Epeira
The European Garden Spider
Bore a name both accurate and dull.
Till some do-gooding Victorian
Decided to give the matter a good old mull –
And, believing truth must always bow
To poetic hyperbole,
He grandly named them all orb-weavers
And wrote to the Times after tea.
Who cares if the webs are as flat as a silk cravat ?,
(Of course, monogrammed).
Should he have named them all plate-spinners ?
Geometry be d-mned !
End of the Line
I’ve never been to Cockfosters –
What strange exotic waits me there ?
A land where roosters shelter chicks,
And spread the corn for all to share ?
I’ve never been to Ruislip West
Where ‘U’s are silent all the day,
Or Barnet High, the net of bars –
And what of Watford, anyway ?
I’ve never been to Edgeware’s edge,
That surely teeters on the void –
Or seen the walths of Walthamstow,
Or beckoned Beckton, overjoyed.
There’s Abbey Wood, the timber church –
That’s just a train away, I swear !
And Morden Moor, and Stoney Weald ?
They’re waiting for me, if I dare…
Beyond Uranus
Alfie O’Ryan is quite the star,
With a name as bloated as he –
Some call him Beetle Juice,
Some call him Battle Geese,
Lord knows what he was to Ptolemy.
And then there’s Wry Gull and Puppies in Booties,
If I eat a careener, will it turn out Serious ?
And do we get to call these,
The Piss Keys and the Higher-D’s ?
We need an Older Baron to make it less mysterious.
Well, how should they be pronounced ?
We have to teach ourselves by the ounce –
We read them in textbooks with no overseer,
Just Awful Yuccas and Cassy O’Pier.
As I’ve detailed elsewhere, Betelgeuse was pretty much dead to Ptolemy. I have heard it suggested that he didn’t care for the fixed stars because they were, well, fixed – unlike his real passion, the wandering planets.
Naymington-on-Poynte
Dark Age place-names,
Leave-a-trace names,
Honestly-describe-the-space names:
Bearing no hyperbole,
They simply stated verbally
What ev’rybody thought the place was,
Giving not a thought to status.
And so we find throughout the nation
Sagebrush prison, Pighill station,
Goatranch airport, Crowfilledwood,
Watertown of the Sisterhood,
Snotti’s Homestead, Northern Trading,
Ladies’ Landing, Stags-are-Wading,
Cheesefarm Green and Hillhill Hill –
Names most Super-Mare and Brill.
But names can be the falsest friend:
Like Middlesex and Lickey End,
Or Swansea, Inkpen, Kentish Town,
The many heights of Lower Down,
Or Upper Slaughter, East Kilbride.
Or Leatherhead and Barkingside.
Nether Wallop, Ugley, Beer,
Towcester, Staines and Wigan Pier
But meanings can survive intact,
As more Bridgnorth than Pontefract:
With Sevenoaks, we safely stand,
And Newport, Battle, Westmorland.
There’s Mill Hill, Highgate, Firbank Fells,
The Mousehole Caves, and Bath, and Wells.
The Otter river is no riddle,
Unlike, say, the Ouse or Piddle.
And if I claimed I knew a place
Called Kismeke Wick or Running Chase,
Or Buttermouth, or Chattering,
Or Shepherds Peak and Hattersing,
Or Owland Buzzard, Wethergale,
Or Buxham Hills and Settingsale,
Or Swallow Spit, or Barnet Shears ?
Would you believe your English ears ?
Twenty-Eight Alone
February, February,
Went and gave his days away.
He lent a trio to July
(Who’d bent a few of his awry) –
He loaned his days out to July,
But never thought they’d beg to stay.
“Oh please, oh please !” would cry each splinter,
“Please don’t send us back to Winter !”
February, February,
Short on shorter days, for sure.
He’ll get no refund from July,
For he’s a seizer on the sly –
His days are dogs, his summers high,
And cancerous his lure.
“I’ll send them back when good and through:
Maybe in a thousand years or two.”
Acid Verse
Lis’ning to psychedelic music,
Joss stick sending up a stream,
Lava shadows on the ceiling,
Red wine drifting off to dream.
Don’t need drugs to taste the acid,
Just an over-yellow mind –
It’s gonna be one of those fitful nights
When the gears of my conscious grind.
Too much psychedelia,
It’s not from the drugs, this trance, though –
I swear, just wine, and a lack of coffee,
So why do the colours dance so ?
I guess that I must be dreaming ?
I really hope that I’m dreaming…
Cos if this is really psychotrope
Then I’m trapped inside a kaleidoscope.
I guess there are folks who deal with this ev’ry day –
Does it make me a bad person to say
That I never wanted to end up that way ?
Like this way. Like slipping down the slope.
Lis’ning to psychedelic noodling –
Are they slurred, or only me ?
It sorta sounds like forty-fives
That are played at thirty-three.
Don’t need drugs to hear the acid
Needle jumping, stuck on repeat –
It’s gonna be one of those Mobius nights
When Alice can’t find her feet.
Too much recycled diorama,
But if not drugs, then what have I taken ?
If only I’d swallowed some bloody caffeine
Cos I need to reawaken.
So why am I still here dreaming ?
Or what if I’m not here dreaming ?
It’s not any pills from off the shelf,
But maybe my brain has brewed some itself ?
Maybe it’s cloning its own serotonin all day,
Or morphing endorphins to help it to play.
Or doped-up on dopamine, drooling away ?
Who’s to say ? Is it madness by stealth ?
Lis’ning to psychedelic mumbling,
Are they blurry ? Hard to see…
This cover art is always changing –
Which side’s A and which side’s B ?
Don’t need drugs to see the acid
Sparking somewhere, distant, bleak –
It’s gonna be one of those unplugged nights
When the doors of perception creak.
Too much psyched-out sepia –
I don’t even own a secret stash,
But these uninvited thoughts wanna dance,
Now this party’s about to crash.
Can I still hope I’m nothing but dreaming ?
I gonna need help if I find I’m not dreaming
Cos I just don’t know how I’m gonna survive
If I’m right here awake and I’m streaming this live.
I don’t want to crash, but I don’t want to stay,
So help me to crash to an overcast day –
Cos there’s so many colours, I can’t find my way –
Help me, pray, when the DTs arrive.
Lis’ning to spaced-out psychic music,
Sometimes my mind is not my friend,
Cos psychedelic may sound angelic,
But it’s based on the blues in the end.
Just Another Joe
Poor little child, for now comes the naming,
The blanding and saming,
The cautious conforming,
The def’nitely not standing out from the norming.
But, loving parents, just look to your child,
For whatever’s chosen is hereafter filed –
For eighteen years onwards they cannot correct,
So only with courage and passion select.
For do we so need yet another Amanda ?
Or Johnny or Sandra ?
Or Alan or Gary ?
And are we deficient in Tom, Dick or Harry ?
So please do not foist them with Julie or Sam,
Nor Timmy, nor Mary, nor Philip, nor Pam.
For Cathy and Bill are as common as Claire
While Helens and Davids are found everywhere.
Now these names aren’t bad, they are just overused,
Their power diffused.
While others, no fairer,
Must serve in a purpose beyond their poor barer –
To label a kid with your own precious name
Is vanity foremost, to make them the same,
To moniker sprogs just to honour the dead
Is dubious burden to thrust in their head.
Yet some names stand out from the Susan and Ron –
Like Homer or Marlon,
Like Kingsley or Rudyard,
Like Heathcliff, or Linford, or else Isambard.
So Brooke and Keanu and Kelsey and Storm
Can ease off some pressure from Amy and Norm.
Give each of us fewer with whom we need share –
A little less common, a little more rare.
One of my first attempts to document my fascination with names, and also an early foray into my habit of versifyig a checklist. I note that all of the examples in the final stanza call to mind a particular individual, which I’m sure I intended, but which I now think would be just as unfortunate on the poor kids as calling them Alfie or Sophie.
Farewell, Athelstan
The Anglo-Saxons had their own names –
Had no need for our Kate or James –
Some, like Swithin and Thunor, perhaps,
Are only found on churches and maps –
Yet some, like Edward and Hilda, survive,
Though Oswald and Cuthbert are barely alive –
And Mildred and Wilfred are old-fashioned now,
Yet rather less Saxon than Dickens, somehow.
The same with Ethel and Edith – I swear
They sound quite common, for all that they’re rare,
While some like Dunstan, Wymond, and Wystan,
Are as old-money posh as Aubrey and Tristan.
And fun-fact, Ruth was a noun for compassion,
Yet strangely never was used in this fashion –
Yet Edruth and Ruthbert could’ve been (no joke),
Though Gailjoy to them meant a wind and a yoke…
Stanley and Beverley back then were place names,
While Hengist and Offa are leave-just-a-trace names,
And Osborn and Osmund are now only surnames,
While Hrothgar sees Roger become the preferred name.
So Alfred and Albert are still doing fine,
But Harold and Winston are on the decline –
And Edmund and Edgar are straight out of yore,
While Winifred and Edwin are winners no more.
Note that the theoretical Ruthbert would probably be pronounced in modern English to rhyme with Cuthbert and not with truth-bert.
Ovine Inspiration
Barbara Blacksheep bears a name
Belonging to a shepherdess,
A damsel in a dirndl dress.
But Barbara won’t play this game –
Whyever did her parents think
Her life should be a nod and wink ?
Barbara Blacksheep, twelve years old,
Is fighting hard against the path
Her name intends to telegraph.
Defiance, though, makes Barbara bold –
She won’t be traipsing downs and dales
From soggy Kent to chilly Wales !
For she’s a city girl at heart –
The only sheep she ever saw
Was supermarket mutton, raw.
She’d struggle how to play the part –
She couldn’t be a wannabo-Peep
For anyone, not even sheep.
She doubts all that nostalgia, though –
They weren’t romantic spirits, free,
But serfs a meal from poverty.
Yet things have changed since long ago –
The modern herders of the moors
Use phones and drones and four-by-fours.
But then she sees a painting in a book –
A shepherdess amongst the gorse
Just leaning on her crook –
Rather chocolate box, of course,
With unshod feet and peasant’s dress
But in her eyes a knowing look
That said here was a shepherdess
That knew her pasture’s ev’ry nook
And knew her ev’ry sheep by sight
And knew she’d get them home all right.
She was maybe fifteen, sixteen,
Not much older than Barbara now –
The latter who would struggle between
Telling a sheep from a cow
Yet somehow, if she’d only end her war
Upon her name,
Then give her three years, give her four,
To give herself an aim –
And could she be that confident of gaze
To watch them graze ?
And so she got to thinking deep
About her future, taking stock –
And made a choice to guard the flock.
So Barbara Blacksheep will never lack sleep
Counting ev’ry one of her charges
As each bleats and bustles and barges.
She made herself a solemn vow
To shield her yearlings from disasters
As playing fields become her pastures –
For she’s a playground monitor now –
Her lambs aren’t sheep and kids aren’t goats,
But tykes in woollen hats and coats.
How Now, Tao Dao ?
Taoist, I’m told, should be said with a ‘D’,
As ‘Daoist’, as voiced in the throat.
By why must it be then written with ‘T’,
To wear both a cloak and a coat ?
Perhaps the Chinese say it between,
But not so our English tongue –
So we must decide which way we lean,
And write it like it is sung.
Rhyming Couplets 