
It flavours many varieties of Gouda
Whilst in Bosnia nettles make Borek pastry

On health retreats in Britain it's boiled as soup
Or nettles stewed to make an alcoholic drink
Its beer will make you want to loop the loop

It's a 10th century Nine Herbal pagan charm
To keep you healthy, calm and free from harm

Ill-doers were flogged with nettles, a cruel chastisement
Sufferers from rheumatics used the plants for easement

Nettle fibre yarn is used in textiles,
(Nettle stems are similar to linen)
They have made clothes for over 3,000 years
German soldiers in WW1 wore nettle uniforms

Recently companies in Austria, Germany, Italy,
Have started to turn out commercial nettle cloth
It's a liminal gatekeeper plant, famed in antiquity

Nettles produce yellow dye from their roots,
Herb with the saw toothed leaf
To haemorroids it s juice brings quick relief

If fed to laying hens, turns the yolk bright gold
Consumers love yolks coloured like marigold
Milarepa, the Tibetan ascetic and saint,
Survived decades of meditation, solitaary
Seated beneath a tree, eating nothing but nettles
His hair and skin turned green. He lived to the age of 83.

The Poetry Book Haiku
In the poetry book
Thoughts, pressed like Victorian flowers
They wait for their page to turn.


A Walk with my Dead Father
Today I walked with my dead father
Like Jesus striding on the waves
Knowing I would not sink.
He was always my rock in a sand storm

He was always hungry for knowledge
The flaming torch he handed on to me

We never left a walk without an image
Bearing home heather moors
Bounding hares
The moving mountain mosaic
Of grazing deer

He opened the doors of the world
Let it speak for itself
Like a window, letting in the air
Clean and cold from the bens


Countesswells
A new beginning counteracts poor start
Some box-shaped flats have social problems housed
The scheme keeps wealth and poverty apart

This land was green, once, fertile farming soil
Grandfather's fields lay a short stone's throw off
Here, agricultural acres have been plundered
Far off you hear a dog fox give a cough

The skies make no distinction between farms or homes
Giant hydro trees stride to the grey horizon
Pegged squares set out new streets of building zones

At school the Covid kids all play catch up
Returning to a slow normality
Like lava, traumas, tantrums quickly flare
The epidemic's cruel legacy


The MisMatch
A Royal Doulton figurine ruled over a shelf-space
Until a Yankee pottery girl arrived to share the place

The Royal Doulton figurine was genuine and grand
The Little Yankee pottery girl was an inferior brand

She wis chipped and she was sassy, vulgar poses needed stopped
So the Royal Doulton figure soon arranged that she be dropped


Jeremy Bentham 1748-1832
Who was a jurist, social reformer?
Who founded utilitarianism?
Who was a famous philosopher?
Jeremy Bentham, VIP

Who fought for equal rights for women?
Who fought for the right of folk to divorce?
Who fought to decriminalise homosexuals?
Jeremy Bentham, VIP

Who sought to abolish slavery,
Capital punishment, old and young?
Who fought for animal rights, free speech?
Jeremy Bentham, VIP

Who wished to improve our jails and schools?
Poor laws, law courts, parliament too?
Who wrote a prison cook book for jailbirds?
Jeremy Bentham, VIP

Who ‘circumgyrated, ' the world's first jogger?
Who invented the game of battledore?
An atheist, who called for sexual freedom?
Jememy Bentham VIP

Who it's thought, invented underpants?
Who coined the words maximize, minimize?
Who called his walking sticks Dapple and Dobbin?
Jeremy Bentham VIP

Who called his cat a curious name,
Reverand Dr. John Langborn?
Who fed that feline macaroni?
Jeremy Bentham VIP

Who learned Latin when he was three?
Who went to Oxford aged just twelve?
Who was in infant protégé?
Jeremy Bentham VIP

Who had a pet teapot called Dickie?
Who had twentysix mourning bands
Post morten, sent to his friends and grievers?
Jeremy Bentham VIP

Whose mummified head was stolen by students
Held for a ransom, £ 0.00 paid?
That mummified head that looked unwholesome?
Jeremy Bentham VIP

Who decreed that he be dissected?
Who willed that his body then be stuffed?
His head, alas, looked far too gruesome
A waxwork head was thus deemed enough.

University College London
Keeps him on show as he wished, and clean
Jeremy Bentham VIP
Taxidermied, forever on the scene