Police Training Disused Football Field by Odd Wellies
Season’s End
Another season over, hey ? There’s no more football after May, I think the FA Cup was Saturday. Oh wait, this is an even year, So the World Cup or the Euros must be near, Within a month or two. I doubt I’ll watch it much or cheer, But hear results from colleagues, as you do.
I’m not so much a fairer-weather fan, As a blue-moon pair-of-eyes, I guess. My attention span is twice-a-season, maybe less. It pops up on my radar In a pub or in the press, Or I maybe hear the sports news in my car. Two-nil, three-one, goalless draw, But don’t ask me the offside law.
However, at those moments When it bubbles up again in-mind, I wonder how the local team are doing ? Have all of their opponents left them far behind, once more ? All administrated, relegated, powerless to score ? Or are they flying high this time, Pursuing record-signings, epic cup-runs, in their prime ? And am I missing out on must-see viewing ?
But then the next song plays, and I forget. And all their efforts pass me by to no regret. I might yet catch a casual match, or maybe not But either way, it’s soon forgot. So, no more football after May, Not that I’ll really notice that it’s gone. Another season over, hey ? And someone won and lost, and life goes on.
Geological Time Spiral by Joseph Graham, William Newman, & John Stacy
Counting Forwards
Imagine, if we like, To the Earth when it was younger – Let’s go back in our minds As Rodinia accretes and binds. Imagine all the life, With its breeding and its hunger, Is all within the ocean wide, While all the land is dead and dried. Go on back a billion years To when the Tonian began, And the first alga brave appears In the inter-tidal span. And let’s call this Year Thousand in our plan.
Now imagine, if you like, A thousand million later – To Britain, as it will become, Through evolution’s endless sum. Let’s use the past to take a hike, To be our ad-hoc dater – With ev’ry year that we explore That’s adding-on a million more. Ready ? Well then, come with me ! To Year One Thousand, long before, When Vinland Vikings rule the sea And early green specs dot the shore – And let’s see history expand once more.
1000-1280 The Tonian is a long old stretch, From Ethelred to Longshanks. We’re not sure when things happened quite, So none of these are strong ranks, But sponges would appear to appear Around the Fourth Crusade, Just as we leave the Dark Age, As the Boring Billion fade.
1280-1365 The Cryogenian grows cold, As the mediaeval warmth recedes – The plague upsets the status quo, As animals succeed. The monks and fossils leave their records, (Fewer than we’d wish), As peasants rise-up, and the jellies – Both the combs and fish.
1365-1460 The Ediacaran, through the Hundred Years War, Is a pregnant time. The Agincourt slaughter sees new forms of life Are on the climb. We’ve so little idea what, Though likely all the phyla we know Are going their separate ways back then, As the trade and prosperity grow.
1460-1515 Bang ! The War of the Cambrian Roses And Henry Tudor the Trilobite. Bosworth Field is awash with early fish, As eyes first see the light. Predators prey, so the shell evolves, And the codpiece probes the way to dress – And we know so much of those olden times Because of the Burgess printing press.
1515-1555 The Ordovician sweeps the monks away And ends in the great divorce – The Little Ice Age causes mass extinction, Though with a patchy force. Most of the phyla shrug it off, As do the merchants of the day, While plants colonise a whole new world of land, Down Mexico way.
1555-1580 The Elizabethan Silurian Sees vascular plants grow bodice and ruff, While armoured fish develop jaws As Catholics have it tough. The millipedes creep onto shore While Mary Queen of Scots must flee, And Francis Drake sails round the world, While scorpions swarm the sea.
1580-1640 Awaiting the tetrapod armada in Plymouth, Comes the Devonian span – Sharks and ammonites emerge In the Tempest of Caliban. King James writes his Bible On the wood of the early trees, Till the Civil War extinction Brings the shallows to their knees.
1640-1700 With the Carboniferous Restoration, Amphibeans arrive. There’s giant dragonflies in the endless forests, Where spiders thrive. They lay-down future coal, of course, As London is aflame – Till the Glorious Revolution, When the reptiles change the game.
1700-1750 The Permian now joins Pangaea With the Hannoverian line – Dimetrodon and future-mammals Have their chance to shine. But from the North, a Great Dying Sweeps them from their heights – The lava traps of Siberia, And the pikes of the Jacobites.
1750-1800 The Triassic sees a trident of firsts – Pterasaurs, crocomorphs, dinosaurs. The sea’s full of plessies and ichthies and turtles, An empire stretching to distant shores. But American lizards break away From rule they call draconian, And a great extinction’s coming-in That’s all thanks to Napoleon.
1800-1855 The Regency brings us the Jurassic, Victoria sees placentas get birthed, While the Chartists challenge the old big beasts, As the sauropods shake the earth. The allosaurs fight stegosaurs, While archaeopteryx soar above Of the Valley of Death as India splits, On their way to becoming a dove.
1855-1935 The Cretaceous next, but where to start ? Pangea well-and-truly splits, While flowers bloom for Victoria’s weeds, And spinosaurs are Edwardian hits. Veloceraptors perish in the Depression, But T-Rex jazzes the town With Triceratops to the very end, When the asteroid comes crashing down.
1935-2000+ Into the Cenozoic we go, As the atom bomb sees things get hot. Mammals and birds diversify, As hippy grasses grab their shot. Hominids climb down from the trees As Tony Blair brings-down the freeze – Then Christmas Day in ’99 Sees farmers plant communities.
Imagine, if we like, Where our journey goes from here – What might the next long thousand bring To life that’s ever-quickening ? And when extinctions strike, Then new forms suddenly appear. History shows progress all the while, Though fashions change the style. But here, for now, our trek is done, We’ve counted up the years we hold, From an Anglo-Saxon simple son To multi-cultured forms so bold. They tell the greatest story ever told.
Happy birthday ! Yes, it’s true, Rhyming Couplets is turning six, so here’s a special treat for anyone who’s still out there.
Similar to my championing of the Holocene Calendar, I hate counting backwards, and can’t wrap my head around the numbers. Therefore I propose the Paleontology Calendar, which can either begin at 0 (equal to 2,000 MYA) when the Great Oxydation Event was coming to an end, or at 1,000 MYA when the first algae was colonising the land. The latter is more useful, as it results in three-digit numbers rather than four, as we don’t have much evidence for what happened prior to the Ediacaran fauna emerging (they’re not called the Boring Billion for nothing…) However, I’ve adopted the former here so that the dates can line up with European history to make conceptualiseing the events easier, at least for me. By happy coincidence, 1000 MYA is also when Bicellum first appears, which might just be the earliest evidence we have of animals evolving away from algae…
Note that all dates prior to the Cambrian are tentative and likely to change in the future. Just when the animal phylums diverged is unclear as there are very few fossils, and rely on DNA analysis and molecular clocks. Furthermore, the current estimated dates may be a few years different from their historical counterparts for the sake convenience (for example, some think that algae first poked its head out of the water as early as 1200 MYA). Come on, this is a poem, not a textbook !
Whitsun Bank Holiday already ? That can only mean one thing – this website has passed another year of existence !
Now, I do have an extra-special poem coming tomorrow which I’ve been saving up. And by ‘extra-special’, I of course mean ‘it’s a bit longer, innit’. But before that, I want to share with you the wonders of AI in all their limited glory.
I recently discovered the Suno.com – where they make music out of users’ lyrics and prompts (the former mostly sung, though some lines are ignored and some are randomly repeated, while the latter are almost all ignored, though sometimes ignored in very interesting ways). The results are then spat out as full-formed songs which have only one foot in uncanny valley, and the other on the not-bad-actually foothills.
So, here are a few of mine. As a tone-mute poet who has often thought of their children as songs without music, this has been a fascinating experience, and not without a few hits to show for it. Note that the maximum length is two minutes, though more credits can be used to extend it. You’ll find a mixture here of songs that cut-off abruptly and ones where I’ve splurged on an encore. Also note that having my words sung back to me revealed a few lurking typos which have now been immortalised in melody. Other mis-pronouncements are entirely the algorithm’s fault…
Quintessentially Redhead by VianaArts – apparently, this entire piece was created with only ballpoint pens!
Ginger Snaps
I know it must be Summer When my frecks come out to play, When my polka-dotted face Becomes a sunshine giveaway – When my pallid-grey complexion Finds a whole new way to live, With its tanning only happening As if beneath a sieve. They serve as a reminder For the cream and overalls – For I cannot risk the sun for long, Before the lobster calls. No harbinger of cancer, though – These are no liver spots – But a crop of chestnut mushrooms, Or brunette forget-me-nots. They pop-up on the first hot day of May, In time for lunch, And settle-in for Summer – Though they seem a jolly bunch. In a burst upon my bridge, And in a dance across my cheeks, They’re a throwback to my childhood, A tattoo for sunny weeks. Perhaps I’m not so pasty, But my darkness only bites In an extroverted flocking Of acute melanocytes. My pixels are in contrast, And my apples are in bloom – I know it must be Summer When my solar flares go boom.
The cottage down the lane had a big end-wall, Beneath the gable, Always covered in ivy, growing so tall, As tall as was able, Growing upto the eaves, to merge with the thatch, Such a weight of leaves to the crown – I’d wondered, how does it all attach ?, How did it not pull the old wall down ?
Drilling-in through ev’ry crack it can pry, And drinking the mortar dry, Whatever it takes to reach the sky – At least it sheltered from the wind. But at what cost ? This cottage was built With overbakes and wattled silt – So which would be the first to wilt, When neither was well underpinned ?
I waited years, but never did find out The power in the growth – For one hot night in the Summer drought, A fire killed them both. There’s a new-build cottage now, with a big end-wall Whitewashed in lime, With a single ivy runner – starting small, But on the climb…
Beavers are thievers, By stealing the gravity Out of the water – Such utter depravity ! Beavers are stemming our streams With their half-inched beams, And leaving them pooling around. And now I hear beavers Are back in this manor, Those peevers and planners Are channelling London Town. I see their toothmarks Graffiti the tree barks Up to their old larks, Of gumming the plumbing – Their home is a slum Full of mildew and scum, And whenever they come They leave the bath running.
Beavers are weavers, When heaving their timbers, When lugging their tinder for cleaving together. You just won’t believe All the leaves they retrieve For their bodge for a lodge And their damnable dam. These immigrant skeevers Are tree-rustling reavers – Who knocked-up a hodgepodge Wherever they swam. We end up with either The swamp in a fever, Or banks in a stodge And the brook in a jam. But now that they’re Cockneys, And vegan beefeaters – These beavers won’t shock me a smidge. So change-up the meter, and take to the bridge –
They’re teeming in the borough, good and thorough, Down the Central Line, Grinning with their teeth on Hampstead Heath, And in the Serpentine. It won’t be very long And they’ll be seven thousand strong, With their ev’ry one a carrier Of oak and London plain. They’ll get their sapling shredding done From Wapping up to Teddington, By blocking Woolwich Barrier And flooding Pudding Lane.
Beavers are thievers, And duckers and divers, And cunning deceivers, And wetback survivors – They’re just like the rest of us, London domesticus, Hard-working strivers, And over-achievers. And soon they’ll fit right in, I’m sure, In the melting pot of the pond next door.
The real question, of course, is how do beavers colonise new rivers well away from the old ones? Some say they can travel over land for many miles, but we all know the truth – they’re carried there by red kites !
Turmeric and ginger, Cumin, mustard, mace, Red-hot chilli peppers, With cardamom to taste, Cinnamon, paprika, And nutmeg makes it sweet, White pepper, black pepper, Turning up the heat.
Not all cats are playfully aloof, Or queens of household staff – There’s some will never steal the show In fairytale or video. And likewise, on the busy midnight roof, They’re just some riff-a-raff – While toms compete and loudly brawl, Some kits can barely catawaul.
Not all cats are masters of their strut, Or lords of backyard realms – For some are timid, peeking out From under sofas, wracked with doubt. They know they’ll never truly make the cut, Their poses underwhelm – And so they snuggle-up indoors Where we protect them from the wars.
The first lone mayfly of the year, And Spring is on the go – Looks like the merry month is here As evenings make a show. The bulbs give way to tardy blooms While cuckoos boast their song, And mayfly brides greet urgent grooms – For Spring won’t stay for long.
You should be my own people – Strivers for a bright tomorrow, Dreamers for an equal way, A better chance, a greater say. But the moralising streaks still creep With the finger-wag to follow – Authoritarian and snide, How come we’re on the same damn side ?
You should be my own people, Treating people just the same – Instead, you’re tribal, keeping score, Denouncing heretics galore. But no ! Rebuking you is cheap – I still believe we share an aim. What makes us strong, what shows we care, Is when our foes are treated fair.
Rhyming Couplets 