Warfare Canaries Museum Installation,2014 Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Reaching up from a pail
A clutch of prosthetic hands

A gas mask head is perched
On a roll of barbed wire
Standing on a plastic skeletal foot

A faceless skull has clockwork for a brain
A child's hand becomes its tick-tock nose
Not telling the time but waving

A sabre skewers an excellent kebab
Of liver, intestines, kidneys

A pulpy mass of pink with two green eyes
Hangs upside down in a canary's cage

Miniature toy soldiers made of lead
Are dwarfed by a forest of bullet shells
All pointing up to the heavens

On a salvaged hospital bed
(Its mattress, torn khaki, canvas)
2 crimson painted stumps of uprooted trees
Resemble ripped out hearts with screaming arteries

Mortars pierce ceramic, shuttered busts
The world is perched on a spiral
Diminishing down

For afters, a walking stick,
Nailed with the badges of many far flung countries

Black balls of blood like a child's metal marbles
Clotted and skewered on prisms,
End with a horse's tail