Author: Toastingfork

Not afraid to rhyme.

Licence to Crenellate

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
castle
These battlements are clearly too small…

Licence to Crenellate

Once-a-time, when castles wore a crown of battlements,
Their merlons hid the archers in the toothy parapet –
And when the peasantry came by to pay their serf-and-chattel-rents,
It wasn’t solid walls that awed them, but the holes that made a net.
If only they had known how they were more for show and ostentation,
Arrow slits too small to use, and windows big and weak –
A single siege would give the lie to strength in crenellation
But who would dare declare their home as battle-less and meek ?
So castle-style continued long past castles were of any use,
As if a Henry Tudor were no diff’rent from a Robert Bruce.

To be clear, battlements are very effective when their big enough, but by the time of Bodiam (1385) and Herstmonceux (1441) things were on the slide.

Breakfast in the Ruins

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
post apocalypse

Breakfast in the Ruins

This !  This is the time that I’ve been waiting for,
When the cars leave the street and the planes leave the sky,
And only the zombies are joining my morning,
While sensible people are waiting to die.

And I – I am a rare survivor,
Finally special – finally alone –
Scrabbling the rubble of civilisation,
Shaking off every habit I’ve known.

I never said my fantasies were pleasant,
Wiping out humanity with barely a shrug –
But there they lurk, just itching for apocalypse –
Not some ugly famine, but a quick and silent bug.

Do I feel bad, now something has happened,
Has finally happened !, to strangers I never knew ?
Though I’ve wished worse in my listless hours –
But wishing is safe, for they never come true.

I can tell myself that it’s all coincidence –
Out of my hands to cause it, or to repair –
So I might as well relish the sudden upheaval
If this is our doom, then I’ll guess I’ll see you there.

But thanks to the efforts of folks far nicer,
We’ll prob’ly survive this, and prob’ly forget.
And I will be just one more drudge on the treadmill,
Still dreaming disaster to spin the roulette.

Ancient & Modern

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
papyrus

Ancient & Modern

To tell the future we were here,
To tell our names and what we think,
What gods we praise and tribes we fear,
What bread we bake and wine we drink –
That we do more than just hunt deer
And gather fruits for year on year,
But proudly harvest grain for beer !-
Then build in stone, and write in ink.

Too many cultures vanish, gone,
Because they left nothing behind –
They were forever moving on
And left no footprints in the mind
But others carved and others built,
And others wrote in soot and gilt,
So we might know who worked the silt –
Because their names were proudly signed.

In Stelloriam

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
crab nebula
A Hubble image of the Crab Nebula

In Stelloriam

The supernovas all are dead already,
Dead – but not yet gone.
They flare, they fade – but holding steady,
Nebulas are glinting on
To mark the spot within the eddy
Where the star had shone.

The supernovas all are dead,
But oh, they make a lovely grave !
Now some stars swell up fat and red,
But find they haven’t got the head –
While others fade away instead,
As all the light they had, they gave.

But supernovas, when they die,
They die with one almighty blast
That sings from out the daylight sky –
But even when their peak has passed,
Their nebulas still testify
They saved the best to last.

Brackicide

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
bracken

Brackicide

(In reply to the Weeds Act [1959] )

Bracken fronds have grown in Britain since the Ice Age quit the field,
But suddenly the Government has said that bracken has to yield –
And ragwort too, and certain thistles, though they’re natives to a leaf,
Are now declared as stateless species by the gardener-in-chief.
Buddleia, bamboo and Spanish bluebells get to spread their reign,
While good-old British dock is in the dock, as though it grew cocaine.
There’s plenty caterpillars eating all the native weeds that creep,
But legislators only care for what can feed our cows and sheep.
So throw them off the grouse moors, sweep them into gutters, dumps and ditches –
Can’t have plebby natives on our fairways or our cricket pitches.
Hack the forests down to make our rolling plains of pastures green,
Then wonder why these woodland plants are growing where the trees had been.

Schrödinger’s Cactus

~ Toastingfork ~ 2 Comments
green cactus
Photo by Ravi Kant on Pexels.com

Schrödinger’s Cactus

My cactus sits in an earthen pot
All sullen and squat
By my garden gates.
I think it was here when I bought this plot,
It thinks who-knows-what
As it watches and waits.

It’s spiky and green,
And what else can be said ?
It waits to be seen
If it’s living or dead.

My cactus sits in an earthen pot
Where it does not-a-lot
For year on year.
It does not flower and it does not rot
In the cold and the hot,
In the rain and the clear.

It’s spiky and green,
And what else can be said ?
I bet it’s still seen
Long after I’m dead.

From Eden to Creation

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
eve & adam
Adam & Eve by Mantegna Andrea

From Eden to Creation

Knowledge has always a dangerous gleam,
And there in the Garden, that treacherous Snake
Would tempt and corrupt with so cunning a scheme –
To lead the naive from this Heaven to harm,
For fog to be lifted and dawning to break,
To shatter these shackles of innocent calm.
But Eve bit the apple for humankind’s sake,
For what the Lord fears is what humans can take –
Just give us an inkling, just chance us an arm,
The glimpse of a theory, the trace of a wake,
The hint of a sequence, the ghost of a theme,
The scent of a notion, the birth of a dream,
We’ll bend it and twist it and pick at its seam,
And build it and test it and lay bare its charm,
Till genome and quantum are held in our palm.

Efnniht

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
brown and green grass field during sunset
Photo by Jonathan Petersson on Pexels.com

Efnniht

A day or two will pass between
The Equinox and Equilux –
In Autumn, it is Night who’s keen,
While Day has lingered, still in flux:
So one’s already evened out,
While still the other lags askew.
In Spring, it’s all reversed about
As Day leads by a day or two.

‘Efnniht’ or even-night was the Old English name for the equinox.

Twenty Seconds

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
washing hands

Twenty Seconds

        1.
Eeny meeny, counted Queenie,
Fingers one two three and four –
A fish alive and thumb makes five,
And on the other hand there’s more.
So rub-a-dub and squeeze and scrub,
And this little piggie wee wee wee
Index middle ring and little,
Pinkie perky owe-you-tee.

        2.
Queenie went to market
To buy a bar of soap
She went to Deal and Margate,
And Cape Town on the Hope,
But a laundry-maid from Washington
Had bought up ev’ry crate,
So Queenie had to wash with none
But ashes from the grate.

        3.
Queenie on her lone and only,
All her friends are all indoors –
They’re down with spots and chicken pox,
And tummy-aches and sores.
Queenie finds the streets are empty,
Like the swings and slides and stores –
They cannot come and play today,
They’ve all been through the wars.