The Little Book Of Issues: All Poems (Scots & English) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Heredity:

Homage to the Ancestors
Many wombs opened before my coming,
In Catholic Normandy, flat Flanders,
The past turns in its coils,
Blood of my tribe, spent rubies in its eyes.
Dutch, French and Gaelic, pounded into the gritty bread of Scots.

I was an old man's child,
Singer of songs as all his village knew,
Who made the short walk to the grass
In a warm winter,
Grief and joy like sword-cuts on his brow.

One brother sleeps by the maple,
Another fill the bellies of Inca worms.

My mother, a withered gourd
Came late to the birthing bed
Her christening present to me was a thorn.

Many wombs opened before my coming.
Quiet doors in the spirit house on the moor
Where grandmother's ghost is weaving a wooden cradle
So she may nurse my bones.

Breeding:

In-Bred
I come from a tribe ofin- breds
Cousins and second cousins intermarried
This was our norm; my father was kin to my mother
My uncle was kin to his wife. Cousins wed cousins
You knew what you were getting with a relative

I was into my teens when I learned the shocking fact
Most people married strangers
Horror of horrors,
Some even wed out-with the North East pool!
I opted not to cast my net too wide
I chose a Deeside man, dark like my father
Of farming stock, who handled a gun like my kindred
A Doric speaker, too.
Like a herd of pedigree cows, we knew our lineage
Stamped by the common brand of heritage

Alienation:

Birthday
Today, I am nearly six.
I am ten steps up the stair, looking in
Through the parlour door at a party.

I am bad as bad can be.
I have not been the perfect hostess,
Sweet as a chocolate smarty.

I am a black shark's fin on a chintzy china sea.
A Shirley Temple of girls is worshipping my cake.

I have dreaded this day all week.
Mother is raging. 'The things I do for your sake,
No nice pink frock when I was wee.
You could pretend to be grateful.
The hours I've spent on invites, icing, games,
Sulk then. Go sit on the stair.
We'll have a party without you.
Don't blame me if the others call you names.'

Today, I am newly six.
A circus of giggling girls
Is ritually passing the parcel,
Is whooping and laughing and yelling.

I am ten steps up the stair.
I am bad as bad can be.
From my two bad eyes, two hot wet tears are spilling.
I am wrapping my arms round my sides to hug me better.
I want to rub myself out, like a squiggly letter.

In my two bad eyes, the sadness drops keep filling..
I am dressed like a lamb on a sacrificial plate.
The jellies are spiked with spite, are laced with hate.

I am newly six. I am bad as bad can be,
Sitting way out on a limb, at six, sixteen or sixty,
Feet of clay, and a heart of rusty tin,
Ten steps up the stair,
On the outside, looking in.

Child Marriage:

Child Bride
I was ten when I married
Just after my periods started
I was a woman now, my father said

One day I was playing,
The next my ma & aunts were fussing around me
Look what we have for you, you lucky girl!

Put your dollies down, ma said
This is a special day for you.
I left my friends playing happily in the street

They dressedme in a sparkly red-and-gold outfit
My hands were hennaed. Ma gave me full make-up
Beautiful nose rings and anklets
Like I was a princess, don't you know?

She pressed vermilion pigment on my forehead
Turmeric on my body
My father lifted me onto the back of the donkey
And off we went. I thought it was a game

I felt so proud and pretty, everyone looking at me
Only my grandmother turned away with a tear

I had to kneel beside a strange old man
I think he was 30, older than my father

The burning incense made me choke a little
The priest was swaying & chanting
Someone placed a garland of flowers
Around my shoulders

There was dancing, sweets and feasting.
I grew tired. Such a long day for such a little girl!

Can I go home now ma? I asked my mother
That was when she told me I was married
My home forever now was with his family
That strange old man who had knelt down beside me

One of my aunties whispered before I left
No more school for you little one. Now you must feed their cattle
Cook their meals, wash their clothes and dishes
Do it nicely, or your groom may beat you

That night I lay in the dark in a strange house
The old man entered me forcibly
I cried out in pain. He hit me and covered my mouth
So much terror!

Next day I couldn't move. The women gave me a bath
Listen, son, my mother in law told my husband
Her 13 year old cousin died last month…internal injuries
Her genitals were torn, she bled to death
Maybe you should wait till she's 11?

Now I'm 12 and pregnant. An auntie died at my age
She struggled 3 days trying to give birth.
A girl in the next village told me this.

I pray I will not die when my time comes
Think of the future, my mother in law tells me
Give us a boy.

Future? I have no future. The river beyond my hut
Is deep and swift. One day I'll let it sweep away my sorrow

The Cycle of Abuse:

This is the Hoose Jack Biggit
This is the hoose Jack biggit.
This is the chiel
That bedd in the hoose Jack biggit.
This is the chiel that merriet a wife
That bore a bairn that bedd in the hoose Jack biggit.

This is the hoose Jack biggit.
This is the chiel
That gaed tae wark tae keep the wife
That bore him a bairn that bedd in the hoose Jack biggit.

This is the hoose Jack biggit.
This is the chiel that needit a dram
Tae thole his life wi his lovin wife
That bore him a bairn that bedd in the hoose Jack biggit.

This is the hoose Jack biggit.
This is the chiel
That thrashed the bairn
(The innocent bairn, fa did nae hairm)
That bedd in the hoose Jack biggit.

This is the hoose Jack biggit.
This is the bairn
That grew tae a man,
That took him a wife
Tae share his life
That bore him a bairn (an innocent bairn
That did nae hairm)
That he'll thrash an thraw
Jist like his da
That bedd in the hoose Jack biggit.

This is the hoose Jack biggit.......

Alcoholism:

Doon an Oot
A doon an oot. A wino.
Her face wis minkit.
Lord, she stank tae High Heaven
Tarts nails, beetroot reid
Braith, sickly sweet
Whit scaffie's bin
Forgot tae pit the tin
Lid on her?
I tell ye - I hid tae move ma seat.

The state o' yon,
Sittin, in an Art Gallery
Some fowk's nae sense o' decency

She's nae alane.
Van Gogh gaed doon the drain
Aabody liked him.. posthumously
Fame's a funny thing.
Me? White wis I there fur?
Tae see the picturs, naturally.

Hogarth wisna on view. A peety.
His 'Gin Lane's' maist affectin
An yon chiel Degas, hard tae beat,
Peintit an absinthe drinker
Sae real, ye'd nearly greet.
Whit happened tae the wino?
Yer nae in ony doot!
Realism's best ahin a glaiss,
Nae face tae face
They pit her oot.

Rape:

The Tryst
Twa lovers trysted bi the birk,
The lass had munelicht in her een,
Bit creepin saftly throw the mirk
The waukrife lad had nane.

Warm was his kiss an' strang his airm,
The blin-sicht mowdie turned awa,
Nae lad sae fine could mean her hairm,
Her bridal guest, the hoodie craw.

A lass gaed up the ferny hill,
A gowk came back wi' feint a word;
The cankered worm wis on its broo
An in its wame, the yird.





Racism

Making a Stand
One girl, private school-pupil, made a stand,
The bus was full, no one gave up a seat
But her, a gesture kindly and unplanned

The pensioner she helped thought she was grand,
From comprehensive pupils, one deadbeat.
Gobbed on the girl's braids, racist fire brand.

The girl was black. It seemed he wished her banned
From public transport. I looked at my feet
No-one berated him, no help at hand.

The rest of us, too cowed to reprimand
Him, looked away, like subjugated sheep
She stood stock still, accustomed to withstand.

We should have asked the driver to command
The thug to leave the bus and hit the street
His jeering gang all had the upper-hand
An unjust world, when life's ruled by the damned

Mental Health

Psychiatrist
Cam richt oot wi't.
'Stop slidin ben the waa, '
He said. 'Cept he didna spik common
On his pye, ye widna, wid ye?

'Haud yer heid up.
Look the warld in the face
Like a fully-pensioned member
o the human race.'

Nae fears. Nae me.
Last time I looked, ken whit?
It gobbed, richt in ma ee.
'Jist let it aa oot, ' says he.

Naethin. Mair naethin,
Scots mist, missed.
This is terrible, thinks I
I'll mak somethin up.
(Us social inadequates bein helluva fly) .
Gie him the patter...
'An whit's your assessment, my dear,
The crux o the matter? '

'Yon tree oot the windae's
Timmer an sap
Gin it rots, ye cut it doon
Ye'll nae tap me
I'm nae a bluidy tree.'
'Oh, ah see, ' he says, 'Ah see '

Hodgin in his seat
Straichtenin the tramlines
On his intercity suit
Samplin soor grapes
An inferior brand o cairry-oot.

Death of a Mentor
(for Dr. J.D.Gomersall, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Research, Sheffield)

The morning sun has risen oer the hill
And dawn is golden, pale as sifted wheat
Now every flower holds up its cup to fill
With dewy sun, the morning's rays, replete
With rainbow's hues. But I awaken, chill
From sorrow that our minds no longer meet.

A lover's thrust may thrill, may penetrate
To fornicate's the feather, but the quill
Is union of the psyche, higher state
Of character, of consciousness, of will...
With precious few I've chosen to relate
A mountain tarn is fathomless and still
The tuneful nightingale's an isolate
And piercing is the darkness of its trill

I was a high-wire walker- you, the net
Now you are gone, I tread with extra care
Knowing no catcher waits to break my fall
One slip could trip me into empty air
In that fine web of friendship and of Fate
Your death is both a vacuum and a tear

The morning sun has risen oer the town
But colder than the crypt I see it soar
For all my years, like windswept corn, bend down
Heavy with grief, to Melancholy's floor
High Spring- yet every bud in bloom seems brown
One who was here has closed the final door

War Crime:

Agent Orange, Agent Blue (Vietnam)
Birth defects, the human cost
Generations killed, or lost
Tainted crops…a poisoned brew
Agent Orange. Agent Blue.

Mango forests, deadly skies
Napalm in a woman's eyes
Mined, apocalyptic scene
Lit by jellied gasoline

Tanks for real, not movie props
Tiger cages. Chemo drops
They bring horror, pat on cue
Agent Orange. Agent Blue.

Muse:

Muse
The pool quivers and darkens.
It has become moonless, midnight black
The tilted sickle drowns, unhinged, upended

The stars are orphaned waifs
Normality's suspended
Now is the reign of the heron's stilted stillness
The corpses'clammy silence
Uncannily, unaccountably,
Unsought, unbought, untaught
A stallion springs from the pot's dead centre
On hooves of spray and ice
Marvellous, eldritch, a gleaming jetty jewel
He snorts and stamps, my lovely liquid tempter
On the banksof a poem's shivering, yawning pool
His flanks are ripples of power, thus muse of mine
My water-horse, my mentor
He waits for me to mount his back and soar
When we are joined and one
Joined and one and dancing
Into the depths of the dizzily dazzling linn
We outpour streams of words
Like flights of snow-white swans
As we plunge into creation
Into the ebony dream realm
Under the slippery salmon's silver fin
This dark lord is my shadow
I do not fear him
He gives tongue to the dumb, dead days
Pray may I always hear him


Buddhism

Journey To The Amitobha Buddha, Forres
A fox lay on the tarmac,
Back curled like a hen's feather,
Foraging paws stopped in their urgent tracks.
Dead on a full belly -
Snapped like a twig by a quick car,
A punch bag thudded onto the cat's eyes.

His delicate pointed face was bright with dew.
Round a narrow bend the road stretched wide;
Autumn burned in flames,
Where an eagle guzzled the wine of a stilled hare,
His raptor's feathers flounced like a grandee's ruff,
His great beak skinning the fur.

Under dripping shrubs,
Through webs of trees, leaves fluttered down like snow.

Journey's end.
A house of stairs and hush
Where Amitobha sat, the sunset Buddha
Above two peacock plumes, framed by a window
Holding day's dead fires.
Flowers in his hand, warm candles at his feet,
The shrine-cloth coiled beneath in folds of blood.

And then, the muffled drum-beat of a tabor,
The mantra like a pulse, lub-lub, lub-lub.
An owl rose from silent woods,
Opened his wings and scattered stars like jewels.

Ageism

Pensioner
Pensioner is a pinched, cheeseparing word
Living on rented time, in the rickety final years
With holes in them, like leaves ravaged by ants.
It smacks of blanks for words, misplaced
Like spectacles, or a reason for getting up
The eyes scanning obituaries, with a shiver

Its nails are coarse and yellow, constantly thickening
It is absent from female TV presenters,
Passed by, like slack-kneed mares put out to pasture

Nobody wants to rub it next to their groin
Or caress its breasts. It counts out every
Meal with pills and wheezes

In jobs, it's pushed aside by the thrusting young
Make way! Make way! cutting the dead wood down.

It is a fingerhold on the handrail of the Titanic
Delaying the splash, the bottle green icy fathoms

Scots:

School Visit of a Scots Specialist

Good morning, I am Mrs X, Head Teacher
I believe.you have contacted the school wishing to visit?

What would you bring to our classes here?
What would you come to tell?
I'd bring ye a leid baith stoot an guid
Aince spak bi the king himsel.

Is there a need to sow such seed
Br stories, poems and words?

Fin Scots steps oot tae the nation's youth
It rins on sangs an girds.

Maybe a poem, once a year
Lip-service to the past?
T'will come like a loon in a scarlet goon,
Nae some sairmade ootcast.

But what of the cost should we welcome it
Through Education's door?

Fit ye gie, ye get. Fit price d'ye set
On a kintra's leid an lore?
The firmament ower the birlin warld
Hauds multiple constellations;
Like a wattergaw foo rare an braw
Are the leids o different nations!

Memory:

The Half-Filled Cemetery
My memory's a half-filled cemetery
Out of my mind's windows
I see the familiar dead
Rise dressed as themselves

See, there is the dark haired poet
Sharp-suited, his flirt's mouth smiling
Promising kisses and honey

There is the mentor, his thoughts like
Wood-smoke lodged in my head forever
And three young brothers I taught
Who never grew up.

Like worms cut in two, these visions multiply
Thoughts, conversations, moments
Partings and greetings
See, here comes my brother, the conjuror
Pulling music out of his hat
And my grandmother Lizzie, kneading love like dough

There are cherry trees in blossom in this cemetery
The graves are deep in clover
So inviting

Disease:

Typhoid Summer
Oh we were the rabid dogs,
The lepers, the black plague bearers
The sewer rats, the bogey-men
Thank God for our NHS carers

Quarantine, health prison, strict incarceration
Delirium, moaning, the system under stress
Companies ruined, town treated as a pariah
Citizens panicked, a symptom of distress

Milk left on the bottom step
The family business wrecked
And testing, testing, testing
Inspect, inspect, inspect

That summer the city suffered
Till all was over, Amen!
And after, return to normal
Milk on the step, again

Covid 19: This Is A Summer Like No Other
That one small germ should bring such bother
Cities in lockdown, less footfall
This is a summer like no other

Medical staff work undercover
A few move to a funeral pall
This is a summer like no other

Scientists race, cures to discover
Vaccines to make this sickness stall
This is a summer like no other

Gasping like fish, the stricken suffer
Funerals shrink, grow sore and small
This is a summer like no other

Daughter must isolate from mother
Too dangerous to make a call
This is a summer like no other

We're told, stay inside to recover
Around the globe, staff police each mall
This is a summer like no other
When businesses go to the wall
Pray for each family, friend and lover


Immigrants/Emigrants

Immigrant
I can't imagine dying in this land.
The neighbours here have doors graffiti-red
‘Why are you brown? ' another pupil asked
‘I think because my folks are brown, ' I said

Out on our landing, someone's dumped a bed
I dream in Hindi. I don't understand
The baby words in English in my school book
At games, or dancing, no one takes my hand

I miss the smells of curry, frangipani,
The steaming chai at Delhi's teeming stalls
The cooking fires. I even miss the sewers
The thieving monkeys with their chattering calls

I miss the temple incense, the bright saris
In this new country, ma wears layers of coats
I miss the beggars, hawkers, the snake charmers
The rickshaws and the tattered rupee notes

You won't have seen a cripple on a skateboard
Or a blind boy, with both his eyes gouged out
That's what it feels to leave behind your country
A picture with the best bits scissored out


Emigration Stone
Great grandfather stood like a stone
As the ship crossed the horizon
To drop off the world as he knew it
His shovel beard, his barrel chest
Heaving a little, wordless

Letters would come in litters, like little puppies
From his lost children, Look at me, look at me,
But never bound at his heel in the surly mud.

He could use the pages to line his heavy boots
Softening the lonely walk behind the plough

He could use them to plug the holes
Where the rats came, gnawing away at his heritage
Loss, tugged at his heart like wool on thorns

Few now, to pass the salt, to chide, to praise
His saplings gone. The sky a red pyre, bleeding
What is a patriarch without a clan?

Animal Refugees:

The Animal Refugees
I'm the only elephant in Phnomh Penh
No more of my kind you'll see
My wife ran off from the killing fields
She's an animal refugee

I'm a Mekong crocodile from Vietnam
When the napalm scorched each tree

I swam to Laos at dead of night
I'm an animal refugee

I'm a slithery snake from Angkor Wat
Where the mountains churned the sea
Now tourists squat in my habitat
I'm an animal refugee

When people's homes are ripped apart
There's appeals on world TV
No one saves us. There's little fuss
For an animal refugee.

Post Natal Depression:

Maternity
Joan X and Mary Y were admitted today.
Three hours ago they shared a labour room
Clicking machines, productive screams,
Hot hands pressed like leaves.

One cot empty.
One cot full.

Rain is blearing the window, gumming the sticky view
Cut roses bloom in the ward
Their short, forced flowering fills the room with scent
Red and heavy and wet

Joan X does nothing but cry
She is breaking the waters of grief
Her child was un-becoming
Someone has sent for the chaplain
With words for every event
He will not bring a card
Or a teddy dressed in black

Mary Y does nothing. Her baby came to term
Was born and lived. Sadly, on this occasion
The mother's love miscarried,
Did not survive the labour.

The afterbirth is slippery with guilt.
The living child stirs in its hungry cot
Needy for touch and taking
The tiny hands reach out like tentacles

Its mother is stitched up tight
The Sister bends and lifts the weeping bundle
Places it tenderly
Onto the mortuary slab of a blue-veined breast
The live child lies like ash in two cold arms

Two deaths on the ward today.
And not one easy.
And not one kind

Terrorism

Easter Massacre, Sri Lanka
Three blasts in quick succession in Colombo
Three hundred murdered, wiped away at once
500 injured, families blown apart

Tourists chatting at breakfast in
The Cinnamon Grand
The Shangri La, The Kingsbury
A suicide bomber queued at the buffet to obliterate
Foreigners, locals, the too-familiar recipe of terrorism

In the Zion church, children in Sunday best
Slaughtered, flesh strewn across the sanctuary
St Anthony's church and shrine, no place of safety

A pipe bomb, detonated at the airport
Ambulances racing through the tuk-tuks,
Fire engines screaming past, police sirens screeching

Wiring hangs like spaghetti from tattered roofs
Some victims left only their shoes
The mortuary at Colombo's national hospital
Reeks with blood and moaning
The shops are shuttered, schools are closed,
Sniffer dogs seek out the dead and dying

A bomb has no mind, no heart
A bomb does not ask
Would you like to die today to further my cause? '
A bomb is anonymous,
It has no conscience

It mingles the blood of Buddhist,
Christian, Moslem, Hindu too
A bomb is hate
Served up at an innocent breakfast on a plate


The Untouchable
I am a visitor, a Mumbaikar
A humble devotee of Lord Ganesh
Fresh off the plane, the cabbie said to me
'You'll be another one from Bangladesh'.

The day the bombs exploded in Mumbai
Like paper, train and carriages were torn
Across the line. I saw my family die,
An empty sandal drop from my first-born

As if untouchable, I lived...although
My sleep's disturbed. Now, peace is hard to find
My father paid this holiday you know:
'Travel' he said, 'will educate the mind'

Where else but Britain would I choose to go?
Cricket's my passion. English, my degree.
My cousin is an engineer in Slough
'Paki go home! ' two children yelled at me.

Last week, I took the tube to Hampstead Heath
My rucksack and my camera by my side
A woman passenger shook like a leaf
At me...the man who lived, when others died.

I am a visitor, a Mumbaikar
A humble devotee of Lord Ganesh
I am no threat, no militant, no shark,
I, too, have been a fish in terror's net.

Environment

Bog
written during an exhibition at Aberdeen Arts Centre,1999, 'Wild Wet and Wonderful, a celebration of Scotland's boglands' by Scottish Natural Heritage.

I am a child of the bog. I am sphagnum, yellow as jester's bells,
I drink the dew from a thousand secret wells.

I am a child of the bog. I am the purple heath.
I am the royal road with the black, black bog beneath.

I am a child of the bog. A sleepy, scaley rope.
I am adder, the forked tongue that sleeps on the slope.

I am a child of the bog. I sting, I bite.
I am the tiny midge, cloud dancer, sharp and bright.

I am a child of the bog, the gossamer dragonfly.
My shimmering wings are mirrors that catch the sky.

I am a child of the bog. I am the slithering newt.
Here, is my alpha and omega. Here, I lay my fruit.

I am a child of the bog, the staring owl
My hood of feathers frames me like a cowl.
I am a child of the bog, the ancient otter,
Threading my fish-fuelled way through the land of water.

I am a child of the bog. I have a crown of thorns
I am the stag. I flee from hunting horns.

I am a child of the bog. I soar, I sigh,
I am the goose skimming the weeping sky.

I am a the mother of all. I am the yielding peat
I am birthing bed, and tomb, where all bog-creatures meet.

Holocaust

Hair- Harvest, Auschwitz
Copper and chestnut, raven, long and flowing
Tresses of virgins, children, all unwed
Passing the weeping-willow, windswept, blowing,
Auburne or ash-blonde, salt and pepper, red,

Braided or tousled, under the barbed-wire bough,
Tangled or matted from a prisoner's bed
Long Jewish side-locks, orthodox, hung low,
Walk to their Nazis hosts, quite safe until
Flick of the thumb will state, you stay- you go

The babes in arms, whose fledgling hair will fill
Some SS general's amply-padded chair
Top-knots and hairpins, down like snowflakes spill:
There's no escape, for Evil's everywhere;
Thousands of ashes tumble through the air

Disease:

Typhoid Summer
Oh we were the rabid dogs,
The lepers, the black plague bearers
The sewer rats, the bogey-men
Thank God for our NHS carers

Quarantine, health prison, strict incarceration
Delirium, moaning, the system under stress
Companies ruined, town treated as a pariah
Citizens panicked, a symptom of distress

Milk left on the bottom step
The family business wrecked
And testing, testing, testing
Inspect, inspect, inspect

That summer the city suffered
Till all was over, Amen!
And after, return to normal
Milk on the step, again

Failure

Death of a Career
This was the year the city dissolved around me
The snow-white horse of hope went to the abattoir
The forest of the future shrivelled and curled
Like an old hag's nails, post mortem, black and charred

This was the year the house of cards collapsed
A lizard crawled away with the Ace of Hearts
Centre stage, the joker split his sides

Limping away, the might-have-beens, the maybes
A chandelier dwindled down to a candle stub
This was the year my life dissolved around me
My useless hands like talentless lumps of meat
The career was a long time in dying
Whimpering in a corner, a beaten cur

Sex:

Heich Fur Houghmagandie!
The makk o man is richt designed
A wummin's pud tae pleisur
Gin he's weel-hung, she'll draa the bung
Tae praise him in guid meisur,
An he may chap his tirlin-pin
Her yett tae caa ajee,
Fur ilkie merry maid maun hae
A jo tae birzel wi.

The mount o Venus boos tae grip
A stick o Adam's stock;
The tappit hen lies doon afore
The crawin o the cock.
In mony's the hame at dawn o day,
The spurtle bangs the coggie,
An gin it winna, wives will gie
The guidman's cod a shoggie.

Sae shortsome, shortsome is the nicht,
Warmed bi anither's shanks
Weel leeze-ye `tween the snawy sheets
Fin luv kicks aff the branks.
Some worship lear, an ithers gear,
Gie me a rousin randy
A brawny back tae stap a crack,
Syne heich fur houghmagandie!

In Flagrante Delicto
Twa baas cam chappin at ma yett
The glory o the spheres!



Addiction

Junkie's Jewels
Donnie in the mornin, getting Izzy up
Makkin sure she feenishes the cocoa in her cup
Puin on her schule claes....butterin her toast
Raikin fur a sweetie, tae sooth his sister's hoast.

Izzy's peed the bed again. Izzy disnae sleep
Donnie's waukent hauf the nicht, coontin stars an sheep
Hamewirk's niver haundit in. Teacher'll ging gyte
Denner money's niver pyed. Donnie gets the wyte.

Dealer on the corner, sellin hash an smack
'Hello Mrs Flanagan. Wid ye like some crack?
Wid ye like a dooner, an upper or an e?
A ticket fae the cooncil scheme tae lan o fantasy?

Dealer's watchin Donnie. 'Here's a penny, son.'
Easy catchin customers fin confidence is won.
Needles, gear an syringes lie aside the bed
Wi Donnie's pyoke o polomints an Izzy's Mr Ted.

Ma sez she lues them, her bairnies are her treisurs
Bit mas hae needs like littlins. An mas maun hae their pleisurs
Fit's aa the steer aboot? She disnae wauk the street!
She niver lifts a haun tae them! They've aywis crisps tae eat!

It's lanely fur a littlin fin the dragon comes tae play
Fin the big fowk on the sofa dinna hear a wird ye say
She niver leaves them hame alane tho bendin aa the rules
Mas can be hame bit hyne awa, fin yer a junkie's jewels.


A Junkie's Mother Goes Walking Into Darkness
He died to joy when the needle entered his vein
Ashes of truth, an ever ending war
She wants a funeral held for her son's lost childhood
She wants the past to open, a swinging door

The teacher who heard him play the violin
The cousins who swam and played with him before
The golden times of laughter, strength and promise
Memories smashed like prayer beads dropped to the floor

Ever diminished by heroin's poisoned kisses
His friends are vermin she'll shrink from and abhor
Humanity peers out yet, from his sunken face
She shells out half her wages to help him score

Wit and music combined with abundant charm
When did it sicken and wither at his core?
A junkie's mother goes walking into darkness
His dealer debts she works to pay out for

He died to joy when the needle entered his vein
Ashes of truth, an ever ending war
She wants a funeral held for her son's lost childhood
She wants the past to open, a swinging door