Of New York, Roustabouts, And Metal Cows Etc (21poems) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.Blind Rain
Blind rain drives down the street. Leaves tumble, bleeding
October’s in the clouds now summer’s fled
The wormy mushroom in the ditch are breeding

Sick thoughts. They nightly crowd around my bed,
Like rancid husks of scooped out yesterdays
Old age has all the charm of mouldy bread

The seeds of promise have no flesh to show,
Like poor miscarriages, they lacked the skill
To fill with wind their lungs, their trumpets blow

Each lies within its coffin, dead yet still
Holding its feeble claws to snatch thin air
Its soul extinguished by the whip o will

An so I pass my time, half live, half dead,
A rotten tree, its greenwood branches shed,
The last oak in an urban overspill

The moon is sick. The meadowgrass is gray
Blind rain, could you but wash this self away.


2.The Thought Performance
No budget is required. Acts are free and are ongoing
No ticket’s needed. There’s always a seat in your brain

The brain is the venue. No disused hut, church, warehouse need be hired.
This is site specific theatre, with links to the centres of thought.

Some thoughts rehearse endlessly
The cast can vary
May involve relatives, colleagues, neighbours

Some walk on thoughts can blow your mind, if you’re honest
Who’s the director? The thoughts prefer to improvise
They require no Publicity. Marketing’s internal.
You yourself are the audience.

Some scenes are dramatic productions, subliminal.
Others are minimal.

Here’s the punch line. Listen. No, listen…
This is important, not in the small print
Thoughts can lead you by the nose
Into the Slough of Despond
The Valley of Humiliation
Where Giant Despair and Giant Grim
Perform a double act

They jump upon the stage,
Rabelaisian, trivial, petty,
Grotesque, lurid, cringe-making

Don’t fall for their game. I mean it.
Ignore the buggers. Don’t feed their need
For emotional recognition.

Don’t applaud. Don’t cheer. Stone-wall them.
Ask any actor. Lack of reaction’s a killer


3.Trespassers, New Deer
The bull’s eye in a North East rural compass
Faldie’s farm has a barn owl at its core
From dawn to dusk she patrols her midnight acres
Winged tiger of the air with the heart-shaped face
Swooping and hooting once the great sun topples.

North, in Artamford wood,
The short legged badger with the zebra pelt
Huffs and puffs in her sett
Ready to cross the borders of her tenancy
No injunction halts her illegal entry
Into the hen coop, baring her lethal teeth

At Mill o Auchreddie, field of the bog myrtle,
The hawk to the west has sheathed his powerful wings,
Drawn the shutters down on his piercing eyes
His claws tight on his perch
By day, he seeks no courtesy of access,
Takes it, a fascist creature smashing air

East at Pitfoskie, frosty starlings flock
To fly like fish shoals over the chilly fields
Joined by their distant cousins, asylum seekers
Refugees from even colder climes

South at Goukshill, the fox pads softly out
Like a four legged ghost, seemingly floating
Over the earth on a sortie. No one will witness
His stalking, killing, gorging. He is the red terror
That voles dread in their bones


4.Three Bankers
Three bankers went to sea in a boat
With sails of money to keep them afloat

They gambled the money, the sails flew away
But they paid themselves bonuses anyway


5.Roustabouts
Roustabouts with their ear defenders
Lie in their cribs and dream of suspenders
Laptop dancers and page three spreads
Their hard hats keep their brains in their heads
Their platform soles don’t let feet spoil
From seagull poo or dollops of oil


6.The Conquered
Would they break our laws by sinning?
Come to trap, to scourge, to fleece?
In their coming our beginning
War’s a crowing cockatrice

We were wary of their winning
Shepherded like flocks of geese
In their coming, our beginning
Opening market, trade increase

Months on end their bombs came dinning
From the onslaught no release
In their coming our beginning
Out of terror, ordered peace


7.Indian Rope Trick
Have you heard of the Indian Rope Trick
In the time of the great depression?
Get back to work, the government cried
It’s only a small recession

Forget those lame excuses
We want no sick-note chits
Pull posts and jobs from empty air
And chin up chaps, you’re Brits!


8.Two Lovers
The house fell into dereliction
The minister and the soldier let things slide

Forgotten secrets blocked the drains and crannies
Irks, piled up in the corners like dried scabs

The lovers came together only to clean and cook
The ritual of the potatoes kept them human

The soldier in his head, replaying his army days
Like a scratched record, impotent and spent

The minister staring at stars
Trying to seek out signs, dodge retribution

Above all this, a black bird sailed
From a withered tree like Thor on a mission
Into the sea-green sky, the red reyed moon
That hadn’t slept for aeons.


9.Rats
Rats, rats, they’re smarter than cats
See them dance in their high rise flats
Like can-can crickets or acrobats
Wearing their tutus and party hats!


10.New York
Dots of data in the corporate map
People are dwarfed by soaring masonry

Skyscraper windows screen observers out
Consumerism has a secret face

The minarets of wealthy attract fanatics
New York’s a global power house of plenty

Huge corporations oiled by working lives
The state’s machine is geared to gain and getting


11.The Empty Cot
Consider the empty cot.
Am I about to arrive,
Or newly gone?

Did my mother want me, or not?
Was I a mistake, or planned?
I had no say in the matter

What will my future be?
Why can nobody answer
The most important questions?

I encountered many dangers before arrival
Hurled like a thunderbolt against a door
Opening reluctantly

After all, I may not choose to stay.


12.The Metal Cow
On metal plated legs, a metal cow came clanking out
‘A triumph of technology, ’ hear the inventor shout

‘Instead of heartbeats, she has revs, she’s not been known to stall
She never has mastitis and she doesn’t poo at all.
You can keep her in the garage, she’s a constant source of fuel
Instead of milk, she lets down oil. She doesn’t even drool
Unlike her bovine sisters who all pee and belch and fart
And need a constant feed of grass before they’ll even start

I’m working on a metal bull, that’s fit for mated pairings
And for his sperm I’m giving him a bagful of ball bearings


13.First Wages
Rent spent hitting the shops
Donna and Tracy are loaded with bags
Like rifles ready to fire

They practise their posing pouts
Their necklines drop
Their hemlines soar
Their bulls-eye belly buttons
Have a silver ring
All the better to tease boys with.

They’ve blown caution out of the water
They’ll paint the town red
Cut a dash. Make a splash
Before the playpen, the partner
The wages needed for silly things like heating.



14.Thorn Women
Like headless tailor’s dummies impaled with pins
Three statues stand wide open to conjecture

They could be Masai women, speared in a tribal war
They could be African virgins, Womanhood
Slashed away by knife and custom

A cunning woman may have cast a spell on them
Sympathetic magic that’s anything but

One thing’s certain:
Somebody means them harm.


15.Tiger Penis
Is it a seahorse? Is it a flute?
Is it a fruit or a dried up newt?
It’s a tiger’s penis! The tourist’s stopped
For tiger parts are illegal, chopped.



16.Dermatome Man
Dermatome man is coloured blue
Maybe he rolled in woad
Maybe he’s one great big tattoo
Or a bruise that growed and growed

Dermatome man is coloured blue
He’s freezing cold, I think
He’s a very peculiar azure hue
Perhaps he’s been dipped in ink

Dermatome man is coloured blue
Let’s find him a yellow wife
Together they’ll do what couples do
And have them a bright green life


17.Taweret’s Follower
The papyrii told her two ways not to conceive
She had plugged her small vagina with crocodile shit
She had stuffed lint, moistened with dates
Ground into honey, into her uterus mouth
Despite it, her bleeding stopped. She had peed
On wheat seeds, and the seeds had sprouted
Proof that she was with child

Nearing her time, she waddled like a hippo
Runnels of sweat ran over her belly’s
Rotunda, like Nile water over a boulder

The priest sold her Taweret’s amulet
Taweret, who watched over mothers
No birth among creatures is harder
Than that of the human

When she thought the pain to hard bear
Her sisters rubbed saffron powder
Mixed in beer, into her shuddering belly

Squatting over the birthing bricks
She raised an agonised howl to the woman’s goddess

Her child leapt for life from the birth canal
They fed her pieces of mouse
While she thrashed with childbed fever

After her death, her cousin rubbed
Menstrual blood on the infant’s skin
To drive away the demons that would harm it


18.Stag Beetle
This group is an urban minority
Based, for the most, in London and North East Essex

In the evening males fly to females
Drawn by their ginger scent

The males’ antler-shaped mandibles
Are wrestling aids in mating duels
In the capital’s parks and gardens

Lewisham is their habitat of choice
With Dulwich, Wandsworth, Beckenham
Close on the housing market

They die by car, by jogger’s heel, or magpies
Immigrants from the country
Forming their insect enclaves in the town
Escaping the pesticides of modern farming
Pursuing a better life in smoggy London

Here, they have access to logs,
Appropriate to their needs

Environmental warfare has displaced them
Decimated their ranks. Now they cling on
In pockets of wormy wood.


19.Tea & Suicide: The Way of the Samurai
To perform the ritual of tea drinking
Invite guests to enter the room by ringing an evening bell

Allow your guests to purify themselves,
Using fresh water in a stone basin

Guide each guest to their mat.
Bring in the tea bowl, whisk, and cloth
The tea scoop should rest across the top of the bowl.

Serve your guests sweets. Then cleanse the bowl and scoop
Ladle hot water, afterwards, rinse the whisk.

Three scoops of tea per guest, place in the bowl
Add sufficient water creating a paste with the whisk.
Pass the bowl to the most important guest.

The guest should bow when accepting the bowl
Then rotate the bowl to admire it.

After sipping some of the tea,
And cleaning the rim of the bowl
It is passed to the next guest.

When all are finished, rinse the whisk and scoop.
Clean the tea container. Offer it to everyone to admire
This concludes the Samurai tea ceremony

To perform the ritual of suicide
First, bathe. Put on white robes

Sit down to your favourite meal.
When you have finished,
An attendant will bring your knife
And place it on your plate
Now write your death poem

With your second standing by,
Now open your kimono
Lift your knife by the blade.
Plunge it into your stomach
Making a left-to-right cut.

With a sword your second will directly after behead you
Leaving a sliver of flesh to keep the head attached as if embraced.
This concludes the Samurai suicide ceremony



20.Versailles: tune-If I was a blackbird
Versailles is a palace of 700 rooms
With 2,000 windows, with servants and grooms
With 67 stairs swept by oodles of brooms
And with chimneys of best Portsoy marble

It took 6,000 horses to build this chateaux
36,000 workers to help it to grow
With 2,000 acres of parkland on show
And with chimneys of best Portsoy marble

It has paintings and statues and furniture rare
On swampland long drained for the good of the air
It has wrought iron balconies, with lashings to spare
And with chimneys of best Portsoy marble

Versailles has an orangerie fruitful and sweet
With stables and outhouses...fountains replete
With water that sparkles where sun and wet meet
And with chimneys of best Portsoy marble

There’s a Salon of Peace and a Salon of War
Corinthinian pillars. This place is the star
That outshines all castles from Madrid to Mar
And with chimneys of best Portsoy marble

Here noblemen plotted, adulterers met
Here duels were arranged with full court etiquette
Here ghosts howled at midnight, folks nerves to upset
Up the chimneys of best Portsoy marble
There were chamber pots ripe for aristocrats’ pee
A Great Hall of Mirrors, of great artistry
But the wonder of wonders folk all queue to see
Are the chimneys of best Portsoy marble




21. Soroptimists
Soror meaning sister
Optima, the best
Raising funds for children
Outcast and oppressed

Plant sales, coffee mornings
Transform other lives
In the global setting
Mending battered wives

In many war-torn countries
Sending help to cope
That’s their greatest triumph
Soroptimists bring hope