Turkey (2 Poems) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Sandalwood, myrtle, cypresses,
Sweet gum, laurel & olive groves
Oleander & dates and pines
Cross winged falcons & turtle doves

Wild bee honey & cliff top goats
Lynx and jackal & snuffling bear
Bougainvillea in perfumed drifts
Red tiled roofs in the azure air

Shrimp & swordfish & quick sea bream
Zebra stripes in a twisting shoal
Coral, amphorae stud the reef
Crayfish, octopus, sponge and sole

Ottoman, pirate, Roman, Greek
Temples massing on nearby Rhodes
Trojan princess who launched a fleet
Amazon warriors, Homer’s odes

Minaret, mosque and muezzin’s call
Baths were the scented tulips bloom
Hot bazaar where the venders trade
Jostle and haggle for elbow room

Marmaris
All day drum beats pound and pulse
Western bellies blob in bikini girdles
This is Butlin’s with a Turkish twist
Date palms soar like birds
In a heat that could strip paint
The ambrosia’s chips and beans,
The nectar’s Turkish beer

Hans, Ivan, Gunter baste like turning kebabs
Water is kingfisher blue. Showers of diamonds
Splash from swimmer’s heels

A rainbow has melted and welded with lie-lows and lean-backs
George from Crewe’s on a Crusade to get laid

A phalanx of bathing belles shield their eyes with shades
Bronze Hector goes striding past, seeking a British Helen

A chalk-faced man sips from an amber glass
Flat buttocks, withered thighs,
Wearing a goat’s beard on his sunken chest

Boys like filleted fish, dart like barracuda in the shallows
Their vertebrae’s skin tight.
A honeycomb of lustrous light and shade, ripple the pool

A bulging Danish bum floats like a large brown pastry
Rising up in the tourniquet of its trunks

Acres of balconies teeter up to the sky
Pill boxes on stilettos

A traumatized boy tells of a knifing, high in the Turkish mountains
Over and over, to anyone who will listen.

Ten heat stroke victims comatose, pass out