Author: Toastingfork

Not afraid to rhyme.

000

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tuxedo

000

You think you’re it –
You think your charm enthrals,
You think you’re sharply dressed,
All cool unstressed –
But you ain’t to me.
You think you’re fit –
You think you’ve got the balls,
You think you’ve got the looks,
And the baited hooks –
But you ain’t got me.

You’re ev’rything masculine, powerful, and brutish,
Ev’rything blandly manly and disputish –
What you are is ev’rything wrong with the world,
Ev’rything murky with stealth.
You’re silent and strong and rigid and mutish,
You’re clumsy and loud and blunt and uncutish.
What I need is somebody saving the world,
By helping me to save it myself.

Is it too much to hope ?
Am I too naive and sucked-in ?
Can’t anybody save this world from self-destructing ?,
When not all of this world can be reached along the ducting,
Or humbled with instruction,
Or conquered with seduction –
We need a man who’s handy, not a grope.
And don’t think me too incessant
If I find the world more pleasant
When the other half is present, and can cope.
Is it really, really too much that I hope ?

You got the moves,
And you got the toys –
Karate and kendo,
And endless innuendo –
But you ain’t got me.
Cos all it proves
Is you’re naught but noise –
You’ve got no clout
Once your bang’s gone out –
You are so not me !

You’re ev’rything spying, lying, and deceitful,
Ev’rything crooked and counterfeit and cheatful –
What you are is ev’rything wrong with the world,
Ev’rything cocked and askew.
You’re ev’rything uncool and tepid and debacle,
Ev’rything Oxbridge and Tory patriarchal –
What I need is somebody saving the world –
Saving from someone like you.

Is it too much to ask ?
Am I being too demanding ?
Won’t anybody save this world by understanding ?,
When not all of this world is corrupt and underhanding,
Or divvied-up and branded,
Because of what the Man did,
As if it’s only men perform each task…
So I trust it’s not too queeny
To insist you do not deem me
Just a bird in a bikini or a basque.
Is it really, really too much that I ask ?

I need a geek –
Someone who ain’t so goddam macho,
Someone who ain’t so suave and chatshow,
Someone who doesn’t grasp and snatch so,
Someone who’s gentle without being meek.
Someone who can’t use force without balking,
Someone who knows his Kant from his Hawking,
Someone to save this world by just talking –
Someone to be my freak.

‘000’ should be pronounced as ‘double-oh zero’.

Requiems Retold

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Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com

Requiems Retold

It’s the orders of service that stick in my memory –
Always the same, just the name and the photo would change.
Funeral dues for my far-distant family,
Seconds and greats twice-removed, from the sticks or the Grange.

The organ would parp but the bells never tolled,
And the bunches of flowers were lilies or roses or daffodils.
The pews were so hard and the stones were so cold,
As, forcibly suited and combed, I was begged to sit still.

The Lord Is My Shepherd, The Old Rugged Cross,
The same old hymns, in the same old badly-sung.
The same “so sorry for your loss”
And same “they had a good life/died too young”.

And even the eulogies followed a formula,
Strangers with unrehearsed mumblings delivered too fast –
The reminiscences couldn’t be warmer,
But too late to tell me now, their moment has passed.

Then it’s the Lord’s Prayer, and into the home straight
With one final blast of All Things Bright & Beautiful –
Which always struck me as having the wrong weight,
Far too happy – though dirged into something more suitable.

But as I grow older, the deaths have grown closer,
And it falls to me for arrangements and guests to be planned –
When I’ve no time for grief, yet I need to bring closure,
I remember those orders of service, and I understand…

Bit of a cheat, but the second line in the penultimate verse scans okay if the emphasis is placed on the ‘Things’.

A Landrace of Snails

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Snail Race by psykle

A Landrace of Snails
 
The Roman snail was bred for the eating,
Bred by the Romans on gastropod farms –
Bred to be fatter and bred to be sweeter,
Bred for behaviour and oozing with charms !
Red shells and blue shells, thoroughly adaptable,
With endless potential curled-up inside –
Many shapes of eye-stalk, fully retractable,
And you should see how speedily these beauties can glide !
 
“You join us at the Coliseum, bursting to capacity,
For the Trophy Mille Denarii – ave, sports fans, and well met –
And they’re off !  Down the first straight, led by Number Three,
While Number Thirteen stalls, and retracts into his helmet.
Hard into the corner at a tenth-a-mile an hour,
And slamming on the brakes – and out goes Number Ten !
Spinning in slow motion as she gives it too much power,
And slams into the backside of her team-mate, yet agen !
So the Formula Unum poll position’s passed to Seventeen –
While her rival Number Twenty-Two has oozed into the pits,
To lubricate his tired foot, while they give his conch a sheen,
With a quick refuel of lettuce, and he’s back into the blitz !
Now shell-to-shell on the final lap come slithering the leaders,
Stretching their antennas out to take the chequered flag.
But competition never ends for Golden Helix breeders,
When looking for an offspring with a slightly better drag.”

The State of the Nation

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The Lion & The Unicorn by Loneanimator

The State of the Nation

Bloody Tories, bastard bankers,
Bleeding hearts and work-shy snowflakes
Brigadiers and Rule Britannia,
Chavs and avocado-fakes.
I’ve been there, blaming them for “it’s unfair”,
This seething, faceless mass.
It’s all too easy, all too “they don’t care”,
Just blame the other class.
But have we ever once attempted,
Tried to understand just why we sharply disagree ?
Before our prejudice pre-empted,
Viewing them as ‘hippies’ or as ‘bourgeoisie’.
But could it still have worked,
Before they’re sneered-at, sussed and tagged ?
Before our knees have jerked,
Our jibes have jeered, our throats have gagged ?
Can we treat our enemies
As the friends and fam’lies that they are,
And disagree more civilly
Before we take our tongues too far ?
We should us all be traitors to our tribes,
Refuse the dogma, learn to reach across the aisle –
The jeers are threats, the cheers are bribes,
But we must greet them both with just a smile.
And as for those who take things further,
On their side, and also ours,
We need to try to tame their fervour,
Try to swap their vitriol for flowers.
Don’t banish them, don’t monster them,
Don’t fantasise of shooting them –
For they are people – angry, human people –
Don’t be brutal, don’t be phlegm.
We need to talk them down, not taunt them over,
Lend a hand, not give a shove.
As once we lose humanity, there’s no way to recover,
For even Reds and Fascists need our love.

A Surge of Surnames Serving as Starters

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Register by Tim Reckmann

A Surge of Surnames Serving as Starters

Whenever I hear people blame
How surnames get above their station,
Moving up to the front of the name,
In a silly fads and trendy game,
Calling kids Odell or Mason,
Grabbing at that Moon Unit fame
That should belong to Jane and Jason –
I love to contradict their claims
By pointing out it’s nothing new for names –
So Franklin, Brooke, and Harrison,
Meet Stanley, Joyce, and Allison,
Who opened up the door through which you came.
But then, there’s many a fam’ly brand
Whose use ain’t so contrived or underhand –
For they themselves derived from the font-side,
Taking a personal name, and riffing free,
Which now completes its jaunty ride
By cycling back as Price or Tiffany,
With not a shred of shame.
For labels, monikers and nicks,
Are simply anything that sticks –
And who wants kids to all be called the same ?

It’s intersting to consider how the four different types of surname get reappropriated:
Patronymic-names (f’instance Anderson, McKenzie, Fitzpatrick) are obvious candidates, being already based on a forename.
Location-names (like Milton, Beverley, Beckett) would be grabbed if they were thought to sound nice, much like India and Vienna would be later, though now with an added dash of exotic.
Nickname-names (say Wiley, Swift, Armstrong) are slower to be taken up, but not unheard-of.
Occupation-names (such as Parker, Smith, Marshall) are the most surname-sounding, and their recent large-scale take-up could well come to define this century, just as the Victorians are associated with naming their daughters after flowers and gemstones.

By the way…if Tinker Dill was a character in Lovejoy, Taylor Dayne was an 80s pop star, Soulja Boy is a rapper…then I guess it’s only a matter of time before we can say Hello Sailor…

(And to all you subjunctive-lovers out there, I stand by the two ‘was’-es above, as what it is saying is “IF…given that Character A was in Show B, THEN…”, meaning that the ‘was’ is not part of the conditional clause.)

What ? Dang !

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Unicode 203D

What ?  Dang !

Okay, hands up, gang,
If you’ve ever used,
Or even ever heard of an ‘interrobang’ ?
You all look so confused at the word,
And I’m not surprised –
Of all the useless punctuation,
This abomination ought to be the most despised.
But no !, the lumpy little toad
Is honoured with a Unicode
While decent, necessary marks
Are offered no abode.
These silly lexographic larks
With oh so little help to bring
Are only ever seen in fun –
I mean, has anyone
The slightest need to use the bloody thing ?
And meanwhile, I cannot succeed
To get the Question-Comma recognised –
Now there’s a boy whose time has come,
Who should be common, should be prized,
Instead of all this tweedle-dum –
Mine shows our queries raised at root,
Mid-flow, when the clauses overshoot, –
Not waiting till the line has passed
And a full-stop hoves in view at last,
To plonk our squiggle over, when the matter’s all-but moot.
Yet ev’ry font is pleading ignorance,
And claiming that they’re full –
Such bull !
So now my hybrid glyph won’t stand a chance.
But why ?, when they’d gladly welcome-in the clang
Of that bastard offspring runt, the Interrobang !?
Oh…oh yeah…
I guess I kinda coulda used one there…

And yes, I did use ‘to hove’ in the present tense, and I’m not even sorry.

That said, Wiktionary suggests that it was a separate Middle English verb roughly meaning ‘to linger’ which became conflated with the past tense of ‘to heave’, and which also spun-off ‘to hover’.

Meanwhile, here are a few examples of what we we’re missing.  Sort it out, Times New Roman !

Confidentity

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Crown by Ben Ashton

Confidentity

I know I’m good,
But I’m all alone in knowing,
And there’s no-one shares my faith –
I know I’m good,
But my telephone ain’t blowing,
And there’s no-one cares one-eighth.
I never meant to be misunderstood,
But I can’t make them see it in my neighbourhood –
And even a tree has less dead wood than me,
I’m just a nobody who knows he’s good,
But the world will not agree.
I know, I know, I could be mad,
A self-deluding lad
Who wants to crow –
I guess I’ll never let it go…

I know I’m good,
But I’m all Jack Jones to know it,
And I’m very out of style –
I know I’m good,
But my funny bones don’t show it,
When they just can’t raise a smile.
I don’t understand why I’m misunderstood,
Like it’s all been planned thus for my victimhood –
From Sunderland to Hollywood, I’m panned
I’m just a jobbing hand who knows he’s good,
But the world is old and bland.
I know, I know, I could be wrong,
Deluded all along –
But I don’t think so.
I’ll guess I’ll give it one more go…

Ghosting

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Alegretto by Michael Hayes

Ghosting

She surely must notice the calls that she’s missed,
Though why is she never beside her phone ?
I know that she knows it, that I exist,
But thinks, it would seem, that I’m best left alone.
Though when we’re together, I swear, it’s a blast,
But then ages shall pass before the next –
I sometimes wonder if this is the last,
Our drifting apart by unanswered text.

I mean, I’m not a creeper of something,
I call once a month, I’d say,
To let her phone complete it’s ring
And a message that she’ll never play.
Is that too much ?  I don’t want to stalk her,
To be a pest, or a joke.
I know she playfully calls me a ‘talker’,
But it’s so long since last we spoke.

It’s not that she is intention’ly callous,
But lives such a busy, busy life –
There’s a definite absence of malice,
Although the malice of absence is rife.
I wish I had so many more friends
That I don’t mind losing one to the void –
But I must work and must defend
My ev’ry closeness, paranoid.

I know, I know, we all must share,
And we’re kind-of lucky to get her.
She’s like a cat, with her tail in the air
Who sometimes allows us to pet her.
We’re only friends, I say with a shrug,
At her drive-by company –
So I must learn not to let her bug,
To ignore her ignoring me.

Sing For The Year

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First of all, a Note Sounded by Riccardo Cuppini

Sing For The Year

This music’s sounding all the same,
I must be getting old.
The world moves on, the fashions change,
The safe and known is new and strange
Of course, there’s nobody to blame,
But now it leaves me cold
And really, this makes perfect sense –
I’m not the target audience.

But once I was the golden ears
The bands would want to please –
A guarantee my mind would blow
Each time I tuned the radio
I thought, despite the passing years,
Their music tastes would freeze –
But songs move on – the future tense
Will be the target audience.

This music’s sounding all the same,
I must be getting old.
And all the tunes from in my prime,
I’ve heard them far too many times.
We get one chance to play the game
To be that big and bold –
And then, we’re drifting in suspense,
Beyond the target audience.

When we are puzzling-out our teens,
The music matters most –
It comforts us, it lights our fires,
It strengthens us against the liars
But as we grow and gain the means,
We can’t remain its host –
It must move on, to bring defence
To a brand new target audience.

Nudging the Thing-a-ma-jig

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Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

Nudging the Thing-a-ma-jig

(in reply to Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap)

Finally, ticked it off the list –
So easy to put it off for another year,
A must-see show that can be missed
Because it’s always here.

Pretty much what I expected –
Dialogue from my grandparent’s day,
Archetypes who’re all suspected –
But that’s the fun of the play.

For entertainment, purely,
To be mesmerised by the whole ordeal –
Cheesy, sure, but surely
On a spike of cunning steel.

Alas, for an author so attuned
To clever plots as tight as a snare –
This one has holes like a gaping wound,
And simply doesn’t care.

Was it because it’s a play, not a book,
That undid the wit of the Queen of Crime ?
Did she dash it off, no second look,
Then order a gin-&-lime ?

The set was creaking, the policeman botching,
And the killer was inconsistently planned,
Conning with only the audience watching –
It just feels a tad underhand.

So by the end, I was scratching my head,
As they raised the dead for their final bow,
And the killer stepped up – here we go, I said,
Here comes the solemn vow –

They begged us, before they let us go,
To not let-on who done the deed –
And decade by decade, wouldn’t you know,
Their pleas, it seems, succeed.

But I’m not sure they’ve earned our hush –
The plot’s phoned-in, then they cut the line.
And if we were all to bust their flush,
They’d close in double-quick time.

I can’t even give you a walkthrough
To show how the plot just doesn’t gel –
The trouble is, who can I talk to,
About the play that we must not tell ?

The most middle-class of secrets,
Woe betide who blabs the second act –
And here I am, despite my regrets,
Obeying the unspoken pact.

But I guess they’re breaking-even,
Even after all these cynical years.
So maybe I should stop my peeving –
Clearly they’re shrugging-off the sneers.

And after all, I still had fun –
(And even more when I got to complain).
So on it goes on its endless run
Just off St Martin’s Lane.

And yet, I can’t help feeling
That a redraft could make it a thing of joy,
Like a cat that sends the punters squealing
As it plays with its startled toy.

They need to build a better Mousetrap,
Up the tension in the spring,
Or else the rats waltz through the gap
Before the jaws can swing.