Author: Toastingfork

Not afraid to rhyme.

The Morningstar

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The Horsehead Nebula, as photographed by William Mccarthy

The Morningstar

It’s a little known fact, but so they tell,
That the Devil loves astronomy.
And when he steps away from Hell,
Away from the caves of his citadel,
With their ceilings of monotony –
Then the one thing that he wants to see
Are stars in infinity.
Is it a part some evil scheme ?,
Or simply that the Devil, as well, can dream ?

I wonder if he can visit them ?
Or can he only gaze from Earth ?
I’m sure he understands each gem,
As much as the Star of Bethlehem,
And over aeons watched their birth
To their glorious end, and brought him mirth
When friendships were in dearth.
Has he lusted for their gleam ?,
Or has he simply been condemned to dream ?

The Bible doesn’t mention much,
Except as signs, or points of light.
Or else, Creation Week and such,
But science there is out of touch –
Like Joshua, needing time to smite,
Commands the Sun to halt its flight –
He knows that that ain’t right !
So is it to score one for his team ?,
Or simply cast away that crutch, and dream ?

There is surprisingly little astronomy in the Bible – there is the basic flat-Earth cosmology which both their smarter neighbours the Persians and the Greeks had already debunked, but not much stargazing it seems. There are numerous references to the Moon, but always in passing – none of them suggest anyone is actually looking at it. Job has mention of Arcturus (or Leo, or Ursa Major), Orion, the Pleiades, and the Chambers of the South (possibly the zodiac, or Centaurus and Crux), but oddly no mention of the very prominent Sirius or Cassiopeia. For a desert culture, you would think that those big skies would feature far more…

Inner Beauty

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Inner Beauty

Skeletons are wonderf’ly spooky,
The freaks that lurk within –
They look both menacing and kooky,
Skinny without the skin.
Skulls with empty orbits,
Missing noses, plenty of chin –
Now freed from the muscles’ corset,
They can flash their toothy grin.

The shoulder-blades hang down behind,
In-front the breastbone juts –
While the ribs are like Venetian blinds,
Or a prison with no guts.
The pelvis is a pair of ears,
To form the butt of our butts,
And the legs and arms are rod and gears –
All held by strings and nuts.

Skeletons are wonderf’ly spooky,
Almost designed to shock –
Though evolution is rather fluky,
And frightens us ad-hoc.
They’ve been the backbone of vertebrates for years,
Our building-block –
So ev’ry October, it’s good to say cheers –
Deep down in our marrow, we rock !

Pareidolia

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Detail from an image of the Cydonia region of Mars, taken by Viking 1 (and NASA, of course).

Pareidolia

The world is full of faces,
And especially at night –
In the most mundane of places,
They are popping into sight.
They mean no harm, I quickly wise,
But not before a scare –
All it takes is two dots for the eyes,
And out they stare.

It’s stupid, though, it’s stupid,
And it’s evolution, I expect –
To keep me safe from non-existent phantoms
That my nerves project.
My over-active, pattern-seeking brain
Is wanting to protect –
And here it goes again,
In its pure inventiveness,
As it fashions features out of tree-trunks –
Just in case, I guess.

I know it’s all a trick
Much like those pictures upside down –
A face emerges slick
And makes a gasp out of a frown.
Though most the time, I always find,
It’s just a chance alignment –
All it takes is two dots, then my mind
Provides refinement.

It’s stupid, though, it’s stupid,
And it’s psychologic, I expect –
To root out ghosts in random architecture,
Till my nerves are wrecked.
My overworking, trigger-happy brain
Is so sure it’s correct –
And here it goes again,
With its scatter-shooting strafe,
As it ferrets faces out of shadows –
Just to keep me safe.

Octatonic

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Photo by Aakash Sethi on Pexels.com

Octatonic

Ring out the bells,
The carousels,
The minor-thirded
Murder swells !
The long-sustaining,
Over-reigning,
Peace-destroying,
Cloying bells.

Some use clappers,
Some use hammers,
Gentle tappers,
Noisy clamours,
Hear their sobbing
Undertones
Then feel their throbbing
In our bones.
From wedding airs to fun’ral songs,
Let swing those gothic gongs !

Ring out the bells,
The peels of spells,
From churchy chimes
To grimy hells.
The long-decaying,
Belfry-swaying,
Steeple-hanging,
Clanging bells.

Some say angel,
Some say villain,
Pure or painful,
Each carillon.
Hear their numbing,
Hear their mourns –
In want of drumming,
Lacking horns.
From monast’ries to citadels,
Let speak the tongues of bells.

Cusp & Foil

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The Devil’s Parlour, an AI confection created using Leonardo

Cusp & Foil

Despite its very un-human appearance,
Brutalism is not of the Devil –
Hell is not open-plan nor split-level,
But rather refined in its elegance.

For Satan loves him a good bit of moulding,
And finds the Gothic suitably striking –
It’s churchiness is much to his liking,
With shadows and alcoves with secrets withholding.

He relishes how it is so un-chaste –
A messy farrago, where carvings cavort,
So clearly theatric, but not overwrought.
He’s rather old school in his decadent taste.

He champions all human endeavour,
He hungers for art, and lusts for pleasures,
Encouraging people to greater measures
Of genius accidentally clever.

Now God, he think, is a philistine,
And Jesus just sees a building as walls,
While Paul doesn’t care for the awe of St Paul’s –
They can’t see the passion within the divine.

The rage of the counter-Reformation
Is nothing but pigments on canvas, alas.
They hear no angelics within the Mass,
Nor thunder within a preacher’s oration.

But Satan knows humans are flesh and blood,
Like gargoyles hanging from rafters and nooks –
They may be grotesque, but we cherish their looks !
For Adam was formed from the dust and the mud.

But Heaven, he finds, is a Brutalist hell,
Raw and unfinished, with Puritan spartan
Enough to frown and hush and dishearten –
At least the Pit has some tales to tell.

The Pearly Gates are some steel-and-glass doors
In a weather-stained wall, not old, not new,
With nothing to say to those who pass through
To where ceilings hang low above beige-grey floors.

It makes good sense, though, that Hell with its fires
Has flames in its tracery, flickers of polychrome,
Bringing a warmth to Lucifer’s home –
For beauty is something that even the Devil requires.

Technically, both philistine and spartan are racist terms, but since the people who identified as such are no longer around as groups distinct from their neighbours, these are victimless crimes.

Brutalism on a Cold Dark Night

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Appropriately enough, this grim render was produced by AI.

Brutalism on a Cold Dark Night

Was there ever an architecture
Better suited to the psychopath ?
A soulless, sucking void of arrogance
From a concrete aftermath.
Revolted by the human touch,
They strip us down to a naked shell –
Forget the creepy Mansard roofs,
When this is the door to Hell.

Architecture that loves to unnerve us,
Streaked with grey and urban rot.
It stalks us down the side streets,
As its slabs are looming into shot.
Ashamed of beauty un-grotesque,
It’s where our inner demons dwell –
Forget the spooky moonlit tombs,
For this is the door to Hell.

But worse, is the way this architecture
Spreads its gloom across the globe –
All local style is crushed beneath the bulk
Of this alpha xenophobe.
Abhorring even a glimpse of nature,
Condemning us all to a prison cell –
Forget your wrought and iron gates,
For this is the door to Hell.

Haunted Houses

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Haunted Castle by nihileswari (though surely AI…?)

Haunted Houses

Whenever I watched those creepy old movies,
I’d always ignore the psychos and ghouls,
And focus in on the architecture –
So wonderf’ly Gothic, so atmospheric !
Why were the characters in these old movies
Such philistines and such fools ?
Ignoring all of this architecture
And long to return to safely generic ?

I never found them creepy –
The shadows and arches were part of their charm –
Those Second Empire carpenter’s mansards,
That echo the castles of Prussia or Serbia.
And always the films were so sneaky,
Suggesting flamboyance is doing us harm –
For florid is evil – don’t stray from the standard
By daring to question the rules of suburbia.

For all that Conservatives moan about Horror,
It’s always been an ally of theirs –
Punishing drinking and sex in full
While the Final Girl is a goody-two-virgin.
And concrete has a Protestant aura,
A purity in its workaday airs –
Don’t be too flashy, too individual,
And squash down any expression emerging.

But all that Brutalism delivered
Was paranoia in ev’rything else –
Satanic panics were preached from the pulpits
Of low-ceiling’ed prefabs and walls of glass.
The decadent styles of the past sent shivers
That must be exorcised from our house –
And always rebellious goths were the culprits
Within the fantasies of their class.

Yet Horror wasn’t so saintly or pure –
With teenager heroes against their parents,
Yet parrotting cultural norms unwittingly,
Not quite thinking them through –
Which brings us back to the architecture
Mirroring this clash in appearance –
Dormers and towers are outcrops that fittingly
Symbolise warts on the face of the New.

But the poor jocks and nerds were always too busy
With running and screaming, to ever behold –
But I did.  And I wept if they set one alight,
To pay the ultimate cost.
Capitalism has left them so dizzy –
To buy all this new stuff, and knock down the old.
You think they’re haunted ?  They’re haunted alright,
By all of the beauty we’ve lost.

I must spotlight a recent video essay by Kendra Gaylord.  I cannot concur with her admirtation of Edward Hopper, but I certainly can agree in her love for the Mansard Roof.  And although the groteque capitalism of both the French Second Empire and the American Gilded Age are most-assuredly horror-worthy, I have always found the inhuman sterility of Brutalism far more suited for existential dread.

Violin Violence

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The Old Violin by William Harnett

Violin Violence

How can something so mellow
Sound so scratchy in the wrong hands ?
How can a starting fellow
Be encouraged to stick to their plans ?
And not be lured away
By an easy piano with its separate keys –
How can we learn to play
If we never can go as sweet as we please ?
If we must have things like untuned strings,
Then the neighbours don’t need to hear.
If our notes are bums and our fingers thumbs,
Then we need some friendlier gear.
Yet the pros aren’t a piglet’s squeal,
Or the hinge on a rusty gate –
So how can a sound so real,
Be a sound so hard to create ?

Wayfinder

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Sanctuary by Rodney Matthews

Wayfinder

I know where we’re going, trust me,
All the signs are showing thusly –
Follow me, I have the knowing
Of the way like nobody.
For I know where the cows are lowing,
I know where the crows are crowing,
I know where no debts are owing,
And the air is free.

Where the stream is flowing fleetly,
Where the wind is blowing sweetly,
And the strings are softly bowing –
That is where we need to be.
So nevermind how much it’s snowing,
Soon we shall be warm and glowing –
For, despite our to-and-fro-ing,
Still our stars agree.

Though it seems we’re slowing quickly,
And our path is growing prickly,
Still we have to keep on rowing,
Or we’ll wash back out to sea.
So let’s keep on this line we’re toeing
Let’s not think of overthrowing –
Soon we’ll reap the steps we’re sowing,
Home in time for tea.

The Elephants of War

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War Elephant Head by Ruslan Bikmurzin

The Elephants of War

The jumbos joined the battlefield,
To put the steeds to fright.
For what use were mere horses
In the face of so much might ?
But the other side were not done yet,
This wouldn’t be a rout –
They launched their secret weapon
As they rode their mammoths out.

So the jumbos and the mammoths
Clashed upon the battlefield –
They flared their ears and trumpeted,
And neither side would yield.
They reared-up on their hind legs high,
They broadsided and barged,
And they shook the ground beneath them
As their ten-ton leaders charged.

But what with all their bellowing
To war and kingdom-come,
It soon become apparent
That these hunks were not so dumb –
They targetted the riders,
Pulled them off with probing trunks,
And skewered them upon their tusks,
And flayed them into chunks.

They stamped upon the humans,
And they kicked them from their path,
Till they were the last ones standing
In the bloody aftermath.
And they touched their heads together in a truce,
And sallied forth –
With the jumbos on to Africa,
And mammoths heading North.

Obviously AI, but it serves its purpose…