Of Gas Masks, Napalm, Weasles (26 Poems) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.The Witch

Her knife, like a scarlet beak, clipped the apple's side
Her restless dragon bared its teeth at the pot
Its tongue spilled over its lips, a lick of flame
On her shelf, a black egg imprisoned the wind.

Her blood boiled when they ordered ten barrels of tar.
She laughed her head off, saw right through them
When they promised mercy

Making it rain cats and dogs was a piece of cake
When asked why she did it, she told them
All flies have wings. A circle has no side

Her excuse was,
If there were no nettles, violets would cover the lea

The day she died the moon turned inside out
The sun turned a blind eye.
Two salmon by Ballochbuie turned to stone


2.The Gas Mask

A gas mask lived in our cupboard
Rubber, with huge bug eyes.
Its arrival pre-dated mine,
A female baby-boomer

It belonged with the aerial song
Of bombs that gralloched my city
The thin, high Sirens' whine

Its straps and buckle were tentacles
A disenfranchised horror, clammy's a dead skylark
Turning sour in the wet clay. It had out-stayed its welcome

At night, in post-war pyjamas
Watching the coal on the fire with its tigers' eyes
I thought of the lungs of soldiers, frothy as candyfloss
Their tongues like those of nightingales, impaled on spits.
A present out of the blue from poisoned skies


3.Woodland Matins

An aphid is using my finger as a footstool
In the loch, a thumbnail trout is building bridges

Leaves fill with chirrups and cheeps
Wing-whirrs part bounce-back twigs.

And this is what wise men wish for:
Water, sunlight, trees
The drone of bees on bluebells.
Miracles such as these


4. Out of the Orange Jungle: 1972

A June like any other in the village of Trang Bang
A plane, low on the palms
Dropping a sun that turned the jungle orange

Out of the napalm fireball ran Kim Phuc
A human torch, wearing her skin as a shawl

The cameraman dropped his lens
Stepped from his job, gave succour.

Countless operations down the years
Saw Kim Phuc's shawl grow old,
Her face, a lamp of peace.


5.War Tourists

In Cambodia tourists visit the Killing Fields
The main attraction...there, plough-shares raise skulls.
Amerasian children of the dust, in uniform-black,
Tell of the mangroves, cleared by agent Orange.

At My Lai, drenched in blood by Charlie Company
Storytellers stir the broth of the past
Shaded by coffee plantations and black pepper trees
Hawkers and soft-drink sellers peddle junk.
The country's major selling point is war


6.The Wind's Nest

I am more cuckoo than wren
Could clear a nest in a moment
Leaving it wicca-woven for the winds.

I am Brueghel's ploughman.
Splash! It's not my worry
When high-fliers take a tumble.
What's the fall of Icarus to me?
I place the ball of my foot in a firmer furrow.

I am Rousseau's sleeping gypsy
Loving the stars, the moon, the warm sand
Letting the dark dream-lion nuzzle my ear

I imagine a Chopin Prelude, hiking up the emotion
As I step from the world's tent like Captain Oates
A practised martyr.

I am Ted Hughes' pike, hanging alone in the water
My old sides worn ribbons of battle honours
My eyes two tin-tacks hammered into my head.


7.Weasel

Because I was too slow he would not wait
Because I wished to watch he disappeared
Leapt from the pool of sun on the forest track
Swallowed up by the dark crack of the dyke.

I only wanted to see behind his eyes
Into the little chamber of his mind
Chips of light, they dulled, and clouded over

When I grew tired of waiting, he came back
A flicker of fur, a lick on the grass like flame.


8.On My Father's Grave

I seldom visit my father
Only at high summer.

It's twenty years since I laid the earth on him.
`Haven't the years flown, ' I whisper to him.

Here, in the hill's cup,
The song of thrush and blackbird
Seep into the soil. A beetle
Creeps from the undergrowth
Is dazzled by the sun.

The sky is blue as speedwell
Clumps of clover knit the lea together

A spider treads the rutted veins of my hands
Trickling off towards the granite headstone

Mrs God has joined our family gathering
See her beaming from that daisy's face!


9.Fledgling

It lay on the side of the track
Dropped by some predator
From the dark wood, the fledgling
The parent bird not witnessing its fall

It had happened
When the mother was somewhere else
Practising scales in a tree
Or fetching dinner

Its beak was open in a silent scream
Its small legs drawn up tight
On the blue cave of its belly
A wisp of nest-moss clinging to its claw

Deja-vu. Mother was peeling spuds
When I toddled into the lane
Climbed a neighbour's wall (A childhood Everest)
Slipped astride the ravishing teeth of glass
Studded along the top to keep out thieves.

I didn't recognise the screech was mine
My river of screams ran dry as I went cobbling home,
Torn knickers bleeding.

No questions asked. Not held.
Adult stuff. Whispers in corners
Of dark things waiting in lanes for girls alone
Dropped into bed mid-day, small legs drawn up tight
No soft stuffed bear could hug away the pain
The bear's soft face unblinking as a Sphinx


10.Self-Portrait of a Young Man

Looking into the mirror he saw
Pythagoras, Bob Dylan, Aristotle
Applauding his intellectual performance
But not the Arctic lorry pulling out.
His body, the pathologist determined
Was common-place as a stick of Brighton Rock
Shot through with others' thoughts.


11.Red Letter Day

Mabel suicided off the pier,
Too heavy to survive life's bouncy waves
In fish boxes her past sailed out beyond her
Stamped `MacDuff in letters branded red


12. Balquidder Glen

The stencil of a frog upon the tarmac
Is etched in blood, a crimson ballerina
The gate is new, the path beneath is ancient
Sheep and folk have worn its flesh away

A wheeling buzzard lassoes beds of broom
Its yellow eye burns on a dot of fur
The heavens are catacombs
For the glen's worm-eaten gods

Forget-me-nots form roads where pale feet patter
A water-bull ploughs up Loch Voile in furrows
Wind-tossed sheaves of spray, splay on the shore

A thistle, wearing purple Mohawk hair
Its neck in studs like a young Goth's bulldog collar
Dribbles a trail of spittle down its leaves
Dandelions, those yellow spivs of summer
Give it a wide berth.

A stream spends nickels and dimes from the bog's mint.
A stilt-walking forest bares black-nippled trunks
Advancing up the hill like a fifth column
A wounded tree, a gaping hole in its side
Is a patch-up job of lichen, cob-webs, wood-dust
Till lightning calls to relieve it of its duty.


13 Last letter

These closing years have rushed apace, pell-mell
They've had their share of roundabouts and swings
This could be my last letter of farewell

But what to say? Who'd listen? What to tell?
Too late to seek forgiveness for some things
Better not done, old sand spilled from the shell.

To start with, youth delivered the hard sell
Ambition led me on, its kisses, stings,
Higher I climbed and stumbling, harder fell
I wed, I bred, I watched my belly swell
I played the game of house and wedding rings
I wombed four children, bore them, heard them yell

I closed my parents' eyes. The funeral bell
Tolled also for close friends.
Now, murmurings
Of ghosts surround me, a lone pipistrelle

The ferry's waiting. Soon I must propel
The oars to where the cob swan beats his wings
This little life has been a bagatelle
How weary turns the cosmic carousel!


14. Maggie May

Being a nautical icon could be fishy
A sexy, spongy girl of orifices
`Sweetie' they said, 'Just keep on saying yes'.

She stared at the hangers, where her outfits waited
Imagined being old...so very old
She'd get to wear her hair like mouldy thatch.

For now, she wore her hairgrips in a vice
Stood on one leg like a heron, acting coy
Ate tarts with matelots between the sheets.
She tightened her whalebone steys,
Adopted the Siren look, with power dressing
Slipped on her sealskin jacket, oyster pearls

She was the harbour every sailor dreamed of
Rum and pepper, she had them on the rocks.


15. Mafia Nicknames

Tony the Ant and Mr Fish, Big Tuna, Teflon Don
With Sally Fruits and Charlie Moose, know something's going on

Mad Sam, Three Fingers, Joey Doves, Ice Pick, Milwaukee Phil
The Falcon, Paint Glass, Handsome Jack, leave bullets in the till.

Sammy the Bull, the Turk, the Gent, Balloon Head, Trigger Mike
If they walk in your local bar it's time to take a hike!


16. The Cannibal's Wish-List

I'd have Lulu with an omelette,
Spike Milligan on toast
Pavarotti as a pizza, Johnny Prescott as a roast

I'd have Kate Moss with a twiglet,
Michael Parkinson as tongue
I'd have Gordon Ramsay pickled, stewed or rare and under- done

I'd have Paul McCartney in a pie,
Prince Charles in a kebab
I'd have Tony Blair with tripe, and have his missus dressed with crab

I might then poach Alec Salmond, or turn Jordan to a crumble
Though the implants might be dicey and the pickings rather humble

I could saute Mr Paxton, turn Bush into potted head
Hang Prince Philip till he ripens by the garters, in the shed


17.The Little Word Tornado

Rotas, iotas, flotillas, Godzillas
Ebony parakeets, Marley and locks
Bitterns and vittles white thistles and mittens
Foxes with barnacles over their socks

Sour-berry, fruit- pebble, mandible, chatter
Chuzzlewit, peewit, and Derry-down dale
Evils and weevils elliptical swivels
Words shaken up in the swirl of a gale!


18.Adios Amigo

Even after a fitful sleep
The creased bed linen loses its lines in the wash
Rises fresh to the wind

The high tide of the matter wasn't his dying
Rather the remorseless way the sand
Continued to cover the shore
Washing his human steps away like salt


19.Demolished House

Let to rot, the chimney pealed with gulls
Window frames became a fringe of ferns
The ceiling opened to receive the sky

Devout mice genuflected in the wainscot
The demolition squad came in like a cleaver
Chopped it up, like a pepper on a plate

A blue chair faced the sky on the second storey
In the basement, boots kicked masonry into touch

In the skip, the freezer mourned its lack of ice
Dust and dead flies littered the mantelpiece
First, the cleansing, then re-written space


20.Minutiae

Between two breaths,
Marmalade cat, an eye-feast crosses the lawn.

A fly is rubbing its front legs clean of flower
In the cupped rose, clumps of tea-leaf beetles scatter

The cherry tree is one long arm of bracelets
Nettle sharpens her teeth on the sun's whetstone


21.What the Wicked -Fairy Mother Never Said

Welcome, little stranger.
I spun your flesh from my blood
For nine months, you rocked
In my cradle of flesh

What a beauty you are little doll-girl!
I shall cradle your every cry
My milk is yours for the taking
Warm as the love you'll have in plentiful measure


22.The Vanishing Woman

The self, like a tent, was always pegging her down,
Trying to fill her up with views and reasons
So one day she just dissolved,
Became nothing but light and air
A glitter of mica, an atom of delight
A fleck of spray in the mids of the cosmic ocean


23.Sea-Scape No 9

A wave, like a green boy, races along the shore
Herrings gulls howl their heads off, white sea-wolves

Under the green rip tide, a lace snags rock
A red crab lifts the tiara of its eyes

On the prom, chained bikes are tethered in the cold
A lighthouse turns its glass eye to the horizon
The Ferris wheel creaks round like an ancient windmill


24.Sherlock Holmes's little unsolved Mysteries

Mrs Lamb at number 87
Owns a Bavarian ottoman, impact resistant

Mr Bruce's left trainer is always missing a tongue
His Irish partner wears her slippers out

There's no right turn, the road is always up
Mrs Brown keeps a flick knife underneath the mat

Eddy is lathering his chin. His towels are monogrammed.
There are more children here, than you'll see on Exmoor
Lives on a short leash, wearing out the lawns

Up and down the worn steps they tramp
To Bingo, tanning shops... for biscuits, perms
For nasal rings and head shaves, trips to Spain
And all the garden gnomes in pokey hats
Roll up their eyes, pretend to fish for carp


25.Situation Critical

Sometimes I'm here
Sometimes I'm not
No plant
No earth
No seed
No pot.


26.Canary

The fall guy, the feathery litmus paper
The miners' canary mistook need for love
As many do.

Sometimes it dreamed of tropical flowers and creepers
Not knowing the sooty streets above were ice
Not knowing that black crows waited
To rip the song from its throat