English Poems From The Hanged Cheil Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Youth has put an Announcement in the Papers
Youth has put an announcement in the papers
To let me know that mine went long ago

It left my locality years ago
It sneaked out of my mirror
When I was watching TV soaps
Growing layers of flab and wrinkles

It put the announcement between the Deaths
And the Classifieds

I checked and I hadn't died
But I sort of missed being young
There was so much back then I hadn't


Growing a Bird: Winnie
When she was five
My little grand-daughter,
Was nicknamed the Magpie
The curious collector

She came home with a feather
Stuck it in a pot
‘Winnie, ' we asked her
‘What's that you have got? '

‘Can't you tell? 'she insisted
‘I'm growing a bird! '
And none of us told her
Winnie…That's really absurd.


The Barker
The small dog with the huge bark
Tears through the veil of sleep
Like a knife with jagged edges
Not clean, but continual and ragged

You would like to propel it into space
Like the dog, Laika,
Aboard the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2
Your cat agrees.
Can dogs use megaphones?

My cat commits small homicides
But quietly, without disturbing the world
Or setting my teeth on edge


Vertigo
I had a wobble once,
In an Art gallery

That overwhelming urge
To do an Icarus

How could you even contemplate that
In such a beautiful place?
The effect the mess would have had
On the everyday public!
A friend upbraided me

And even now, I stand well back
From the sides of bridges
Indeed, from anywhere high

Somewhere deep inside me
Is the pressing desire to fly


Memorandum
Like a Spitfire pilot in an unarmed plane
Teachers today fly blind in a world of stress
As tigers, defanged in a cage of yelpers
Nipping their ankles, a tsunami of duress

In the final analysis,
It is now a teacher's job, as troubles increase
To potty train, to allocate time
For toothbrushing, to instill morals
To try to keep the peace
To do the job of social work and police

Many professionals nowadays opt to quit
While retirees return to man the barricades
Facing a barrage of nebulous rules and spit

Horrified, of Morningside, writes letters to the press
Lamenting the feral state of the UK's children
Where every swear by an infant reveals distress

Respect now isn't expected, but earned by experience
Against society's ills, can a single teacher make a difference?

Who has hidden the tools to balance the skills
That Education needs? Nature or nurture?
Lost childhoods lie where poor upbringing breeds

Often we're told, the teacher is not the target
The home is the main concern
Three quarters of pupils, (their needs on the back burner)
Only pray for the peace to learn


Dorothea Tanning 1910-2012
'Women artists. There is no such thing—or person. It's just as much a contradiction in terms as 'man artist' or 'elephant artist'. You may be a woman and you may be an artist; but the one is a given and the other is you.'
'Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity.'

Child of Swedish parents,
Raised in Illinois
She met Max Ernst in New York

Over a game of chess they fell in love
Their marriage lasted thirty years
Spent between Paris and the States

Her paintings are dream-like, Gothic
Insomnias
Hotel du Parot, Chambre 202
Etched Memories
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
The Guest Room
Blue Mom
Guardian Angel

Her poems explore the
Abyss
Chasm

Prepare to face the Un-faceable in her work
Her images lift the lid on incipient evil