Of Marmalade, A Delhi Cow Etc (24 Poems) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Of Marmalade, A Delhi Cow Etc (24 Poems)

1. Water of Life / Uisge Beatha

I am water in a glass
I have my eye
On the firmament of the ceiling
The shadow land of the screen
The world of betwixt and between

In my element, I have class.
In one form or another
I've been on this cranky planet
Since its conception

I am the rainbow's sperm
Seas' resurrection
Opaque as fish scales
Swallowed, I'm a disappearing treat
Like the woman announcing
A terrorist intervention
As the bomb explodes at her feet

I'm water. My impact's Titanic
Try cutting me out of your life
I dare you. I double dare you.
The result's Satanic


2. The Withering Prize of Laurels

At Delphi, where the Pythian Games
Once rang to the shouts of victory
Only the sun remains,
And the bleached columns of stone
Quiet sand where the quern of time grinds
Challenger, winner, to bone

I touched the oracle's shrine in sun-baked Delphi,
In the shade of laurel trees.
Only a chorus of cricket voices spoke

I felt the wind from the feet of the dead in passing
Rising, to take their ease,
Needing no Sybil to foretell, soon, I'll be one of these


3. The Hi-Fi

Every evening, Danny, pissed as a newt
Window open, his hi-fi giving it large
To all the neighbours

Jo-Jo'd tell her husband
'If you were half a man you'd set him straight'

No shrinking violet
It was a blaring sunflower
A dam of music bursting from its sides
A dam-buster...a damned contraption
Turning the cows' milk sour
Giving the down-town cats
The heeby-jeebies

After the flies built up on Danny's window
After the police and the sanitary men with masks
Only the old iron roof
Only the old black chair
High pressure Hi-fi finally disconnected

Only Mrs Baker, two doors down
Missed the hi-fi's evening Doo-la-dilly-da
Said it made her ironing chore go 'faster.


4.The Park

A greyhound guards the park.
Air smells of muddy grass
By the chute in the misty playground

In the day-shift, children feed the ducks
Men in boiler suits unwrap their lunch
Two girls giggle at boys, walking a bandy pit-bull.
Dossers doze, dreaming of cosy pubs

A match is struck. Two smoking mothers gossip.
A jogger jogs, his face pitted with spots
Knobbly as quartz, his legs are poker thin.

Skateboarders zoom down slopes
Like Vikings on speed.

Ice-cream wobbles down cones,
Dribbles into the cracks of crazy paving

In the night shift, in the moon hours
When the snails slide down the walls
On their eerie journeys
Hoodies share booze or needles
Teens enter the bushes
Checking out unmarked boundaries

Up in the frosty heavens
The Northern lights switch on their icy rainbow.


5.Palette

On the palette table there's a real apple
Uneaten, a model, a focus,
Thinking itself a symbol.

There's a jar with lemony water
Holding dried honesty

Alizarin crimson seeps its blood
Yellow ochre oozes autumn leaves
Navy blue squirts out a small lagoon
Where emerald green spurts up like fishy fins

Cadmium orange flares like Ulster marches
Violet slides like a Royal negligee
Burnt sienna smoulders like a kiln
Ivory black, titanium white, are plotting
Making a B. movie, aiming for the Oscars


6.Blind Date

It's a Blind Date. He's never seen the face
But think's he'll view a quality of grace
That transcends every difference of race
Anticipation is a living Hell

He's dressed with care, the better for to brace
Himself against this meeting in this place
His cassock's a defensive carapace
His every nerve becomes a jagged cell
He's researched well. He will not court disgrace
New cap, smart shoes. No wayward untied lace
He's not some Pagan throwback out of Thrace
This match was made in Heaven, he can tell.

A lamb stands at the door, without a trace
Of fear. He rubs his eyes. Why in this space
Should it appear? He knows he has to chase
It off to cross this lovers' Carousel
Into the church. A pause. A slower pace
Beneath a Lord without a crown or mace
A true blind date. No body to efface
But that's the Nature of Life Spirituel


7.First Cut

Old scars, old scabs, old storms
How do you know when a tree has died
Though its leaves seem green on the branch?

When the saw brings forth no resin
Wet on the blade.
A woman with hideous hurts
Of the invisible kind
Old scars, old scabs, old storms
Looks at the skin on her forearm
A peachy limb,
Quietly drawing a razor down her flesh.

A private act, not a spectator sport
Blood drips from the unzipped skin
She is alive although she feels no pain
At all of the physical kind.

Calm, like a mighty vulture, has descended.
An agony, that's coffined and confined.


8.The Fetishist

Ed snuggles down with a lassie from Leith
And ….s her as often's he's able
What's going on in Montgomery's head?
He goes to bed with a table

Jo has relations with Susie from Cork
Nigel makes whoopee with Mabel
Montgomery gets no surprise from the stork
He goes to bed with a table

Fred lusts after Julie, her hair turns him on
It's luscious and silky and sable
Montgomery loves a well-turned piece of oak
He goes to bed with a table.

Adam and Eve they were at it like knives
As you'll read of in many's the fable
Montgomery's mistress, (a nice coffee-size)
Was doomed...for her joints were unstable.


9.I'm Fine, how are you? (Psychiatric Ward)

The gummy shadows of the window pane
Fall like cage bars upon the empty wall

The floor is undulating like a wave
Cracked like an egg the sun makes its slow crawl
Across the sky. 'I'm fine today. How're you?
Says the Queen Mother to a vacant chair
Ophelia turns her back on the drug trolley
Sings nursery rhymes to babies who're not there

Mary is shaking, manages to spill
Her liquid cosh. Poor dear, she's very ill

Annie's a seal on a glacier. Jessie's a hoot
Thelma was thumped by her man, the brute
Shook all her senses up like a cocktail
Betty's inside her shell, a weepy snail

`We're not so scary's people like to think'
So says the shrink

Mirror mirror on the wall
Who is the sanest of them all?

Outside the gates drug dealers slink like sharks
Muggers and gangsters wait to pick them off
Care in Community...it's sink or swim
`I'm fine today.' Just pray that it's enough.


10.Peacock

Marie Antoinette adored its feathers
Wore peacock plumes in her hair, roasted its flesh.
It was a living landscape on her estates,
Indian bird from the Himalayan heights.

Muslims thought it symbolized the Cosmos
Standing guard at the very gates of Paradise,
Proud bird of many wives, it watched them all
With many eyes emblazoned on its tail

Hindus thought the bird looked like an angel,
Sacred playfellow of blue-skinned Krishna
Kept in Indian temples to eat the snakes

Sarasvati, goddess of poem and music,
Rode a peacock round the firmament
Indra ruled the world from a peacock throne.

His charm is in the swish of his fanning tail
Such beauty cursed with such an ugly call!
Tone deaf. They say pride goes before a fall
A screech like a stuck pig, a caterwaul


11.Myth & Tradition

Traditional boys like paper planes
Popping gulls' eggs into a sack
Carrying mice beneath their shirts
Running wolves in a hunting pack

Traditional girls like foxy clothes
Wishing trees and a soft guitar
Horses neighing beneath a tree
A mermaid waving beneath a star

Traditional boys like catching fish
Fixing an anchor to a dog
Stoning a fleeing magpie's breast
Mocking Timothy in a blog

Late in the night inventing myths
Owls sit up. They're a breed apart
Over King Neptune's watery world
The lighthouse shines through the murky dark


12.The Feet of Tiny Birds

Our civic trees are pretty but controlled
Obey each health and safety law unrolled
Their branches lopped to regulation height
Lest, god forbid, they injure in the night
Some six foot drunk who over-near them strolled

Although their green credentials are extolled
All complements, like house of cards must fold
If straying roots, like moles, should pavements blight

There are some truths each city must uphold
Trees are green lungs more precious far than gold

Whose heart has never warmed to the sight
Of leaves, like forest flags in tethered flight?
Our sylvan heritage should not be sold

The feet of tiny birds have here patrolled
The streets below. They've foraged `gainst the cold
For twigs and leaves to bind their houses tight
Leaf, wing and sun's what keeps our suburbs bright

Black-bird and song thrush, sparrows small and bold
Robin and wren peck-pecking in the mould
Beneath a roof of branches spilling light
Birdsong and leaves make all the world seem right.


13.Six Old men

Six old men on a long park bench
Two with nothing to do but think
Tortoise necks and watery eyes
Sixty years gone by in a blink

Six old men on a chilly day
Two are feeding the pecking doves
Stale bread sandwiches, piece-meal treats
Hands vein-lumpy as knitted gloves

Six old men sit killing time
Two read news for their racing tips
Hooded eyes slide over the page
There's no sound...but they move their lips

Six old men on a long park bench
Here's where they come to pass the day
Watching the world and his wife go by
Age grips tight as a tourniquet


14.The Couple

Face to face like a pair of Irish setters
The bones of their marriage between them
Mr & Mrs O'Brian chew the fat

Mrs O'Brian's scrawny's a cat-walk scrag-end
Scalloped shoulder blades and a washed out look
Cheeks scrubbed raw and her expression, flat

Mr. O'Brian's lean and drip- nose lanky
Hatching an ulcer, he's got egg on his face
She's the door-knob. He's the old door mat


15.Wall with Delhi Cow

Imagine a Delhi cow pretending to be graffiti
Illegal dairies springing up over the city
Owners letting their cattle fend for themselves.

There, cows are traffic stoppers, graze in the middle of lay-bys
Gazing up at the cars with lustrous eyes
Sacred beasts, no injury must harm them.
Many are old – their udders, dry of milk.

This cow is still pretending to be graffiti.
It does not want re-housed in a far compound
Its horns are sharp, it has an angry look

Three hundred plastic bags lurk in its stomach
The government will give it a ration of hay

Not being accustomed to grass, the cow's suspicious
Does not believe some other place is greener
Prefers its petrol fumes, its takeaways

Which is why this cow's pretending to be graffiti
Hoping no-one will steal its bag of bones


16.Marmalade Town

A blue and white zebra with orange eyes
After a breakfast of hot mince pies
Polished his hooves, shook himself down
And trotted along to Marmalade town

Out of a jug, a dairymaid stepped
How she pleaded and whined and wept
`Oh blue and white zebra, please don't frown
Let me come with you to Marmalade town.'

They hadn't gone far when out from the cheese J
umped a Turk with horribly hairy knees
Oh dairy maid, oh zebra so blue
Please let me share the jaunt with you
Along with my friends...they're terribly down
There by the coffee pot, see... that clown
With his harlequin friend, so sad, so flat
Don't let him weep on the table mat

The dairymaid sighed and twiddled her thumbs
Nothing was left on the plate but crumbs
So off they galloped to Crumpet Land
Where the Marmalade pot with its marmalade band
Is waiting until the clock strikes three
To welcome the world and his wife for tea


17.Lord Byron

When Lady Gordon's son was eight
He limped across the Castlegate
Carrying schoolbag, chalk and slate
He's sure to go a-roving

When Lady Gordon's son was ten
His title came from dead kinsmen
Lord Byron now, `twas certain then
That he would go a-roving

When Lady Gordon's son was grown
Many's the wild seed he'd sown
Though London was this poet's own
He longed to go a-roving

When Lady Gordon's son was dead
All Greece put laurels on his head
Tongue of an angel, feet of lead
Grey death, it stopped his roving


18.Nigg Kirk

North of the Dee and the bay,
Is a church adrift in a sea of souls

The high, square tower fronts up to the wind's punch.
The wall's like a castle's defences of stony moss and heath.
The watery sky looks down on drowned, grave men

Twilight's bled the evening dry of colour.
Clouds seep to the lighthouse of Girdleness.
Beyond, is Greyhope Bay where the wreck
Of the whaler Oscar broke asunder

South of Nigg the coast is rocky and jagged,
Narrow creeks and subterranean caves,
Where waves make secret trysts
With ancient crabs.


19.Catalyst

A Catalan cat in a catamaran
And a Catholic caterpillar
Sailed for Cathay on a holiday `
Twas the cat that held the tiller

A catastrophic catarrhal fog
Made both of them caterwaul
As over a cataract's foamy lip
The ship began to fall

It slipped down into the catacombs
Like a catapult-shot on speed
That's what I call a catalyst
Said the cat. And his friend agreed.


20.Snouts in the Trough: tune: In an English Country Garden

How many things can be got by pulling strings
From the public purse a-buying?
Shall we assemble a typical list
To save MPs from lying?

Toilet seats and swimming pools
Storm doors and house patrols
Book cases, prams and plumbing bills
With some pampering weekends
And some other little spends
Like a moat, duck house and loo roll

When you've a house or two to see you through
Then the money flows like water
In a credit crunch, it's the public pays the lunch
And a home for your son or daughter

Stable lights and legal fees
Piano tuning, groceries
Drive-way repairs full size TVs
Plus a chauffeur driven car
Crates of wine to fill your bar
And flower-beds for your wife to potter.

Life is very sweet with a parliamentary seat
When your home's got a marble table
A mock Tudor door, and a polished wooden floor
Hanging baskets from each gable

Rocking chair and trouser press
Carpets, sofa, evening dress
Shop for as long's you're able
Oh it's hey-tally-ho off to Harrods they will go
For their next designer label


21.The Social Workers' Lament:
tune: She was poor but she was honest

Mother spends the cash on bingo
Father's in the pub again
Little Johnny's smashed a window
Social worker's in the frame

Chorus:
It 's the same the whole world over
Social workers get the blame
From the Press, TV and media
Ain't it all a bloomin shame

Patrick's gone an broke his ASBO
Hit his granny with a chair
That's another for the caseload
On the social workers care

Cuts are needed in the budget
Which department takes the strain?
You don't need a fortune teller
Social workers, slashed again

Squaring up to angry clients
Work can be a battle zone
It's a knife edge...hard decisions
Still they soldier on alone


22.Campus

Marquee tents have appeared at the lawn of Kings
Like a city where knights can shelter between jousts
The clipping of shears snips sharp across the silence

Over a rainbow bus, a copper beech
Spreading its stately shadow, a tree's largesse

Is it a wedding? A fair? A Templars' camp?
It's no good asking the birds, they'll only sing
Turn everything into a trill or a cantata

Now comes the whirring of wheels, the denim cyclists
Weighted with books and jackets, notes and pens
Every second hand is hugging a mobile
Small umbilical cord to the wider world.


23.The Falling Dream

Nothing to do but hope you wake up
Prior to touching base
Like a snapped pendulum
Like a fly with its wings plucked off
Like the scream from Munch's bridge
That nobody hears


24.Earth

Earth, the womb for all things growing
Earth, the tomb for all things dead
Earth, the microcosmic oven
For the clay that gave us birth
Little seedlings, little seedlings
Know your mother, and her worth

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