On The Rocks (Eng) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

The Big Easy/New Orleans
On New Year's Day,2025, a terrorist drove a truck into celebrating crowds, causing carnage

The end of life should be a peaceful thing.
When sleep slides into death, as in a dream
When spirit joins the secret, silent stream
The end of life should be a peaceful thing

The end of life should be a peaceful thing
Not some nightmare where city sirens scream
Not seared upon the global media screen
The end of life should be a peaceful thing

The end of life should be a peaceful thing
Not mowed down by a murder fuelled machine
A happy street turned hideous, obscene
The end of life should be a peaceful thing

Out of thin air, a guillotine descending
Wrong time, wrong place. Beyond all care or mending

I am Lochnagar
I am Lochnagar
The biggest mine crater in the Somme
Is named after me.
Lord Byron composed a song for me
I feature in postcards, paintings, brochures
I have Royal Connections
But does the adoring public cherish me?
Litter louts ruin me with rubbish,
Human waste. Barbecue detritus

In return, I throw avalanches at them,
Flesh chilling blizzards
Thick as pea-soup mists,
100mph winds.
Nothing puts them off
In April 1981, a climber fell to his death
From the final pitch of Black Spout Buttress.
He was un-roped, so his 2 companions survived
Their number wasn't up.

Up they come in flimsy trainers,
Summer joggers, no compass
Thinking a Mars Bar's all the back -up they need
When they pit their will against mine
As if I'm a day out on the beach

I flick them off like flies
Their bones splinter like matches

My cliffs are 200 meters high
The Stack, Eagle Ridge, Black Spout Buttress
The Sinister Buttress, The Sentinel
Perseverance Wall, The Cathedral Chimney
Magic Pillar, Jacob's Slabs, The Vice…
They chip away at my sides, erode my paths

Sometimes they die of exposure, frostbite
Hypothermia. If they are lucky enough
To be rescued, by helicopter, or Mountain Rescue teams
They crow about how brave they've been
The glory of the challenge. No word
Of the cost and inconvenience to others.

Climbers heart rates skyrocket.
The very unfit keel over with heart attacks.
Strains, sprains, fractures are de rigeur
Asthmatic? Stay at home if the weather's bad.
I am one of the immortals
I am Lochnagar. I am not a playground


Three ds
Relocated, demented, divorced or dead
Another year gone by. So many fled
The wise, the loyal, the witty, the always game
The young bulls turned blind, or deaf, or lame

Relocated, demented, divorced or dead
Too frightening to contemplate what lies ahead
Twelve months on, more spaces at the table
Did I dream my life? Or was it just a fable?

Relocated, demented, divorced or dead
Pale ghosts drained off like veins that opened, bled
And was it worth it all? The passion, the ambition?
Vanished like tumbleweed in a Hollywood cowboy fiction?


Well Hello Mr Death
Some people say Death is a thing to dread
That life at any price is to be sought
That at the last, the heart should rule the head

Professor Bakker took a girl to bed
A student - his poor family were distraught
Suicide his solution. One snipped thread

Alan Whyte was pottering in his shed
A heart attack, quick end, and not too fraught
Death called, and he was happy to be led

Mrs Clare in childbirth cried and bled
Her labour pains in vain, all come to nought
A little, unused life was born dead

Pierce Douglas in his souped up motor sped
(Adrenaline junky, wheels burning hot)
Quite off the road, to the Hereafter fled

John begged and stole, thus his addiction fed
Killing him by degrees, Death slowly bought
One hit too many, . So, another, fled

And thus in many forms, welcomed or fought
Death takes us from our work, life, couch or cot


On the bus
A student, hunched in a parka nods off, snoring
Condensation matches the rain down-pouring

A shopper blocks the seat with bulging bags
A skeletal beggar steams in his sodden rags

A bully dog curls its lip in a grimace
‘Sorry! ' the driver growls ‘We've no more space'

A schoolboy rings the bell and everyone groans
An OAP who's standing, sighs an moans

A pot hole makes the whole bus jump and jar
For comfort, safety, better take the car


The Pinto Poem
I imagined a white pony called Pinto
Once, it had been a circus horse
In a fictitious circus.

Now, it stood in the rain and mud
Of my mind. Stalled at verse one

It refused to move. It stamped and whinnied
It steamed. It snorted.

I placed twigs under its belly. I lit them
It neighed out a sentence in equine indignation
It dropped an expression of dung

I shoved a bunch of thorn under its tail.
It looked at me as if to say ‘Really? '

I gave up. I led the Pinto poem
Into the stable of imagination
A cobweb drifted over my cerebellum
Behind my left ear, an owl hooted softly
Sugggesting a line or two or maybe a sestina


A Fishy Poem
Carp & brill, haddock & hake
Kipper, halibut, whitebait
Tuna, bream, pilchard & sole
Sturgeon, shark, & mackerel

Mullet, salmon, plaice & trout
Cast your hook & pull it out
Sardine, tuna, swordfish, pike
Herring, cook them as you like

Favourie Friday food is fish
Served with chips, mouth watering dish


For Rab Blackhall 1945-2025
His work is done, his kindly presence gone
The best of men, a well respected breed
Grown from a pedigree of farming seed
Today Cromar has lost a precious son

In youth he was a source of harmless fun
At marquees he was quick to join the dance
Took off his dram to many a smiling glance
Today Cromar has lost a precious son

And in the show ring, many times he won
Prizes for leading cattle, groomed and cleaned
Their hides brushed sleek, hooves polished till they gleamed
Today Cromar has lost a precious son

Fate measures each man's span, his race is run
A father, husband, grandfather and friend
Cherished by kin and neighbour till the end
Today Cromar has lost a precious son

Death always brings the power to hurt and stun
And in the howe there's heavy hearts today
His trials ended, pain now smoothed away
Today Cromar has lost a precious son


The Marmalade Millionaire
In eighteen hundred and eighty six
John Keiller of Dundee
Bought land on Deeside's bonnie braes
An went on a spending spree

He built in granite Morven Lodge
Twas named ‘The Shooting Box'
And lo betide the pheasant or grouse
Or occasional straying fox

And those were the heady sporty days
When toffs met up to shoot
Whatever flew up from the heather
Dressed in tweeds and sturdy boots

This great Victorian entrepreneur
He didn't grow rich on spam
But on that queen of the condiments
His famous marmalade jam

They say his ghost still squelches about
The Gairn, in his thick plus-fours
Fuelled by a breakfast of porridge and toast
With the marmalade he adores