Comic Poems: The Young Wife Poem by Sheena Blackhall

The Diocese Meeting
Before the interview begins
Before we call him in
I'll share surveillance findings
That your thoughts should underpin

We have googled him and taken stock
His antics cause concern
Check out those suspicious snapshops
Of that weekend in Lucerne
We have checked him pot on google earth
His garden is a tip
And we clocked him sunning starkers
With a lady and a whip

He's been joining dating agencies
Online, this married man
He's not got the moral fibre
To fit with our parish plan

For a hobby, he's put cricket
Save the planet is his ethos
But on facebook his distractions
Are with alcohol and eros

Now it's time for us to fetch him
But before that he sits down
He will NEVER be our minister
A chancer and a clown


Deli Katesson: The Supermarket Deity
I am Deli Katesson, goddess of all supermarkets
I am omnipotent, omnipresent, all seeing

I shape shift at will
Sometimes, I'm a trolley
Sometimes I'm a check out slide
Black and fully loaded

I bless the heads of cauliflowers
I stampede shoppers into the maw of consumerism
I persuade them to buy the coffee excreted by civets
I terrify them into stock piling toilet rolls

I sooth dismembered chickens in the fridge
I hypnotize them into stupefaction
By playing syrupy music in the store

Belgian pate's putty in my hands

I tingle your tastebuds as you pass the wine
I jingle the coco pops like strippers' tassles

I levitate above the rasps
I meditate over the Brie, the cheddar, the Edam

All hail my magnanimous watermelons
All praise my salmon steaks, my peach ice cream!

I am Deli Katessan, deity of the pickles
The Doritas, the mince, the herring

Your money, cards, vouchers
Please lay them at the tills, my sacred altars


Very Disappointed: Don't Commission this Artist
Sixteen years it took him to finish my portrait
Sixteen bloody years.

My husband was a silk merchant, you know
Money no object
But would that Leonardo stick at the job?
No, no. Always something else on the go
Like a performing flea

Let me introduce myself
I am Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo
I posed for that portrait for ages
That wasn't a smile,
That was gritted teeth
Tholing attacks of cramp or flatulence

He took my painting to France, you know
Sold me to King Francois 1st
I've lost count of my owners
Once, I ended up in Napoleon's boudoir
But on that my lips are sealed
I ended up in the Musee du Louvre, Paris
I'm bullet proof, temperature adjusted
Insured for 700 million dollars
6 million tourists gawp at me each year

My face…MY face…has been copied
Parodied, mocked, worshipped, marketed
Operas, movies, songs, ships
Even a crater on Venus, all with my name
More mileage commercial-wise than Helen of Troy

A Louvre employee, Vincenzo Peruggia
Hid in a broom cupboard, and just walked out with me
Hid me two years in his squalid little flat!
Tried to sell me to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence
Then a vandal threw acid on me. A Bolivian threw a rock at me
A cup was thrown at me
And that nasty oik the Dadaist, Duchamp
Gave me a moustache and a beard
Artists? A nasty lot. I wouldn't give the best of them
So much as the time of day