Once Upon a Tune

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Once Upon a Tune

Sing another story-song,
About a love gone wrong, perhaps,
Or unrequited longings long,
Forever under wraps.

Rag-to-riches, rites of passage,
Tell your message verse-by-verse –
From the wreckage of a savage love
Or maybe witch’s curse.

Country, folk, and western,
Aren’t the only storytellers –
From Ancient Rome to Preston,
Were the yarns of many fellers.

There’s always time for stories,
Don’t be sorry for the tale –
There’s life in allegories,
And there’s drama in the mail.

Emotions aren’t the only theme –
With which to team a tune.
We sometimes need to daydream
On a lonely afternoon.

So play another story-song
To singalong, my friend –
From a start that’s low and strong,
To a climax at the end.

Legitimate Bastards

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Legitimate Bastards

If I call you a bastard
I don’t mean a bastard
In terms of your parents –
So don’t get so cross.
There’s no-one says bastard
As that kind of bastard
For fifty-plus years –
I just don’t give a toss.
Who cares who’s your father ?
Don’t get in a lather –
I mean you’re an arsehole
In need of my scorn.
I called you a bastard
Because you’re a bastard –
A blighter, a beggar,
However you’re born.
So if you’ve no papa,
You’re mum ain’t a slapper-
Cos people are people,
And no harm to me.
I don’t call you bastard
To call you unmastered –
Cos I ain’t an unfeeling bastard,
You see.

…because “s/he” is unpronounceable…

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     …because “s/he” is unpronounceable…

Singular Theys were always generic,
The individual everyman,
Of either gender, but numeric’ly one –
Not hard to understand.
But once we knew who it was,
Then he or she was He or She –
They didn’t stay a They, because,
We now could specify, you see.

This calling Barry and Susan They
Is fresh, and it still sounds strange,
Though it’s prob’ly here to stay,
And language always likes to change.
We’ll get it, if you give us time,
To navigate the new.
Our speech evolves, it’s not a crime –
Just ask the Singular You.

Wireless-less

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Wireless-less

Left my phone at home – what a pain,
Now I haven’t a thing to read on the train.
I hope that nobody needs to reach me –
My own stupid fault, but I guess this’ll teach me.
And the loss of my music is just as bad –
But I wonder if there’s a poem to be had…?
A rant at the waste of a day I must frown on…
Then again, what will I write it down on ?

Saints of a Lesser Rank

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St Valentine proudly bearing some anachronistic double roses. Thanks, AI…

Saints of a Lesser Rank

The names we give our churches
Are all bound by strange constraints –
There’s an unwritten convention
To the way we dole-out saints.
So every town must have its Mary,
And its James or Paul, if space,
And all the All Saints crowding altars
Ever since the days of Thrace.
But as for Valentine, whose name
Is just as big as these, or bigger –
On the street, this saint for couples
Cuts an oddly lonely figure.
P’raps to worship him on ev’ry Sunday,
Sending prayers above,
Must seem to stuffy vicars like indulgence,
Gorging weekly love…
Yet how can priests with vows of chastity
Behold this worldy man,
Who teaches us to worship with our bodies ?
Best to scoff, and ban…
And yet, on February nights,
And far from Canterb’ry or Rome,
We pilgrims come together in his name
At makeshift shrines at home.

I have previously discussed a preference for local saints over here.

Hampstead Heartaches

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Hampstead Heartaches

Even the rich deserve to love,
They have it hard enough, we feel –
Having to live with all that guilt,
While all their wealth is jerry-built.
How can they hope to show their stuff,
Unless they give it up for real ?
To work a job and earn a crust
In hope they one day earn our trust.

Even the rich deserve to love,
To prove they’re more than privilege.
We shouldn’t judge the state they’re in,
Or hate them for their perfect skin.
I really hope they care enough
To share their fortune round a smidge –
To favour ev’ry love-struck son,
In hope we all can be the One.

The Price of Sharps

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The Price of Sharps

I remember when my father gave me
My first penknife, as a lad,
A ritual passed-on from his dad.
“I see you’re growing up, our Davy”
Like me, it was Sheffield made,
With a penny taped upon the blade.
“We always do that – that’s tradition.
You need to give that back to me,
To pay me for the present, see ?
It’s just a silly superstition,
But it’s how it’s always done –
Best to play along, hey, son.”

So now it’s my turn, as the father,
With my boy departing home
To study Greeks and Ancient Rome.
“You’ll have to learn to cook now, rather
Than depending on your mother.
A world of flavours to discover !”
And I gave him a set of knives
With which to peel and dice and chop,
Without a penny taped on top.
It felt at odds with modern lives –
Instead, let’s pass on tools and shears,
And pay them forward, down the years.

Bob-Bob-Bobbing

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Robin in the Spotlight, thanks to AI

Bob-Bob-Bobbing

The robins are chirping all night long
In the tree by the streetlight over the street.
I wonder what is the point of their song
That they keeping on chirping all night long ?
Perhaps this tree’s just a place to meet
When they fancy a branch for a late-night tweet ?
A nightclub where the music is strong
In the tree by the streetlight over the street.
I thought that robins were territorial,
And yet this tree is a truce-arboreal –
Chatting and chirping in one big throng,
In the tree by the streetlight all night long.

Fourthtides

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Diagram Comparing the Celtic, Astronomical and Meteorological Calendars by Ccferrie

Fourthtides

The Celtic quarter days are out of sync
By six weeks or so, all said.
Not on the English solstice and equinox,
But behind (or ahead).
Now May Day and All Saints are obvious links,
To anchor the year secure –
But Lammas and Candlemas slip their docks
When they don’t mean much anymore.
And so the seasons grow and shrink,
And won’t be tightly bound –
The year won’t fit a nice square box,
When its orbit is a round.

I’ve discussed quarter days before, and their mixed-up child the tax year.

On a bit of a tangent, but I’ve long thought the perfect year would be made up of 6-day weeks – with five per month, or 60 in a year (plus five spare days, interspersed one every three months, plus one extra for New Year’s Day). This would mean that a particular date was always the same day of the week each year, and we could finally ditch Mondays…

Diacritique

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Diacritique

English’s attitude to accents is curious –
I don’t mean Geordie and Scouse,
But those sprinkles of furniture that turn pedants furious
When added (or not) to the house.
A déjà vu of coördination
Or über-pretentious clatter ?
A naïve façade in over-citation,
Or a stick to beat the piñata ?
In a language with only a nodding relation
With sensible phonetics as this,
Then it hardly matters if most of the nation
Give this foreign decoration a miss.
With English, their rôle is recherché at best,
For all some writers may covet –
In English, they just make the page look stressed,
And I doubt they’ll ever be belovèd.