Author: Toastingfork

Not afraid to rhyme.

Bigger Than Jesus

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Photo by Snapwire on Pexels.com

Bigger Than Jesus

So you’ve formed a band, hey ?
A bunch of like-musicians have joined-forced with each other.
Time to chase that fame
And choose a name
For all of your future fans to discover –
One that sticks in the mind okay,
Yet’s easy to say,
And you won’t be ashamed to tell it your mother.

We’ve all of us kept lists as kids,
Whenever we heard a future name
In a turn-of-phrase or a parlour game.
Well, now it’s time to make your bids,
Set all those quirky titles free –
They may just be your new identity,
For all the times you joked with a whoop
“Now that’s the name of my future group !”

Don’t call yourselves after one of your members,
For therein lies an ego –
I guarantee, of all career-enders,
This is the bitterest blow.
The public assume the namee is the main-man,
Until the members think the same –
And what was a band when you began
Becomes a bunch of sidemen to the Name.
And girls, this doesn’t just apply to the dudes –
So insist you’re a we and an us in interviews.

Now, if it contains three words or four,
It may be a mouthful,
Pretentious bull,
And more manifesto than proper noun –
But it may be distinct and int’resting,
With a definite ring like nothing around.
If so, resist the urge to water it down.
For ev’ry word you unpick from your thread
Is a little less grand and a little more bland,
As if to admit you couldn’t live-up to its stead.
Till you’re just one syllable,
Easily killable,
By keeping-on cutting till there’s nothing to be said.

Yet make sure your moniker sounds like your music –
Don’t play metal in the name of a jazz quartet.
But whatever public-label you pick,
You gotta make it stick
By showing no regret.
Whatever you choose, however you want,
Inscribe it with pride in a well-drawn font.
Before you can even play a note, your brand
Is the first that the world will hear of your band.

It’s just as vital as your onstage-looks,
As your lyrics and your hooks and your tattooed breasts.
Imagine it competing with your rockstar brothers
On your album covers and t-shirt chests,
And your tabloid headlines of drunken arrests.
Will the kids double-take when they see it
From Vietnam to Budapest ?
Inhabit your name – believe it and be it,
It’s what make your music diff’rent from the rest.

Double-Dip Sleep

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Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Double-Dip Sleep

I’ve heard it often said,
That mediaeval folks would fall asleep
As soon as the Sun went down.
And then they’d rise from bed,
Around twelve or one, as the dark lay deep,
From the peasants to the Crown.
And they’d spend an hour or three
Quite wide awake, with nothing to do,
With the fires and the candles out.
And they’d sit, presumably,
As they’d shiver the midnight through,
Awaiting drowsiness, no doubt.

Relic

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No Appointment Necessary by Stephen Sawyer

Relic

The church is dedicated to a saint I’ve never heard of –
To a Supine of Sardinia (or possibly Southend).
A mural might have shown him once, before they scraped the dirt off,
While the stain-glass is a patched-up jumble showing “Christ with Friend”.
A reliquary hold his middle finger, so the wall-plaque claims,
And possibly an eyeball, (though it may have been a sprout.)
I asked the local vicar what his story was, but he just blamed “the heathens”
And said Supine was a martyr to his gout.

The organist was more forthcoming, gushing over miracles –
Like turning water into thirst, or plague into the pox.
He brought a locust back to live by breathing on its spiracles,
And made an old Ionic column weep, and found lost socks.
He even taught a fish to swim, and once out-stared a snail,
And he claimed that worms were demons when they crawled from out the earth.
He went upon crusade – and found, then lost the Holy Grail,
And he prophesised the world would end the year before his birth.

I wondered why no other churches recognised the man ?
Have we all become so cynical, insisting on the proof,
Until we haven’t got the space to celebrate an also-ran ?
Why, the next thing, we’ll demand on prophets only telling truth !
But in the end, he met his fate when challenged on a cliff,
When he said that God gave wings to all those strong in their belief.
And so he died for faith – and just as real as any myth,
Now he’s patron saint of bucket-men, (or possibly false teeth…)

When I wrote this, I thought it was too flippant.  So I wrote the fourth verse to give it a bit more weight.  However, on reflection it feels like an anti-climax, so I cut it off and present it below:

Relegated Relic

The church is dedicated to a saint I’ve never heard of –
And yet somebody still knows him – and today that’s me, and you.
And there’s plenty more I could have told, and I barely know a third of
All the things that come attached to him, (regardless if they’re true).
And I wonder if they’ll still remember me, a thousand years from now ?
And if they do, what strange, outrageous feats will I perform ?
So raise a prayer to Saint Supine, who made a convert of a cow –
And celebrate the pilgrims who have wandered from the norm.

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.