Sheena Blackhall Poems

High walls and watchtowers loom around the place
This cemetery once needed guards with guns
To keep the dead safe from the body snatchers
Bloodhounds protected Dublin’s buried sons
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Producers’ heaven, that’s Kilmainham jail
Five famous films made here, give it street cred
Its walls stout built to keep out storm and hail
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1.Scurries Rule OK!
Scurries skyte aroon the schules
Fleggin bairns an brakkin rules
Pooin on the teachers’ cars
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The wife and I go where there’s sun and sand
We watch the pennies, fly where it is cheap!
Australia’s too far at our age, and daunting
With sharks that rise attacking from the deep
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1. Swans
Four swans transform into people,
Aodh, Fionnula Fiachra and Conn
Like molten rubber, stretching and writhing,
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A Catholic mother with Irish roots
Babe in the womb with an Indian view
Sitars, tablas, tambura drum
Heard in a terraced house with outside loo
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Every man has a woman who loves him
He was a big hit with wife number one
They were married on borrowed time
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Once upon a Long Ago
His mother was an Angel in Disguise
Early Days, at 3am, she cycled through snow
A midwife answering every baby’s request
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Richard Starkey, MBE,
an only child with rhythm in his bones
In and out of hospital, caught TB,
here’s what he said of his early homes
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The U boat story, Slave Trade, Mersey beat
Junks, sampans, memories of the Opium Wars
Scouse Chinatown, where doves and dragons meet
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