Of Barking Dogs And Lady Godiva (27 Poems) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1. A Walk in the Desert

I seldom speak of this
And not to strangers
The desert that I inhabit
Holds empty boxes,
Masks of smiles and frowns.

The sun's an unwanted intrusion
It's minimalist. I have moonlight for company
The horizon's a crater of cacti

You could walk the plank
Where the cracks begin to show
This orb has ceased to orbit long ago
Now, it's suspended over an ominous void
Like a noose, a noose
That's swinging, oh so gently


2. Pathways

There, where the trees stand tall
Where the road is trodden down
This is the path to town
Followed by most.

Crows call
Here where the leaves scarce fall
Rich in each golden crown
When with a corporate frown
Gardeners burn them all

There is a second way
Blackbirds dropp from the bough
Merry with dew and singing
Far from the hoe and plough
Ah, to be there in May
And all the bluebells ringing!



3. At the Ebb

The crucifix stands high and dry
Sky is a Bible no-one's reading
Stone walls crumble into sand

Now at the ebb, great tides receding
Systems betray, and peoples die
Chernobyl, Dachau, all unheeding
Poisoning minds or poisoning lands
Now at the ebb, great tides receding

Over the oceans factories fly
Greed and need are forever seeding
Justice and opposition banned
Now at the ebb, great tides receding
Spin doctors, politicians lie
Aiding war mongers frenzy-feeding
Succour the foul, the underhand
Now at the ebb, great tides receding

All of the misery man can buy
Someone must pay for - hope lies bleeding
Global warming at every strand
Now at the ebb, great tides receding
Eden will soon become a sty
Man plays God, fresh horrors breeding
Frankensteins at his cloned command
Now at the ebb, great tides receding


4. Roses in Rain
Come rain or shine
Come hell or high water
Roses continue to grow

Tenacity of Waterloo proportions
The light brigade pushing
Against all odds for the sun
For a moment's glory


5. Stitch Up

Gender's a stitch up.
The woman wears the world on her skin
Hence nip tucks, boob jobs
Fat sucks, face lifts, botox
Plodding along the cat walk of her days

Never looking beyond her own two feet
The man's a thinker. Watch this space
A think bubble
Waiting for a Eureka
See how straight he stands
His world, a football


6. Femme Fatale

She is wearing the birth mark of Eve
She has no blusher
Her durex elite's in the bag
She is wearing her flirt skirt
Sporting her lucky knickers
Surprising her mobile
The morning after the trap.
The Brazilian clinched it
It was a close shave.


7.Barking Dog

The scrawny dog
Looks right in the eye of the storm
Under the accumulating clouds
Four legs firm
Head Barking


8.Measured Steps

Leather sandals skipping along
Soft to make her feel good
Phonic rhymes and fairy book times
Pop goes her childhood

In and out of college and school
Bopping off to disco
Bruiser boots and tottering heels
He's proved his manhood

Jogging off to office or bank
He's thinking of the mortgage
She's off working nine to five
Just like a mum should

Kids all grown and flown away
No use cogitating
For you can't retrace your steps
Pop the hearse is waiting


9.Wild Introductions

At the height of noon
Lady Godiva entered the streets of shoppers
Wearing stilettos, standing on a boar.

It was a perfect tusker, bristling like a brush
Words failed us. We gulped. We goggled.
She was a porker, carried it well though,
Or rather the boar did, nonchalant old ham.

Her hair was cropped at the nape
Her only apparel, stockings sans suspenders
Patterned with fields and meadows
Like Picts' tattoos

We heard police sirens wailing up the road
She carried a giant cannabis leaf in her left hand
Sinister, like.

A man with a honeyed ferret narrowed his eyes
Listen. The lewdest thing in the whole shebang
Was the orchid that flowered at her feet
A flagrant vagina.


10. The Elvis Impersonator

Draws himself up like cobra
Stands in a pool of light
He is dressed like a street-boy
The tickets are priced sky-high.
His greasy hair hangs lank across his face
His heels begin to drum
His shirt is damp with sweat

It is like watching Beethoven play
Beside his piss-pot
The eye will always stray to the foul container
Bypassing the golden swell of gracious notes


11. Pigeons and Girl

The pigeons descended like snow
From the white clouds on a windy April day
Then the kids came, boisterous as tumbleweed
Bombing the pigeons with cans and kicks and shouts

And she sat there, still as a figurine
The bracelet of birds at her wrist
Hungrily pecking the seeds from her cupped hands
Like St Francis who understood the winged world
Being himself part angel
The children gone, the trees rained birds
Onto her arms transformed to boughs of flesh.


12. The First Days of Autumn

Maria's thoughts are foraging for her son
They are racing along the dusty roads to school
While she cooks paella. She is the hearth
And axis of the house.
The magnet pulling the family to its core

This is an old village. Even the starlings are leaving
Shaking the frost of autumn from their feathers
Juan has carried his CV seven miles
His hat is pulled down hard against rejection
He is not an adaptive commodity
In a market of flux and change

Juanita's mouth is filled with Catalan
Words pour from her like water from the tap
Screwed tight at school. There, everyone
Uses Spanish.

Two dogs on the hill
Get by with barks and sniffs

Senorita Jerez stares at a tablecloth.
A wasp crawls over her untouched bowl of fruit
She has removed her peach,
Replaced it with a sherry.

Her husband dines with his mistress
Slow, Senorita Jerez will draw the cork.

Steps go down to a pond of festering reeds
The sun's extinguished. One star blinks awake
Two lovers kick aside the tumbled leaves
Fall into each others arms like swing doors meeting

Old Pedro drives his seven pigs along
Walking behind small tails like twitching bedsprings
His son Jose and grandson Federico
All day have raked weeds from a broken drain
The village church bells chiming, Six seven eight

Everyone needs a region to call their home
Where there is land, sky, night
A cricket chirruping somewhere in the olives

When the credits fade in the cinema,
The tribal currents of jealousy and joy
Waiting there in a warm, familiar landscape


13. Pros-op-agnosia:

If we pass on the street when we happen to meet
And it seems that I just doesn't knows-ya
Don't take it to heart as if struck by a dart
It's only my pros-op-agnosia

'Hello' people say, stepping into my way
In Bangor, In Banchory or Bosnia
And I look wholly blank with an empty think tank...
It's only my pros-op-agnosia

I'll give you a clue..we once met at Loch Dubh A
nd discovered we both played harmonica'...
You might as well tell to a desert sea shell
Because of my prosopagnosia

Remember that night? Why, the landlord turned white
When you danced wearing only a fuschia! '
You recall with a grin. Did you serve up the gin?
Oh it's devilish, this pros-op-agnosia

Worse...I can't smell at all...just another short fall
You could stink of Old Spice or ammonia
Not a clue would there be to your identity
Combined with my pros-op-agnosia

I detest when folk smile...say
'I'll give you a while It'll come'.
So will mould on ambrosia
If left on the plate. I'd much rather they'd state
That we shared the same bus in Estonia.

Just lately, I lie if some strange passer-by
Say's 'It's you! ' I reply, 'No comprendia..
My name is Yocande from that little known land
The country of Pros-op-agnosia


14.Van Goth's Sunflowers

We are Van Gogh's sunflowers
Reporting from the other side of the glass

Red herrings lie in the air
Between patient and doctor

It's always on the tip of their tongue
Freudian slips the psychiatrist coaxes from them
`Take your time' he says
Furiously clicking the nib of his ball point pen

The patient stares at our yellow, squirming petals
Breathing in-out in-out
We too know what it is
To be watched


15.The Bride who Carried a Dolls' House

Marriage is a precision instrument
That must always be checked for accuracy.
Therefore a doll's house should be carried
Rather than a bouquet
In the afternoons, between work
And her husband's arrival,
The newly-wed may wish to study her dolls
In their small, domestic theatre.
She must practice balancing millstones
Transforming flour to bread
Like a creaking windmill
Her husband walks through the door


16.The Barbary Ape

I am a British ape, a true blue monarchist
My troop is billeted at the Queen's Gate
My wife refers to me as 'The Old Contemptible'

She is currently picking the fleas from my left ear
Her nose is the colour of brushed peach
With nostrils, slim and delicate as a split pea
Her bum is a bruised pomegranate

I myself have many admirers
I have fine thin lips, like Darwin
A serious expression,
And luxurious, grand side whiskers

I think I may be descended from professors
My grandfather died in the Royal Naval Hospital
As befitted an listed ape, on the military pay-roll.
He was named after Admiral Nelson, the records show.

We are a national treasure,
On daily rations of vegetables, fruit and nuts
Alms, from visiting tourists, have been banned
Begging is not the traditional British way.

I am a bona fide 100% Macaque
Tattooed and micro-chipped for identification
My identification photo is held by Interpol
My troop is inspected and checked on a regular basis

When the rock is bare of apes, the British will leave
Sir Winston Churchill himself ensured our survival
Smuggling in reinforcements under cover of darkness
When our numbers fell to barely sustainable levels

My great-great-great-grandmother, Hibbu Faziz
Took the subterranean route beneath the Straits
According to the legends of my people.
She may have been the Queen of Drowned Atlantis.


17. The Dance Mistress

Adagio! Madame shouted.
We were puppy fat trussed in tights
My fingers laid on the barre were pale as lard
My satin ballet pumps were flesh made silk.

Allegro with arabesques and pirouettes
Madame was a scarlet scarf on a dancer's high
Whereas my tu-tu was a bristly porcupine
My spangled belt, a tummy tourniquet

We changed direction, tried the Ghillie Callum
Over the crossed swords, the victory dance fell flat.
Father gave me the claw of a ptarmigan
Clasped in silver, a Cairngorm on the hilt
Mother, the flouncing jabot, the heavy tartan

There was talk of sow's ears, silk purses
I was snapped elastic, stiff as a marionette
Madame was sympathetic, but unyielding

Forty years on, her farmer son spoke riddles
A messy business... poker, blood, a fire
He blamed the Devil, said he drove him to it
She would have been a living leaf of flame
Twirling and falling in the dance of death.


18.The Sampler

Shadows spilled from the folds of the practice sampler
Each week the linen rose, a crumpled Lazarus
Each week I was Penelope, forced to unpick my labours
The sampler was the elephant in the Art Room
My needle stabbed and jabbed at its gender parameters

Boys who studied Art were handed chisels
For hours we bent to our allotted task
Our little squares of boredom
Learning our place in the pink quilt of the world
Obedience, dear, is a lesson to be valued
And sticking power, of course. That thing you lack


19.October 1916

Scotland. The mist lies lightly on the land
In kitchen jars the wine-red brambles set
Fences are built to stop the rough-shod ram
Mounting a neighbour's ewes.
No fools' neglect
Leaves blank defences.

Roaring evening fires
Drive families inward from the cold and wet.
Along the Somme, gas hangs in shell-shocked trees
A frozen corpse is pocked by clotted blood
His fellow-soldier, bound in thorns of wire
Like a snared rabbit, twitches in the mud
Round Bennachie and Loclmagar, the byres
Are filled with steaming cattle every night

The fields are ploughed.
The prized potato crop
Is lifted, sorted, saved from frost and blight.

In Devil's Wood, an eyeless, bloated horse
Floats in a trench, where rats glut on the dead
A baker-boy, swells in his uniform
His flesh transformed like doughy, sodden bread

The men who set their lives aside for war
Walked forward up from Hell through History's doors
Lance Corporal Hitler, wounded near Bapaume
Carried the killing seeds like mushroom spores


20.Red Horseman of the Apocalypse

Shovel the bones in Auschwitz
Sri Lanka and Darfur
Remember Nagasaki's rain
Once fell like Devil's spoor.

Earth is a violent planet
Where fierce guerillas fight
To milk the poppy harvest.
Corruption outweighs right

Bury them in Rwanda.
Ah, there, the dust is red
The blood of fallen farmers
A tidal wave of dead

In Afghan lands and Israel Iraq and the West Bank
The little children's drawings
Show gun and fist and tank
In Kashmir it's artillery fire
In Lebanon, the bomb
In Chittangong in Bangladesh
The terror lingers on

Namibia, Nigeria, Somalia know well
The human price of confict Of mine and mortar shell

In the Cambodian Killing Fields
The skulls lie crate by crate
War tourists view the genocide
Of Pol Pot's nightmare state

In New York city's ashen streets
How the Red Horseman laughed!
For bloody is his countenance
And deadly is his craft.

His Lord and Master's Ignorance
With Bigotry and Greed
The dogs of War that run beside
The Hell-hooves of his steed

And until Peace pervades the world
He rules in Awfulness
And razes countries to the ground
And murders loveliness


21.Currency Crunch

Predatory lending, , , Business talks
Corporate jollies, , , Joe the Plumber
America sneezes

overspending doves and hawks
empty trolleys
Wall Street tremor
World wheezes


22. Something Amazing

Beside the dancing water at Terminal Five
A businessman wearing a trench coat
Dips his mouth to the lips
Of a pretty Thai girl, sipping her kisses
Like a stag in the cool of evening tasting a pool.

His smile as he comes up for air
Says 'Something amazing just happened.'


23. The Soap Poem

Gutted John walks out on love-cheat Mary
Jim snogs John. But Mary's parrot sees
John and Mary's marriage nearly over?
Mary's secret lover's uncle Fred
Loved up John calls Mary's Fred a pervert
Freddy does a runner to the Costas

Deep down, Mary's heart is torn apart
Mary loses it with drugged up granny
Jim's her dealer. Granny hits the bottle
Freddy's back. A hit-man shoots the parrot
CID charge Jim with stalking Mary
John comes clean and Mary has a face lift
Uncle Fred has bedded cousin Cindy

Crazy Mary snaps and cheats with priest
Parrot sells its story to the tabloids


24. Spanish Sunday

Rain is a high-powered hose-down everywhere
English dilutes in watered tourist-speak
Wrong-footed I gesticulate in air
Struggle where sullen vendors do not care
For foreigners, like Frenchman, Scot or Greek

Bull-ring I say. The waiters stand and stare
As I, with pointed fingers try to share
By charging up the pavement like a geek
My wish to see this ritual affair
You want a steak Senora, maybe rare?
A waiter guesses, wrongly. Heavens leak

The day is dreich's a tale by Baudelaire
I'm Gulliver in Lilliput. A freak
Tongue-tied by meanings that play hide and seek
Costa del Sol shows its sadistic streak


25. Pillar of Hercules

She's riddled with cannon shot,
A raddled old rock, randy camp follower
The fringe of her salty petticoats
Lifts where the Med. meets the stiff Atlantic breezes
One of the pillars of Hercules,

Gibraltar's head lies on a quilt of clouds,
Looks down on a dolphin bay
Battered by storm, simmered by sun
She stands in her own shadow
Waves, lapping around her ankles.

She keeps a look out on two continents
Oh, she's got a colourful past
She's fond of a tar and a squaddy
Old Nelson entered her once, he was
Always one for a girl with a roving eye
Muslim, Anglican, Jew, Catholic and Sikh...

Gibraltar's an easy berth
People crawl up her sides like beetles the wind could flick away
The Levante blowing east from the dry Sahara
Has dried her face, her sides,
Into a warren of tunnels where caves have dragon teeth
Here, everything speaks of home
But is not home. Same street, a different house.

Apes are juxtaposed with British policemen
Shipping lies in the bay like Christopher Robin's toys.
The tide climbs up the rock, then tumbles back
Like Zebedee, dropped off the Magic Roundabout
Streets are a necklace of the known, unstrung and rolling
Geography's fallen through the crack in the crazy paving
She's terribly British, Sahib,
Best fish and chips and curry in the world!


26.Monkey Business

A Barbary ape that I stroked
Sank its teeth in my flesh, unprovoked
While the one on my head
Stole my ice cream and fled
And I hope that the wee bastard choked!


27. Bullfight

People spill from their gardens and plazas
To savour the spectacle, the frisson of steel on bone
Into the sandy ring, the bull hurtles
Wearing his black Sunday coat
Men put out the eyes of the bullfinch
To make her sing better, just as they'll goad this bull
With lance, harpoon and shout,
Till he's nothing but rage and fight.

He has not been de-horned nor calf-killed.
He has not been castrated.
He is a son of Minos, this bull. His horns
Have the wide embrace of ivory scythes.
His juice could sire a herd worthy of Mithras.
He could crush a farmer's rib-cage like a nut.

The sun-topped arena is a blazing eye.
Into it, steps the gaudy matador
He is graceful's a Cretan bull-leaper
Bending his back like a bowstring
Rising up in his pumps, his muscles taut
His manhood tucked to side of his skinny pants
Like a lithe Nijinsky.
He is wearing his suit of lights, embroidered gold.
The ancient ballet begins, the dance of death.
Think of Yiyo, killed by the bull Burlero Of Manolete, killed by Islero.

The bull snorts, pissing hotly into the sand
A bubbling hiss.
Crowds throw hats and roses into the ring
Ole they cry as a horn brushes the matador's velvet thigh.
Fear breeds fear, like fire in a dry season

Fear is a scorpion hiding in the shadows
Its sting ready to strike.
Spinning on his toes, the matador rears like a cobra
Plunges his sword dead centre
The wound opens up like a flower, like a dark orchid
The lungs, red bellows, drown in their own blood

Black bull with cloven hooves, sticky with sand and blood
Leaking your own gore, brute strength is no defence
Against subterfuge, the power of wit and weapons

The bull collapses, a tent that won't stay straight
Its hedgehog head bristling with lance and sword
Tail, ears cut off, as trophy, he stiffens
His small black eyes fixed on the fiery sky.