Author: Toastingfork

Not afraid to rhyme.

Out in the Styx

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Pluto 1
Charon & Pluto by NASA

Out in the Styx

Pluto – the solar system’s Greenland,
Cold and remote, an inbetween land,
As way beyond the horizon he lies.
Infact they are a similar size –
And Charon is Baffin – who watches him sleep,
While facing each other across the deep.
An arctic fox and a polar bear
Of the Kuiper Belt, that pair.
If planets are continents, these two are islands:
So icy and ancient, yet teasingly shy lands.

Their names and status are pure propaganda
The truth, of course, is both lesser and grander –
Fascinating for their own sake,
Despite the islets that clutter their wake.
But here, their orbits must diverge:
As Greenland enters its warming surge,
While his long summer cannot last –
His perihelion has passed.
So into the Hadean depths once more,
Upon the night’s Plutonian shore.

Paley Ontology

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time clock silver stone
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Paley Ontology

William Paley,
(Still quoted daily)
Chanced upon a timepiece while out walking on the dale.
Pondering its presence,
Mulling on its essence,
He saw it was a Made Thing, and all that must entail:
Here there were no surplus parts, no way to make it less dense –
If this must have a Maker – why, then Man must likewise hail !

Grand Mr Paley,
Postulating gaily,
Never knew the fossils that were lurking in the shale.
So too have the watches
Seen their share of botches:
Dodgy trains and axles who have never found a sale.
Cruel is such selection as inflicts their cogs with notches,
And calling time on any found irregular or frail.

Poor Mr Paley,
Breaches in his bailey,
Holes in his hypothesis, all bigger than a whale.
Thermal compensation
And grand complication
Have grown in watches gradu’ly, and clearly leave their trail.
So tick evolves to tock with ev’ry not-quite-iteration,
In the coiling of the spring as in the spiral of the snail.

More than a Footnote

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TP
Terry Pratchett by Kevin Nixon

More than a Footnote

The dawn light is welling in the dams –
Hold it back a little longer.
The thunder is rehearsing for its roll –
Don’t give the cue, don’t let it blow.
The dragons on the moon are all asleep –
Let them dream, let them hunger.
The gargoyles are watching from above,
As are the dwarves from down below.

If we can only stop the Disc from spinning,
Maybe we can stop the ever-grinning-one
From winning,
Do you reckon ?
No, I know, that isn’t how it works,
And none escape from he-who-never-shirks,
Come the beckon.

And so the Disc must turn,
The dawn must gleam,
The lives must flow,
The turtle swim.
It isn’t fair, we scream,
Because we know:
It isn’t fair, it’s only Him.

So cuckoos are winding their clocks up,
And pine trees are counting the years,
And you, who saw it all, yet laughed at seers:
You are not there, you are gone –
Yet still it goes on.

You know, some say that no-one truly dies
If someone else remembers them in once-a-while.
My friend, I think you’ll live on in disguise
However long that we can read, and we can smile.

Out of Lock

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key
Key by dreamijo

Out of Lock

If keys should lurch
From out our care,
Then spare the search:
They are not there.

So cars and gates
And unwound clocks
Have naught to sate
Their hungry locks.

The keys are lost,
They won’t be found –
For dropped or tossed,
They’ve gone to ground.

These keys live on,
They are not dead –
They’re gutter-gone
And softly fled.

Holy Smoke

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smoke

Holy Smoke

“New Pope Francis I was a chemist before joining the priesthood.”

– The Vatican Talisman

Black smoke rises,
No bells chime –
No-one gets to reign this time.
Too much ash
And unburned carbon –
No-one gets to put the garb on.
No red shoes
And no election
When the soot absorbs the spectrum.

Of course you knew,
Though could not see,
Locked-in within your conclave walls –
But did you muse
On chemistry,
With thoughts beyond the Sistine halls ?
Your former calling, calling still,
Electron shells that need to fill,
Covalent bonds that still attract,
Reagent spirits interact –
Until, born up on thermal wings,
The particles of life shall dance –
And crowds shall watch these benzene rings,
And trade their schooling for romance.
Francis, Francis, what get’s passed on ?
Less Assisi, more of Aston.

White smoke rises,
Bells are ringing –
It is you, this new beginning.
Oxygen
Within the salts
Have brought fresh air beneath the vaults.
Watch out, though,
For excess flack,
For white smoke stains as much as black.

Of course you know,
Though will you see ?
Locked-in, within your papal robe ?
Please don’t forget
Your chemistry –
It’s not in Genesis or Job.
So will you be the iron fist,
Or will you be the scientist,
And stress how best our souls are driven
Through the brains that we’ve been given ?
Till, borne up on hungry wings,
We seek for ever greater knowing,
Blown by what tomorrow brings –
But will you join us where we’re going ?
Francis, Francis, reawaken !
Less Assisi, more of Bacon !

Like Rain…

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waiting
Waiting for a Friend by Maureen Hyde

Like rain…

Now, where was I again ?
Thinking, I think, about my thoughts,
And how many do I have each day ?-
How many zeros-worth, would I say ?
And should I call them ohs or noughts ?
And why is seven longer than eight ?
And eight o’clock, is that too late ?
So when does evening turn into night ?
And goodnight – must it mean goodbye ?
Can we say bad-bye ?  Worth a try ?
But is it really worth the fight ?
Boxing ?  I’ve never seen the draw,
Unless the glove is hiding a claw,
A mutant from a mad professor !
And don’t forget a screaming blond,
Unless it’s bleached and we’ve been conned !
Poor mum was scammed just last month, bless her.
Just last month ?  Or the month before ?
They go so quick, I’m never sure…
But why no ‘h’ in ‘sure’, I wonder ?
Seven wonders – pyramids…
I used to love them…them, and squids…
They’ve got some giant ones, Down Under.
Down…below the upper feathers…
Have they feathers round their nethers ?
Where do birds go in the rain ?
Still pouring, by the sound,
My thoughts just spinning round and round.
Now, where was I again…?

International Women’s Day

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women
image by Bridget Badore

International Women’s Day

Some women are doctors,
And some women are dockers,
And some women are punk rockers,
Fire-fighters, romance-writers,
Occupants of bishops’ mitres,
Pacifiers, rabble-rousers,
Mini-skirted, wearing trousers –
Anything a man can do,
For good or ill – a woman will,
And ev’ry bit as bad or skilful, too.

Some woman are bikers,
And some women are bakers,
And some women are homemakers,
Blond-plaited, bowler-hatted,
Rugby-balled and cricket-batted,
Fat-catted millionaire,
Manning-up to grow a pair –
Anything a man can do,
For left or right – a woman might,
And ev’ry bit as grim or brightly, too.

Carriers

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close up of human eye
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Carriers

He:
 To see my parents, chocolate for eyes –
To see my siblings, thoroughly brunette.
To see myself is seeing dusky ties:
Too dark for mousy, yet too light for jet.

She:
 To see my siblings, there you see my eyes –
To see my parents, there you see my debt.
To see myself is seeing fates devise:
So brown is passed to brown, and brown we get.

Both:
But see our children, golden in their flush,
So pasty-blanched of face and pale as day.
So bright in hair and eye, so fair in blush,
So flax and dandelion in the hay.
Our children lurked within us all the while –
We show, not in their eyes, but in their smile.

Love in Letraset

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green and black industrial machine
Photo by Wendelin Jacober on Pexels.com

Love in Letraset

She asked if we could correspond –
She asked of me in Garamond.
She wrote how long her pen had dried –
She wrote it out in Franklin Wide.
She thought my slugs were growing cold –
She thought me that in Goudy Old.
She wept how I was needed back –
She wept it all in Cooper Black.

She’d search through slab and Monolith
To strike upon her perfect glyph,
And thought I could be just her type:
A heavyweight, not Candy Stripe.
When I wrote back, she liked my scans –
No Dingbat, I, nor Comic Sans –
My quick brown fox was framed and pressed,
And from her font my text was blessed.

She inked her heart across my page,
Italicized, in 10-point gauge,
In boring secretarial –
But god, I loved that Arial.
I flew upon its static chill,
As if she’d signed in Baskerville.
Her monotype shall answer me
As fine as Blackface Chancery.

Composited in forme and mould,
Our love is set in Gothic Bold –
We’re written on such plates as these,
My mistress of the matrices.
I place my serifs on your sort,
Your metal hot, your kerning taught.
You shape my bowl and soothe my stem:
My Century, my Requiem.

Concestadors

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family tree

Concestadors

Just think, there once was a couple like us,
Some ten or twelve thousand-odd years ago,
Who looked on their children and started to suss
How far might their progeny grow –
From out of their children would flow ev’ry nation,
All wandering further with each generation,
Till ev’ry damn human alive in creation
Is each one a cousin – we’re kinfolk, you know.

From Kenya and Fiji and Rome and Nepal,
Through love, rape and conquest, each fam’ly propels –
They’re mother to each and they’re father to all,
They’re filling our veins and our cells.
Their dynasty, you and me, thoroughly blended –
They’re either to ev’ry- or no-one descended.
And could it be, thousands of years on, portended
That we shall be flowing through ev’ryone else ?

A concestor is the last common ancestor.