Impossible Gifties 10: Poem by Sheena Blackhall

for Gift 10: Street Scene — Edinburgh Writers’ Museum

and the washing still out drying

the day got up with a hang-over

birds played hide and seek

with a boy’s flung stones

behind a window, a pentagram’s scrawled on a wall

in red but it’s saying nothing

Saturday's whores grow ripe with sweat and sin
On the cobbles at gap-toothed windows

a  mongrel scratches its balls
whines for a wished-for bone

from under the pub door cigarette smoke seeps out

the smell of whisky and spit flows over the evening

Jeannie Froubister didn’t throw herself off a bridge

or swallow a bottle of bleach

she met a murderer in an Embro street

such a nice man too, with perfect hands and manners

and salaried, you can’t trust anybody

strangled, and the washing still out drying

© Sheena Blackhall 2012

Impossible Gifties 9: Poem by Sheena Blackhall

for Gift 9: Dinosaur — National Museum of Scotland

Like T-Rex

It felt as if it had rained for centuries
Drips fell ding-dong remorseless, over the drowned fields

As if summer had been deleted altogether

Even a pope might lose his faith in prayer
The Thinker up his plinth

Was pondering arks and floods

And then, like T-Rex loose in a china shop

The sun burst out

Such a big thing

In our tiny world of happenings.

© Sheena Blackhall 2012

Impossible Gifties 8: Poem by Sheena Blackhall

for Gift 8: Cap and Gloves — Scottish Poetry Library

Gifties

I wad gie a cloak o the wud bee’s fur

The wings frae a jenny wren

Tae shakk the mools frae the yirdy kist

That’s happen the neist step ben

I wad sow the grun wi the norlan stars

Reap waves far the burnies shift

Gin I cud boo at the moo o daith

Thon dark kist lid tae lift

For jist ae teet at fit’s lyin there

Ayont the warld’s sairs

I’d rype the reid frae the robin’s breist

Beard cats in their Heilan lairs

Thon kist… is’t stappit wi kith an kin

An the joy at the eyn o wytin?

Or is it teem… an the mools a swick

An daith bit a new braith kythin?

© Sheena Blackhall 2012

Impossible Gifties 7: Poem by Sheena Blackhall

for Gift 7: Magnifying Glass — Edinburgh Central Library

Honing In

I am honing in on my poem

Should I rhyme it?

Should it be written in Scots or English?

In the kitchen, some fish has gone off

A crane fly is banging its legs off the wall

Like an insect giraffe

The air conditioning rattles in its cage
A rapper on speed

The washing tangles and whirls

A soapy octopus, with rainbow legs

All day I write this poem and I grow older
I do not watch the children play in the street
Little explosive Catherine wheels, whooping and wild

The triangular geometry of my bottom
Fills the computer seat

I am honing in on my poem

Who knows if anyone will read it?

© Sheena Blackhall 2012

Impossible Gifties 6: Poem by Sheena Blackhall

for Gift 6:  Lost in a Good Book — UNESCO City of Literature

In ma Uncle’s Cornpark

In  ma uncle’s cornpark  fin the hairst wis stooked

I hid in a shaif, a shaif fu o fuspers an mysteries

Wi a craa as ma ain familiar

The sun daunced ben the cornflooers

As I cocked in my stibble throne

Whyles, a moosie squeaked, kennin me

A princess in borraed claes

Wyvers spun tales o knichts an hidden treisur

An auld tattie bogle, leanin ower the dyke

Keckled deep in its thrapple like a warlock.

© Sheena Blackhall 2012

Impossible Gifties 5: Poem by Sheena Blackhall

for Gift 5: Tea, Cake and a Book — Edinburgh Book Festival

One Lump not Two

My dear woman,  have you actually met the writer?
Not that one should judge 
But really, her agent should muzzle her

Oh, there goes X,  noble but washed-up
His partner’s a real little asp

Knocking at fame’s door in dreadlocks
Isn’t that Y, last year’s lauded versifier?

If only he’d  died when he’d written his first,
His obit would have been ‘A Trier’

And there’s  old B, the critic
Whose reviews are mind-numbingly dire…

A lover no-one wanted, he wrote from the heart –
A pity it was a transplant.

© Sheena Blackhall 2012

Impossible Gifties 4: Poem by Sheena Blackhall

for Gift 4: Dragon’s Nest — Scottish Storytelling Centre

The Dragon

In a dark neuk o Embro toun
A thochtie aff the Canongate
A dragon’s egg, jade green an roon
Hatched oot a thoosan years ower late

The craitur hodged an raxxed its wings
Syne kittled up an set its mind
Tae scoor the cassies, wynds an stairs
In search o ithers o its kind

Tae Embro castle first it flew
Inbye St Margaret’s chapel bouer
Caunles an sancts in peintit glaiss
War aa that held the dragon’s glower

It hirplit ower the castle hill
An dowpit bi the witches’ well
The warlocks, knichts an ghaists war gaen
Nae hint o cantrip, imp nor spell

Bi Brodie’s Close, St Giles’ kirk
Traffic an towrist hashed on by
The Street o Sorras, tae, wis teem
O aa bit History’s daith-cry

It lowped tae Mary’s palace syne
Thinkin it auld eneuch tae be
A bield for fabled, mythic breets
Bit nocht wis there bit statuary

The Warld’s Eyn. The dragon stopped
Deid in its tracks an drappit doon
It wis inveesible tae aa
The waukers in the modern toun

A steer ower at the Netherbow
Gart the young dragon lift its een
It pressed its snoot agin the peens
An catched the glamo’rie o yestreen

Intae a thoosan sangs an tales
It stepped. They bad the dragon bide
For fit’s a warld withoot the fey?
As wae’s a groom wioot his bride!

© Sheena Blackhall 2012

Impossible Gifties 3: Poem by Sheena Blackhall

for Gift 3: Cinema — Edinburgh Filmhouse

The Charge of the Movie Brigade

Look! From the Gods to the upper circle

Virtual reality has crossed the line

Riders whose horses thundered over Europe
Pour from the painted screen

All the dead soldiers, putting the spur to their mounts

Re-enacting, over and over, battles, bombing, bloodshed

The audience has caught fire,

A banker down in the stalls, battered by rifle butts

Bleeds into his popcorn, his right eye blown

Deafened by gunfire, women cower in the aisles

A tiny bassoonist down in the orchestra pit

Is squashed by a cannon wheel

Careering by, stage left

It’ll all be showing twice nightly with weekly matinees

Only the characters change, the plot and the war’s location

No one bows to the audience after a war

Steps forward and confesses to muffing the lines

That might have averted it all

The tragedy is, that no-one faces the music.

 © Sheena Blackhall 2012