6 English Poems From The Glastonbury Thorn Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Boadicea's layer
This human lioness burned Londinium down,
Archaeology shows a thick red layer of debris
Burned ash, covering coins and pottery

Tacitus tells us Boadicea took no prisoners,
The captured perished by gibbet, fire, or cross.

Noble Roman women,impaled on spikes
Had their breasts cut off and sewn into their mouths
Revengefor the rape of her daughters, her public lashing

They say this warrior woman drank poison
Rather than surrender to her foes
She'sburied, legend relates, between platforms 9 and 10
In King's Cross station, London
Still today at the hub of capital matters


Carving the Blood Eagle
In the ritual execution of the blood eagle,
Victims were kept alive
Their backs sliced open
Their ribs, lungs, and intestines
Pulled out into the shape of bloody wings
All in the name of Odin

Vikings deserve the negative press of history
Spin doctors can't undo the stench of cruelty



The Roar of the Crowd
Nuremberg, the Roman Colosseum
Turnstiles, terraces, masses

How many fouls are played out
In the shadow of the roar of the crowd,
That great homogenous body that acts as one?

A crowd is as easily driven as a herd
A headless chicken, all thought guillotined


Operation Magic Carpet
In the Spring of 1949
TheImam of Yemen agreed
To let 45,000 Jews depart
Israel's chosen seed

Operation Magic Carpet,
Three hundred and eighty flights
Bore the Yemenite Jewsto their ancient home
Safe from Europe's anti-semites

Planes airlifted Jews from Aden,
Safe after the Holocaust
Away from the ghettoes and pogroms
And the millions murdered and lost


Dunkirk
The twilight war plays out behind the mask
Of a war shocked soldier, slobbering, yammering, numb
Whose battle never ends,that pulls him down

He saw his shipmates drown, full kitted,20 yards from shore
The whizz bang planes that blew his comrades up
And oh, the wretched flotsam of the tides
Tugging the lifeless floaters back and fore
Like aimless seaweed, green and slimy brown
Dux of his year, locked forever in hell

Better to be killed outright on the blood and thunder coast
Than forever to relive death, in madness lost


Quatermass and the Pit
Hobb's End- a space pod -Martian imps
Boom boom boom as the tension rises
Out of the pit the devils pour
Into the world with the worst surprises

Forget ‘The Shining', it's not so black
Bring the devils of Hobb's Lane back!