English Poems From Forehooied Poem by Sheena Blackhall

On Releasing my Inner Napoleon
I would have:
None of my poems set to music by John Cage
All dogs made to wear nappies in public places
Spiders and roaches exiled to Muckle Flugga
All creatives given a salary for life
Be universally nicknamed Blackhall the Brilliant
Re-establish Scots as Scotland's official language
A private jet to avoid catching colds on buses
Negative critics sent to Siberian salt mines
The power to teleport to Glen Quoich's punchbowl


The Birdless Tree
I am a birdless tree
Since my son perished
Dead leaves hang from me

An owl's hoot echoes
For my trunk is hollow
Within me is a sore vacuity


Untrod
No more plod, plod, plodding
Up four flights of stairs with a pitiful bag of shopping
No more tossing bills into the waste bin
No washing spread to dry on the sofa
No need to bite your fingernails down to the quick
The fridge, hauled down to the skip
Dealers, towing away the abandoned car

In all of this, where was your grandmother's god?
We'll have no more meetings over a pizza
No more tobacco scraped from the battered tin
No roll ups with other bachelor paraphernalia

Life's a sod
I am forsaken, felled by the immensity of your leaving
Spring sunshine's back, but you're not here to enjoy it
Your siblings' bairns are growing
But you're not here to see them
Gone, like a dropped stone, under a lid of water
A life half-lived, so many roads untrod