Massacre On-Mass
Do fishes school in shoals
Or shoal in schools ?
Who cares ? Who sets these rules ?
And are they herrings or are mack’rels ?
Sharks just see them all as sprat-kills,
Be they hammerheads or bulls.
And dolphins call them balls of bait
When wolfing fins onto their plate
With click-and-bubble tools.
We ought to ask the swarming bunch,
Except, it seems they’ve gone for lunch…
The fools !
Dog Tags
The names of dogs shall change and flex,
With the rise and fall of Gus and Rex,
As their names are called around the lido –
Though these days, no-one calls Fido.
Folks in the park are a diverse lot,
And so are their dogs – but none is Spot.
Some names, it seems, are truly over –
Hello Lola, goodbye Rover.
Bigger Than Jesus
So you’ve formed a band, hey ?
A bunch of like-musicians have joined-forces 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 makes your music diff’rent from the rest.
Nonsense Avenue
Why can’t our road names
Be honest and neat,
As regular codenames
To Gardens and Street ?
A road name is two-fold,
That ought to be checked
To see me and you told
Just what to expect-
A Lane should be narrow,
A Way should be broad.
Alas, this clear arrow
Is often ignored –
Our naming mis-uses
And gives itself airs,
With Prospects and Muses
And circular Squares.
Ultima Thule
Pytheas claimed to have gone to the North
In ninety-six seventy-six HE.
As far as Thule, beyond the Forth –
But where ? Nobody can agree.
So the name was later applied to places –
Shetland, Norway, Iceland, and on.
Forever drifting North as the traces
Of habitation were stumbled upon.
The word was attached to Eskimos,
As called by those who did the naming –
And a rare-earth element, which shows
The allure it held in its framing.
Finally, in the hundred-and-twentieth century,
A trading post re-used the term
In Upper Greenland, the latest entry
To plant the Grecian germ.
An airbase later sprang up to claim it –
And at last, Thule was a definite place –
It had finally chosen to cash-in its fame
And end its meandering chase.
Until…the Air Force decided to change her,
To strip out the exonym, rebrand the node.
So Thule is free again, ever the stranger,
To wander the North and with no fixed abode.
Thule is usually pronounced as Thool-uh (or perhaps I should say Þool-uh). However, I have seen Tool-ee used, even by myself.
As for the dating, I’m using the far-more logical HE Calendar because I’ve got no time for counting backwards.
Two Body Problem
I want to hear less of Uranus,
That big gassy body found in the Bath.
You see, you’re sniggering already !
It’s a noble planet, it’s not a cheap laugh !
Why use the Roman name of the Greek ?
‘Ouranos’ sounds not so silly.
Or better yet, let’s see more of ‘Caelus’
For the methane found by the Willy.
That’s Wilhelm Herschel, the man who slapped it
Into the solar system.
And named it after King George the Third –
When he saw royal buttocks, he kissed ’em !
From its nether regions, this constant hot air
Gets so petty, and I want it to stop –
I want to see less of this childish smut,
Or the pressure will make it go pop.
Urban Planning for Urbane Planets
You can’t build Uranus Circus in Bath –
At least, not by that name.
A quirk of language is having a laugh,
And we all have a smirk in the game.
Uranus was discovered in 1781 (11781 HE), though it had been unknowingly sighted several times, possibly as early as Hipparchus in 9873 HE. This was the first time that the concept of there being a new planet had ever occurred to anyone, and there was no reliable naming convention to guide them. Yes, the ‘prehistoric’ planets all bore the names of Roman gods, but was this new object really another one just like them, or should it be demarked as something different ?
Indeed, although Uranus was proposed as a name within a year (and the equally-newly-discovered element Uranium so named in its honour), consensus around it wasn’t achieved until some seventy years later, and meanwhile other proposals included Hershel, Cybele, and even Neptune. But at least the eventual winner was considerably better than that proposed by its discoverer – Georgium Sidus (or King George’s Star). I mean, it’s not a star, is it ? Next you’ll be naming a chunk of rock an asteroid…
Turbo
I wonder if Carl Linnaeus smiled
As he coined a name for a water-snail
As if a windmill in a gale.
Perhaps the twist of its shell beguiled,
But given its lack of energy,
He must have seen the irony ?
Forever dubbed forever more
By a name befitting of cavaliers
To a bug with neither joints nor gears –
In the age of steam, as the turbines roar,
What did they think of their silent whirlwind,
Forever failing to twirl and spin ?
But maybe our Carl was being sublime ?
As cyclones on their well-greased heels,
Like plugholes, perhaps, or waterwheels,
But they did so in their own sweet time –
Forever in motion, the will that drives,
Revolving their shells throughout their lives.
Perhaps Carl was thinking of the popular hobby of snail racing ?
Final Calling
They used his full name, in the notice –
And then carved it on his stone –
I guess that he was born with this,
So that indeed made it his own.
But I never once have heard it uttered,
Not be anyone who cared –
His was shorter, far too cluttered,
Fewer letters, unimpaired –
With a friendliness in its brevity
And no pretentiousness or strife –
A name with great longevity,
A name that lasted all his life.
For some people, a single syllable
Is all we need to say –
And those others from their name in full
Just get forgotten, tucked away.
But now, formality’s a blessing –
We understand, accept the change –
And we know who we’re addressing,
Though he sounds a little strange.
But the man himself is just the same,
With this not-quite-pseudonym.
Though it’s odd, to see his Christian name
As God alone would call him.
Headbanger
Whyever are woodpeckers
Logged by how they’re spotted ?
Why are we such checkers
Of how many lots we’ve totted ?
And is the greater-spotted greater
In the number of its spots ?,
Or is its name a commentator
On the quality of dots ?
Or is each polka such a size,
They’re practic’ly uniting ?
Or are the spots our searching eyes,
Recording ev’ry sighting ?
Since woodpeckers are more likely to be heard than seen, perhaps it’s a reference to Spotify…?
Good Name, Bad Name
Never trust an author who
Addresses all his male cast
By surname-only, first to last,
As if he never even knew
Their given-names.
As though he doesn’t really like them,
Tolerates at best the lot,
It makes you wonder why he writes them
Just to be forgot.
And quite unlike his wives and dames,
With whom he’s less superior,
Yet overly familiar.
There’s those who see these names we use
As either/ors, up for review –
One part sensible, one silly,
One name functional, one frilly –
Always others get to choose
Which one that we must answer to.
It’s strange, these different forms –
We say the Hadley Cell and Beaufort Scale,
And talk of how in FitzRoy sits a gale –
It’s quite the norm.
And yet we’re first-name-chummy with the devastating storms.
So never trust an author,
Or a teacher, or a sergeant-major –
Never trust a posh-voiced pager
Barking surnames with a clout,
Intent to order them about.
Never trust a critic who ostensibly admires,
Yet then only calls his heroes like some underlings he hires.
And yes, I have been guilty too,
Not wanting to presume a closeness
Or an overly-verboseness
In my always using first and last each time, just in case.
But I hope I’ve never made the crime
Of calling someone bluntly to their face –
As if I owned the place !
And you can call me Mister,
If you need to call me anything –
Just like I talk of Mr Windsor when I mean the King.
But why are we insisting on such old formality ?
It’s just not me !
So even if we’ve never met,
You all still get the same rapport –
To call me by my friendly name –
Cos that’s what our forenames are for !
