Cleikum: 14 Poems In English Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.Foot as a Portrait. (Adolph Menzel: Foot of the Artist)
When is a foot a portrait?
When the veins bulge up
When callouses crown the toes
When corns and bunions distort
It's the sole of man

2.Sean Connery
It's Sean Connery
As a packet of cornflakes
Head like a quail egg
Mr Six-Pack the beefcake
Bond hero par excellence

3.R.D.Laing
R.D.Laing at rest
His mind on auto-pilot
A mouse in a lab
His antennae finely tuned
The labyrinth is waiting


4.Andy Warhol: Self Portrait with Platinum Bouffant Wig
Self-portrait with platinum wig
Andy Warhol looks glum
Lip-stick smeared and anxious
A lamb in wolf skin
Come out from hiding, mister


5.John Knox wearing pie lid
John Knox the man
With his Taliban hat
His scowling face and beard
Was the archetypal bigot
Patriarch, judgemental, harsh

6.New-born with Sibling: Cecile Walton: Romance (Childbirth)
New-born held aloft,
A mother is showing
Off her latest baby
Her elder son looks dismayed
Knows that his perch has shortened

7.Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox, Aberdeen quine
Androgynous, whey-faced
No fixed identity
Tartan choker
Ghost woman, pedigree, Scots

8.The Fried Egg Woman: (Sarah Lucas: Self Portrait with Fried Eggs)
Artist facing her public
James Dean look-a-like
In tight jeans hugging her crotch
Two fried eggs over each breast
Sex, done to a turn

11.And no Bird Sang
A white feather fell
To me from the roofless vault
Of Melrose Abbey

12.A poem from Romanian proverbs (proverbs in italics)
The sow is dead in the barn
Today, she leaped like a dog into concrete

Yesterday, I saw her stare
Like a cat at a calendar

I said, ‘Go walk the bear.
You look like a donkey in the mist.
Have you got dwarfs on your brain? '

Quick as an old lady with a machine gun
The sow replied, ‘Make a whip out of poo.'

And that, my friend's why I shot her.

13.Aberdeen: Capital of Decommissioned Rigs
You'll live longer here than Glasgow
Granite's radio-active…kills the bugs
The rooves on Union Street are eco-friendly
Trees grow from chimneys. Grass, festoons the gutters
Our council is exceedingly creative
Every day it brings out new designs for ancient projects
Honing the architects' skills, filling the papers
We have declared war against GRIME
Grime busters blitz the pavements of errant gum
Scary clowns keep pensioners active at night
Amsterdam has Red Lighst…we have NORTHERN LIGHTS
Rome has pizzas. Aberdeen has rowies
Filthy McNasty's is the place to drink
No IRN BRU for us. We're granite-built.

14.Melrose Abbey
Here in the vaulted ceiling of the presbytery
St Andrew clutches his cross
St Bartholomew flaunts his flaying knife
St Peter coddles his keys
St Thomas supports his spear
St James bears his bludgeon
St Paul shields his sword
St Matthias arches his axe

Outside in the alabaster air
Demons, imps, hobgoblins rule the roost
The rose-tinted sandstone is hewn
From the Eildon Hills

Glazed fragments of floor tile
Shine up yellow and green
Geometrics, starred with leaves

Gargoyles spew water from sky-high guttering
Angel musicians reach from projecting corbels
Crones smirk and grimace by a winged, calf-headed beast

A cook with a ladle stands stirring broth
Where monks tell beads in eternity
Masons long dead, wield chisels

A sculpted frieze of kings, queens, lords and ladies
Craftsmen, sinners, and a fat Falstaffian
Blob of a portly pig, plays bagpipes porkily

Alone in the cropped grass, in the heart of the cloisters
Lies the heart of Bruce in its leaden casket
Magnificent in its simplicity, as all truth is