Author: Toastingfork

Not afraid to rhyme.

Tumbleweed

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all that's missing is a cactus

Tumbleweed

If you want a Russian Thistle,
All you have to do is whistle –
In they tumble on the breeze.
An 1880s stowaway,
A foreign sprout who’s here to stay
By blowing ever West with ease.
Not a thistle, but as hairy,
From the steppes to claim the prairie,
Infiltrating cowboy lore.
Full of thorns and full of seeds,
These drifting immigrants are weeds
Just made to be a metaphor.

The first recording of a Russian Thistle in America is from 1877 in South Dakota, but ‘seven’ has too many syllables…

The High Cost of Living

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why isn't it on the bumper

The High Cost of Living

Diesel-hungry four-by-fours,
Draft-dodgers dodging wars,
Betting on the football scores –
Well, that’s the price of freedom.

Christmas Cards on sale in June,
TV news all afternoon,
And folks who claim we faked the Moon –
Cos that’s the price of freedom.

Despots have it easy,
They can do away with clutter –
But me, I’ll take the messiness
Of ev’ry geek and nutter.
So tune them in or tune them out,
But never for a second doubt
That we can ever do without.

Sticky kids on talent shows,
Tattooed arm and studded nose,
Neighbours’ hedges come to blows,
And that’s the price of freedom.

Metric units here and there,
And lots of artificial hair –
It isn’t always right and fair,
But that’s the price of freedom.

Dreamers have it easy,
They can make the world anew –
But me, I’ll take the old one
Cos it’s here and now and true.
So make it sweat or make it blink,
But never for a second think
That freedom is just pen and ink.

Dream On

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Dream On

Sleeping is our right,
It is our patriotic duty –
And ev’ry dream is freedom,
And our freedom is to dream…
Sleep, my fellow patriots,
For sleeping is our beauty –
And dreaming is our industry
In which our twilights gleam.

Storm Warning

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storm
The Gathering Storm by John Robinson

Storm Warning

The temp’rature is stalling,
And the air is tinged with tin,
The mercury is falling,
And the front is moving-in.
The cumulus is clumping,
And the sun is shafting gold,
The Ninety-Nines are slumping,
And the mugginess turns cold.

The temp’rature is dropping,
And the singing birds are stopping,
And the ringing ears are popping,
And the air is tinged with tin.
The woodpecker is calling,
And weathercock is squalling,
And the mercury is falling,
And the front is moving-in.

The chimneypots are whistling,
And the flies have stopped their buzz,
The static cling is bristling,
And the cats are balls of fuzz.
The thunderheads are stacking,
And the grey is turning black,
The sun is wholly lacking,
And the rumble starts to crack.

The temp’rature’s adjusting,
And the herald-winds are gusting,
And the anvil-tops are thrusting,
And the air is tinged with tin.
The heavy drops are splashing,
And the lightning-bolts are flashing,
And the mercury is crashing,
And the front is moving-in.

Via Metallum

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mountain
Photo by Liam Gant on Pexels.com

Via Metallum

There is no metal in the metalled roads,
But still they’re made of steel –
They take the feet and hooves and loads,
And the ever-turning wheel.
The dust and ruts and highwaymen
Were swept away in dale and fen
By smooth and fast and tarmacked threads
With footed feet and watersheds.

But these have all been laid with stone
A century or more –
The job is done, the back is bone,
The soles are growing sore…
We surely now have roads enough
To leave the wilds unpaved and rough,
And only build our future trails
As metalled roads of shining rails.

Upward Spiral

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brown snail on grey wall

Upward Spiral

A snail upon the concrete, half-way high,
Just scaling up the slabs to the broken-bottle prism
That shards into the crown that lacerates the sky –
It’s breaking up the straight lines, a bauble on the brutalism.

This snail is still there, years later, its shell becoming its coffin.  I wonder if it were poisoned by the concrete ?

Seventh Day

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like morpheus
detail from Sleeping God by ernestoriveraart

Seventh Day

And on the Seventh Day the Lord did rest,
With feet-up on a cloud –
And hereafter, in Sunday best,
We imitate his weekly quest
To switch-off from the crowd,

For ev’ry Seventh Day, the Lord makes clear
To leave the fields unploughed.
For on this day the Lord is near –
So don’t have too much fun down here,
Incase we get too loud.

But what do you suppose he does Upstairs
When punched-out from the week ?
When through with listening to prayers
And judging sins and love affairs,
And blessing all the meek,

Kicking-back with a glass of manna, say,
Or visit Zeus the Greek ?
Or maybe give the spheres a play,
Or take a jog round the Milky Way,
Or give his beard a tweak ?

Thus ev’ry Seventh Day, to decompress,
He rests his weary head –
And he commands we acquiesce
To give up any busyness
And copy in his stead.

So we must waste the day with filling pews
And quelling Monday-dread –
Half our weekend in a snooze,
A seventh of our lives we lose,
Because he swings the lead.

Stone-Sand

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photo of rocky seashore during golden hour
Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels.com

Stone-Sand

Shingle beaches, pebble-dashed,
Where armoured dunes are heaped and smashed
By hefting surf that tills and rolls
On up the beaches, spits and shoals,
Whatever flints that storm and time can prize
And toss like bowls –
All layered out by weight and size.

Gravels from the cliffs and beds
In blacks and greys, in blues and reds –
These bucket-breakers of the strand,
These castles that can never stand,
Upon a beach-head built by wave on wave
Of new-formed land,
Of nuggets dug from out the grave.

Pushing back against our soles,
The sucking wash between its holes –
This is no barefoot summer beach,
But haunt of limpet, kelp and leech.
Yet stones to scree to grains shall grow
Along this tidal reach
By silicates just going with the flow.

Sun Serfs

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photo of sunflower
Photo by icon0.com on Pexels.com

Sun Serfs

Sunflowers are conformists –
Growing equally tall,
Facing the same direction –
See one, see them all…
Until a shoot is pampered,
And displayed against a wall.

The clones out in the fields
They all droop their heads as one,
But the show-offs in the garden
They are staring at the sun.
But which will yield us seeds and oil
Once the reaping’s done ?

Wish I Were There

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switch off the office

Wish I Were There

I should be on holiday right now,
Instead I’m still at work
Still typing out reports that won’t be read.
I should be at the seaside
Cranking what-the-butlers with a smirk,
Then fish & chips on the prom, and late to bed.
I long to swap my bowler hat
For stetson, Panama, or fez
Instead of charting overheads
With Paul the Bore and dreary Des.

I should be on holiday right now,
Not swamped in endless work
While dreaming that I’m swimming in the Med.
I should be in a cocktail bar
With the just-met eyes of a sexy Turk,
Or a charming couple from outside-Leatherhead.
I long to be in Venice,
As my corp’rate stress unwinds –
But instead the sun is trapped behind
These beige Venetian blinds.