Of Swans And Media Pussies (25 Poems) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1. Scottish Apocalypse

A frightened Edinburgh Bagpipe will suddenly fart
Ten ptarmigans on Ben MacDhui will moult
The HIghlanders will turn into kilt pins

Queer things have come to pass, Sean Connery will proclaim
Tartan deer will leap in the sea like lemmings

Violent thistles will strangle Strathdee shortbreads
A plate of Baxter's soup will morph into spam
Thig a mhuir deas air a mhuir tuath
Thomas of Erceldoune was head to say.
Thig a mhuir deas air a mhuir tuath:
The south sea will come upon the North Sea

Hollyrood will be the new Atlantis


2.Red Moon on an Old White Whore

No one to stroke her bones
No-one to wipe the tears
From her runnelled cheeks

There's a big red moon in the cold black sky tonight
Winter's scoffed the victuals off the trees

The old white whore's gray brains
Know she don't quite cut the mustard

Her gravy-train's dried up
Men look elsewhere
Now that her trade's gone ape
She's mothballed in old-woman spider spit


3.The West as Materialism

Sometimes the West's like the Mary Celeste
Skeleton hands on the tiller
Nixon, up on the Crow's nest

Through portholes, I notice icebergs and sun,
Like a gold biscuit
Dipped in the sow's trough of the sea

Slaves cough in the hold of prison ships
A junk, full to the gunnels with smack
Rolls with the punches

Five hundred pleasure cruisers
Sipping cocoa and shortbread
Drift towards the Valhalla of Retirement


4. Alice leaves Wonderland

Alice grew up, left Wonderland
Enjoyed a quick tumble with a foxy-looking student
His calloused fingers tapping the vertebrae trot

Afterwards rinsing her flimsies in the launderette
She soaped her crannies clean

It was all downhill after that,
Back alleys, booze, drugs,
Shafted by all the usual fleshy pit-falls

In the end, there was nothing to do
But shut her turtle eyes
Breathe out the little bird of her soul
Into the cavernous blue and empty air


5.Big Brother

My telephone rings. A man promises
Time-shares in Nirvana
I'm ex-directory, but he's managed to sniff me out.

I call his bluff
Speak French, tell him the tenant
Left on a long safari.

Yes, that's correct, I note
When the data on a computer
Shows me my own name
Filed in an alien department I've never heard of

Respectable buildings behind their granite jackets,
Watch us with James Bond eyes
They see through credit cards, passports, saris, hubris,
Bowler hats and ethnic sub-divisions

Inside the ministry of sin
Somewhere it's recorded, put on an un-dead loop
One day you'll watch it
Again Again Again


6. The Media Pussies

Media pussies purr across their Pims
Their pouty lips, trout-like,
Are always ajar

They swallow men like bubbles
Then spit them out
Just for the hell of it

Cat-walking media pussies
Eat fur-balls for breakfast

Celebrity sucks, they say
We need our privacy
Showing their sleek bottoms
High-tailing off with a swish




7. D.H.Lawrence's Snake

A man came to my water-trough
on a hot, hot day, in pyjamas for the heat,

I made him wait, I was silently drinking
Minding my own business.
He looked at me, as poets do,
Like a stunned sow.

I flickered my two-forked tongue at him, and mused a moment,
I was thirsty, and first in the queue

I am a Sicilian snake. He was only a British tourist
Grey socks beneath his sandals hiding his pasty toes

He was grinning at me like a simpleton
Maybe the heat has got to him, I thought

I drank, lifted my head, and licked my lips,
Looking round. He was still there
Speaking to himself like a half-wit

I caught a word like 'honour'.
We Sicilians know about honour,
A Mafia thing.

Whenever my back was turned.
He picked up a log and threw it at me with a clatter
Honour, I thought...He doesn't know
The meaning of the word

Now, I expect, he'll write about it
Say he's sorry, over his gin and tonic
Making a song and dance of petty cruelty


8.Wild Plants

Bloody Crane's Bill, Butcher's Broom
Creeping Jenny, Witch's Butter
Devil's snuff Box, Lady's Tresses
Red Hot Poker, Jacob's Ladder

Viper's Bugloss, Good-King-Henry
Hound's Tooth, Lamb's Ear, some Fool's Parsley
Stinking Hellebore, Fairy Foxglove
Water Drop Wort, and Baldmoney


9.Global Grub

Australian's relish Parrot Pie
The Thai love bee grubs, creamed
Silkworms flavour Vietnam soup.
The Turks like starlings, steamed

Romanians eat stuffed bear paw.
Japan has snake tongues, fried
Calf udders grace the plates of France.
Chinese eat maggots, dried

The Scots eat sweetbreads boiled inside
Sheep stomach. What appeals
To Irishmen is a pig's face.
And Englishman likes eels.


10.Swan Keeper Number One

There's the Mistress of the Robes,
There's the Queen's Raven Master
There's the Lady of the Bedchamber,
The Chauffeur and the Gardener
The Ghillie, Stalker, Nanny,
The Hereditary Grand Falconer,
The Butler, Maids in waiting,
The Barge Master and the Almoner

But if I had to work
In the service of the Queen
I'd be the Keeper of the Swans,
And nothing in between

I'd watch them bobbing on the Thames,
A snow-fleet in the sun
Now that's a job that's magical!
Swan Keeper Number One!


11.Goods and Chattels

The things were helpless.
They stood in the icy hall
Their owner, dead.
Goods from a family with its core removed

Who bought them? What for?
Will they be cared for?
Collateral damage felled by the scythe of Death.

Some, stretch back to the tottering steps of Empire
The knobkiri casting its shadow over continents
A killing-club transformed to a child's plaything
A trumpeting ivory elephant, shrunk to a souvenir
The goods and chattels of my ancestors.

Things glue a home together
Gathering them, my father never thought
They would outlive him, inhabit other homes.
His house is now closed up with snow and sorrow
The worm turns in the oak.
The things have other homes
New masters and changed meanings


12.Metamorphoses

A box of face-paints at a fair,
A child transformed at a stroke
From a human into a jungle beast,
Identity is smoke.

Something unseen within me stirs
From the mirror of mist and haar
Something unknown stares back at me,
Sad as a falling star

I close my eyes, I stop my ears,
Keeping unease at bay,
It comes to remind me Man is sand,
His castles, shadow- play.


13.Witnesses

The sun was bright on the face of my watch
I was dining in the Leopold café
With a casting agent, (Bollywood pays my rent) .
Twenty died in a hail of guts and bullets
Just as dessert arrived.

I'm the maid who used to work at Nariman House
It was instinct. I scooped up Rabbi Holtzberg's son
And ran. My luck was in, I saved his skin and mine.

They were just boys, the terrorist, newly bearded
Schools that train in atrocity, do they give grades in killing
Distinctions for murder?

Flames lit up the alabaster ceilings
Priceless Eastern carpets sopped with blood

My ambulance was a ferry for guests and tourists
To hospital, not quite the trip they'd paid for
Down in the mortuary of Cama Hospital
My friend heard screams in the wards,
As folk were slaughtered
More like an abattoir than a place of healing

Ms. Amarsy and her husband …
She owns French Princess Tam-Tam lingerie.
I'd almost raised the courage to join her table
When in mid-sentence, her face was blown away.

Thirty-five hours I spent in total terror
Locked in my room inside the Taj Hotel
I'd only come to attend a cousin's wedding.

I hid my British passport in my shoe
British, American, we were sitting ducks,
Picked by a foreign policy not of our making
I am a banker. What do I know of war?

After the Commandoes kicked the door down,
I stumbled into the lobby littered with glass
Picking my way past shrapnel, limbs and shoes.
I pissed myself relieved that I'd been missed.

I sell sweet fruits and flowers by Mumbai station
Worshippers buy my blooms to dress their gods
Before the Mumbai massacre, I had a son,
Now I have blood stained petals, a soul of-ash.
But I work on, for even grief must feed.


14.Vetting Requirements for a Makar

Second sight and the gift of prophecy
Is optional. The wearing of odd socks
May well be an asset

Bardic duties may include singing the praises (or not)
Of kelpies, banshees, and other indigenous rarities

Visits to schools should always be made
Without the laying on of hands
(A makar should be wary of
Falling through cracks in the system)

The successful applicant should be pulsing
With sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, odes, haikus,
And have access to copious transfusions
Of blank verse, limericks and form of poetry
Alive or dead

Dietary requirements are a matter of personal conscience
When the Horsemen of the Apocalypse charge from
Crathie to Cairo with blue sparks crackling off their hooves
A makar must be ready with a poem
Emergencies require immediate action
Nothing binds the bleeding soul like words.


15. Sao Paulo Nocturne

Always on Saturday night my brother drank
I'd be upstairs near sleeping when it started
`While you're beneath my roof ' our dad complained
Con brio, bellicoso

'The hell with all of you, ' my brother's answer
Crescendo, passionato
Near taking the door off its stiff Victorian hinges

His music would machine gun any response
Every window, wall and roof shook to attention
Even the Northern Lights swayed in their sockets

One day my brother was there,
The next, he wasn't
A modern Conquistador
Off to Brazil in his tailored business suit.
Saturday nights were quiet after that.
Talk was sotto voce

I thought about cannibals, crocodiles,
Rainforests heavy with leaves
In the land of drizzle Brazil

Our little battered school book told of
Anaconda, evil vampire bats.
He sent me home a razor-toothed piranha

He couldn't have flown further if he'd tried
Learned Portuguese, dropped off the Grampian radar
Gave his name to a child from a leper colony

Chameleon-like he took another culture
Into his bed. His neighbours gunned down robbers
Con bravura
The rainbow's crock of gold kept disappearing
Just one of 20 million in his city
The 19th richest city in the world
His lovers were exotic, leggy, Latinos
Where helicopters flew through gilt-edged clouds
Where shanty-towns spawned infants in the gutters
Little tadpoles, wriggling through the middens

A woman's voice, a stranger, at the end
In broken English called.
'What shall I do?
Your brother, how I'll miss his grey-blue eyes!

The Old Country, for long,
Diminuendo...
Home's where the heart is, or the greatest grief.


16. Aboyne Games

Super-heroes, love-boats, Jekyll and Hydes
Stepped from the pleasure flap of a Deeside tent
At six I'd just discovered I loved balloons

A bat in a far tree opened one ear and sighed
Folding its arms like a brolly dipped in tar.

A feral kitten tried to climb the flag pole
Somebody hung a medal on a horse

A blousy woman with shoulders like epaulettes
Picked small bones from a mackerel on a plate

Over the dyke the village dead stayed mute
The laird took photos of the piping contest
A girl, all legs and giggles, was declared a beauty
Nobody looked in her mouth to study her teeth
As they did with the shelts,
Sots played Russian roulette with their wives' tempers.

Three sheep watched a Highland fling
Through the visor of their pens, tall grass, and wool

A ridiculous dog bit clouds of candyfloss
Cheetah-spots of leaf-shade dappled the ground.

Maisie Macdonald sold sprigs of lucky heather
To the minister who professed it was for charity

A young girl stared at a gypsy selling rides
Pictured his brown limbs smeared across her freckles

Owls climbed into the soothing jar of sleep
And slumbered till the village fair was over.

That night I dreamt of sporrans made from wild cats
Beavers and foxes, glass eyes staring from kilts.


17. Yesterday's Heroes

Where were you when Kennedy was shot?
In a classroom? Cooking the tea?
When Lennon died, were you shopping?

TV brought them into every home.
They shared our lives,
We felt that they shared ours

Kennedy was everyone's rich uncle
Powerful, suited, booted, living the dream
Lennon, the stroppy icon, family odd-ball
Eternal student, cast ideas like coats

There have always been trolls and goblins,
Princesses and crones
Larger than life, reality writ large
The saw forgets, the mighty elm remembers.


18. The Last Throes of Marriage

Towards the end, silence prevailed
Two grey fish in a tank
Circling each other soundlessly

Small betrayals leaked away all liking
Like rain through an Amish sieve
Actions had their sequel
Apples fell in an orchard
Red cheeks bruised and rotting

There was the usual parade
Of meals and days and laundry

Too late to discourage
The tremendous ocean
Leaning against the crack
In the fish tank's side


19. On Valentine's Day

Rain lay like rust on an old sword
I was sitting under a great horse chestnut tree
In the wind-farm of the woods
Dusk fell swiftly.

A crow sang like a hinged gate
Screeching of loss and decay
It was February, the lovers' month
Cupid peered from the past,
A withered gargoyle
A shrivelled pilgrim of sorrow

In the hills that lay to the north,
Fingal's woman bathed in a mountain pool
Beauty, dipped in a tarn of marvellous cold

Love lifted the wings of others
Made kingfishers from sparrows.

I am a hunched grey heron by Glen Tilt
A wave tossed in a storm on high Loch Duibh


20.Perishible Goods

To prepare the patient's body for family viewing:
Four Morgue sheets
Four Body tags
Four Safety pins

Remove all personal belongings.
Remove all drains, tubes, and soiled dressings.
If dentures are present but not in mouth, place in mouth.

Close eyes. Use small piece of tape
(on eyelids if necessary)
Bathe the patient's body
Remove all blood and/or body excreta.

Gently cross arms
Gently and loosely tie wrist Kling.
Loosely bind feet/ankles together
Place body I.D. tag on the big toe

Tie the outside shroud in three places:
at the head
at the mid-section
at the feet
One on the wrist/hand;
One on the outside of shroud when finished.

Place the third body I.D. tag
On the outside of the shroud
Affix it with a safety pin.

Release of the body must be noted
In the morgue sign out log book
The body is now prepared for family viewing

Respect, is attention to detail
The rituals of unbecoming
Must be observed


21. Red-Coat

He is standing, framed by the window
Staring into the house.
Brittle with frost, snow crunches at his feet.

His black-socked foxy legs
Rise stiffly into his heart-shaped ermine ruff
His heavy sable tail, brushes
The copper fronds of the feather-ferns

This lethal, dapper hunter consumes each moment
His pulse is wired to his teeth.
His ears drink sound,
His eyes feed upon movement
His tongue laps up the air,
Reddened from recent kills

He is life, unfettered by thought
A focused fury. Walking
Ways of being we have forgotten,

Less than a field off, he is pure as the North Star
Breathing Winter, softly.

22. Dogged

Kirk Anders, a woodcutter's precious poodle
In Norway, wandered out into the snow
Responding to the pressing needs of Nature
With the temperature at minus ten below.

On icy paws, the dog returned limping
Its jaws were tight, as if clamped in a vice
A quick look ascertained why it was wincing
Between its legs hung two white balls of ice

Before the stove its owner fought a battle
(Frostbite castrates as nothing else can do)
To thaw out little Hakan's bits and pieces
With his gentleman's love-tackle turning blue

Oh never take a poodle dog to Norway
Where the blizzards will assail you everywhere
But if you must have pets to keep you company
Buy a panguin or a furry polar bear


23. The Octopus

I am an octopus
Such an octopus as Hieronymus Bosch
Might have Painted into his
Garden of Earthly Delights

See! Another day comes
To take little bites from me.

How daintily time feeds
Wiping its mouth on the serviette of the past.


24. Fallen Lucifers

We love our Fallen Lucifers
Lord Byron, Errol Flynn
With their fires forever burning
And their morals in the bin

They're so like a Xmas pudding
With the sixpences stuffed in
They're rich and mad and bad for us
There's nought so sweet as sin!


25. Blue Pool

Six year old Daisy's a bobber,
Popping up through a round pink dough-ring
Of wet plastic.

Fourteen year old sister, Eloise,
Floats like a closed umbrella
Eyes shut tight as a corpse,
Legs clamped like a whelk's sides

Their mother, Magdalena,
Doggy paddles inelegantly
Arms full of imaginary messages
Going neither forwards nor backwards
In stagnant fury

To the right and a little above them
Like Neptune surveying his realm
Nikkos, walrus- headed, is treading water
The ripple from his thighs surrounds them all.