Author: Toastingfork

Not afraid to rhyme.

Constructivism

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The Pont Neuf, Paris by Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau & Guillaume Marchand, with a proposed parasite on top by Stephane Malka.

Constructivism

When I talk with my lefty friends
On art and architecture,
They all are oh-so-modern in their taste.
And so I have to talk to them
On anything but architecture,
All to keep things sweet, if rather chaste.

So what’s this style that they’ve embraced ?
A smashing of the ruling class ?
A break with endless cut-and-paste, debased
In choc’late-boxy quaintness ?
So is a love for steel and glass
A love for unconstraint-ness ?

But when I talk with the lovers of
The column and the arch,
We have to keep the topic to the stones,
For stray to social policy,
And progress on the march,
And I quickly learn they’re Tories to their bones.

So what’s this style they’ve seen replaced ?
A harking back to Empire ?
Of seeing Albion defaced, disgraced,
Encased in brutalism ?
So is a love for dome and spire
A love for old-time feudalism ?

On one side are better lives in ugly buildings –
On the other – palaces, but for the rich.
And yet the latter need what brother-artisans are skilled in –
Frescos, gargoyles, heraldry – the very things we’re told are kitsch.
But have we really got no use for them ?
Can we not have our peace and rights and social care,
And still have ornament to spare
To build our new Jerusalem ?

Whenceforth

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A Schoolmaster Punishing One of his Pupils by Jan Steen

Whenceforth

Whence ‘from whence’ ?
It makes no sense,
It just means ‘from from where’.
But then again,
It sounds so vain
And old-world debonair.
It looks contrived
That we’ve revived
Such quaint and frilly bull.
We just don’t need
The added speed
To drop a syllable –
So don’t correct
Our speech unchecked,
Don’t leap to its defence –
It’s overstayed,
So let it fade,
And cease all use, from hence.

December the First

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first door of advent

December the First

All through November,
We dash into Winter –
Not me.
November’s November,
And I’m not a sprinter
When leaves are still falling
And afternoons glinter,
You see.
All through November,
I’ll take my Autumnal sweet time.
I’ve no wish to onrush
The noise and the crush of the big pantomime.

But finally, here comes December –
From season of mist to the season of mistletoe,
Nip becomes frost becomes why-won’t-it-snow-?
Finally, finally, on comes December –
And finally, even I unleash the cheer…
So haul up the streamers and load up the larder,
For now is the season of twinkles and ardour –
Throughout a whole twelfth, and for only a twelfth, of the year.

RAS Syndrome

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Three women from Winterthur by David Sulzer – nothing to do with the poem, but I like the fact that they look like triplets

RAS Syndrome

So what if it’s redundant
To repeat the words we say
In a PDF format
Or an LCD display ?
That’s just what you get
When you over-shorten-down
So your acronym comprises of
Both adjective and noun.

So what if they’re redundant
In their final acronemes ?
We’ll always have PIN numbers
For our ATM machines.
Cos that’s just human nature,
So triumphant to a T –
But if you wish to argue it,
Then please RSVP.

RAS Syndrome stands for ‘Redundant Acroneme Syndrome Syndrome’.  An acroneme is a single letter within an acronym.  I just made the latter up, and I’m really pleased with it.  According to Wiktionary it also means “the slender section of a flagellum”, but it doesn’t give any citation, so I win – QED demonstated !

Advent in November

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christingle

Advent in November

I remember we’d troop off to Grandma’s old church,
(My parents not having a church of their own),
And there, with my brothers and cousins, we sat
Through the joyfulless carols and reverent drone
That tried to cajole in us love for lord Jesus,
And bribed us with candle-and-currant Christingles.
We’d dutif’ly queue up, us kids, at the rail,
For our symbolic fire-risks – and catch the first tingles:

The season had started !  The countdown was counting !
And even before the first door was prized open,
The tension was banking, the pressure was mounting –
The avarice simmering, quaintly called ‘hoping’.
Our candles were dripping, the service was over,
So back home to Grandma’s for crumpets and cakes,
And writing our lists from the big book of Argos,
And tingles that gradu’ly built into shakes.

The Critic’s Lament

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detail from The Art Critic by Norman Rockwell

The Critic’s Lament

If you don’t like this then you’re a moron,
If you do like that then you’re a lout,
If you’d rather t’other, then I guess you’re on your own –
For even when the way is shown,
You’d rather do without.

If you don’t like this then you’re a cretin,
If you do like that then you’re a square –
Yet now, for all my years of selfless vetting of the muse,
So you masses never have to choose,
It’s like you just don’t care…

How can you reject my spotless taste
In favour of your own ?
Or let my perfect wisdom go to waste
Despite my megaphone ?
For who will sing the praises of the chosen
That they’ve scarcely earned,
And who will prick the egos of the posers
Once their backs are turned ?

So if you don’t like this then you’re a heathen,
And if you do like that, you’re thick as planks –
For I alone am high priest to this seething sea of stars,
I’m crushing dreams, inflicting scars –
Yet still I get no thanks !

Fingerfluffs

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Photo by Leah Kelley on Pexels.com

Fingerfluffs

Ev’ryone makes typos,
Where a silly misspelled rush of prose
Is hiccupped in its fluency –
Careless hands work careless labours,
Jumping cases, catching neighbours,
Letters standing in for others,
Covering their brothers’ truancy.

For as our fingers run and leap
And waltz and peck,
Too busy to go back and check,
So in the errors creep.
Too quick they ran, too soon they leapt,
And where our eyes should intercept,
They’re mesmerized by finger-dances,
Only sparing random glances
At the all-important screen.
Or else they stare out straight ahead
To read instead the words unseen,
That float midair, as thick as flies –
The copytext behind the eyes.
But if we’re lucky, underlines in red
Will warn us what we’ve said
And give us chance to clean.
But otherwise, each error cries unheard,
Each mangled word and un-snipped thread
Is slurred by digits over-keen.

So ev’ryone makes typos,
Where our textual flows get bent and dented,
Letters get disoriented,
Weakening intent –
They may look careless and inept,
But these days we’re all quite adept
At reading what was really meant.

History Never Changes

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painted fore-edges by Cesare Vellecio

History Never Changes

The trouble with the past
Is that the past is pre-determined –
So we know just how it goes
Because it’s all already been.
Now at the time they must have felt so free,
Yet they’re confirming
That the past is fixed forever,
With no wiggle-room between.

Little did those little people know
There’s just one way for things to go,
And ev’ry time we play it back,
The same old things are still on track.
There’s just no way to keep hold of dinosaurs
When dead is dead –
There’s no way to replay the wars,
Or Anne Boleyn to keep her head.

But wait – if there’s a script to act,
We write it out together
From a million potential drafts
That could go either way.
For just like us, they got to choose
But once they chose, they chose forever.
The past is post-determined –
Once it’s set, it has to stay.

Hide

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The Watcher – Tribute to Edward Hopper by David Wickline

Hide

Shhh…let’s lie low here for a while
And let our camouflage do its thing –
Let’s watch the daily rank-and-file
As it passes by on the wing.
Birds or people, far or near,
They flock till they part their ways.
If we keep still, we’ll dissapear
As they chase their busy days.
It’s good to sometimes sit and think
With a patient air and a weather eye –
Let’s slow our breaths and barely blink,
And watch the world go by.

Dig

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God Speed the Plough by Henry Gawthorne

Dig

Turning the soil is Autumn work,
Ploughing, forking, hoeing the loam,
Breaking it up before it freezes,
Driving the moles from their home.
Airing the worms out, harvesting stones,
And mining the black to bury the brown,
Dredging the roots up, combing the waves in,
Leaving the fields quite upside-down.