Ground Control

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Waiting by Rajasekharan

Ground Control

I guess you’re still alive,
Somewhere out there,
Somewhere new.
I guess you’re busy busy,
In your never-ending rush.
I know that you’ll survive
You’re latest dare –
You always do.
I guess that you don’t miss me,
You were never one to gush.

You love to do it all,
To paint your skin
In polychrome –
You’ll find another place to stay,
And then you’ll disappear.
I know that when I call,
You won’t be in,
You won’t be home.
I’ll leave a message anyway
I know you’ll never hear.

But then, from out the blue,
An absent ring,
A sudden voice,
And down a noisy line
I hear your Sunday morning walk.
I know before you speak it’s you –
I’m listening,
I have no choice –
I just pretend I’m fine
As I let you talk and talk.

Snowfall in London

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Photo by Yelena Odintsova on Pexels.com

Snowfall in London

Frost fairs upon the Thames, they never happen these days –
Snow just once or twice a year is all we get round here.
Curses to the Gulf Stream, damn your warming ways !
Snow just once or twice a year, and Spring is always near.
And it’s shut down the town again,
It’s shut down the town, my dear,
Shut down the trains and the drains and the pier.

Nobody is ever ready when it comes a-falling,
Never dressed for proper cold in proper Winter gear.
Nobody is ever ready when the snow is balling,
Before they’ve even had a fight, the flurries disappear.
And it’s back to the rain again,
It’s back to the rain, my dear,
Back to the grey – and it’s here to stay, I fear.

“I want to say one word to you, Benjamin, just one word…”

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Photo by Krizjohn Rosales on Pexels.com

“I want to say one word to you, Benjamin, just one word…”

Contact lenses, spectacles, disposable razors,
Medical heart-valves and pencil erasers,
Sterile packaging, gloss paints and superglues,
Motorcycle helmets, fibreglass canoes,
Polytunnel farming, gas- and gutter-piping,
Multicoloured buttons, and click-a-clacker typing,
Hygienic nappies, and vegan-friendly footwear,
And yes, all the litter that ev’rybody put there.

The truth is that we need it,
That we cannot live without it –
Except of course we did
Before we ever knew about it.
But look at all the progress that we’ve made –
Can we lose it all ?  I doubt it.

Self-healing polymers, handle-safe explosives,
Tin-can inner-linings, and packaging for corrosives,
Lego bricks and credit cards, LPs that we cherish,
Electrical cables that will never fray or perish,
Damp-proof damp-courses, and cavity-foam walls,
Artificial limbs and teeth, table-tennis balls,
Satellite shielding, acoustic guitar strings,
Hyper-fibre optics, and a thousand other things.

The truth is that we need it,
That our lives are better for it –
We need to use it less,
But we surely can’t ignore it –
The future’s soft and flexible – be careful,
And we’ll all get to explore it.

Naymington-on-Poynte

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Sheffield Fingerpost Signs by Leander Architectural

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 ?

Future Habitual

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Future Habitual

At some point in the future,
I would have laboured ev’ry day –
I would have gone to work and back,
Is what I would will say.
But further in the future,
I would have been retired by then
(But not yet will have go to God),
And I can would be looking back
And I will wondered yet agen
At how such phrases once will sounded odd.

The Future Habitual aspect is a clause of speech that linguists insist does not exist.

Twenty-Eight Alone

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feb

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.”

Salisbury Cathedral Vaccination Centre

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Christ Cleansing the Temple by Bernardino Mei

Salisbury Cathedral Vaccination Centre

Angels in the ceiling, salvation in the needles,
Organ practice in the air, the bishop looking proud –
Gone is the busyness of canons, deans, and beadles,
But the locked-up church can once again give welcome to the crowd.
Monks used to pray here, monks who ministered the sick –
But these days it is nurses who are rolling up the sleeves.
So what would Jesus say at their death-defying trick ?,
Their communion, regardless what each congregant believes.
Would he drive them out, back to their lab’ratories ?
Or would he get stuck-in with his newfound clientelle ?
Stained-glass in the windows, telling ancient stories –
Maybe in a thousand years, they’ll tell this one as well.

Strictly speaking, there were no monks at Salisbury, but rather secular canons.  These performed the same duties, but weren’t under a monastic rule, and lived in the town rather than in adjacent cells.  Sort of like day-pupils rather than boarders.

The Wages of Sin

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Manners & Customs of ye Englyshe in 1849 by Richard Doyle

The Wages of Sin

Thanks, Dick Turpin – what a guy !
Killed a few, but by-the-by.
Thank you Ripper, Jack the Flash –
Take the tour and rake the cash.
Thank you Crippen, bask in fame –
Morse was made through your good name.
Thank you Shipman, take my breath –
Waxworks beckon, Doctor Death.

Lokomotiviy

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Lokomotiviy

We’ve all heard of the sealed train
That carried the 36 between
Zürich and the Glasbahnhof,
In April 1917.
A couple of ferries and a new suit later,
Tornio station, platform 1,
To catch the sleeper to Petrograd –
And become the prodigal son.
Finnish metals all the way,
On over the swamps and rugged terrain
To the Finland Station and history,
Though no-one thought to note the train.
One is preserved – it may be the one,
But as likely not – we’ll never know.
Those locos were all faithful workers,
Too busy toiling to stop and crow.

But in the height of August,
Fleeing back the way he came –
Working his passage with a shovel,
Lenin stoked the movement’s flame.
293 – preserved in glass
The only loco we know he rode,
Not that we can blame the pistons
For their unexpected load.
American built, as the century turned,
A proud ten-wheeler, H2-Class,
A broad-gauge beauty, wood-fired boiler,
Black, without that bourgeois brass.
Does it matter ?  Holy relics ?
Lenin was also just a machine
That public anger drove to the station
In the red-heat of 1917.

I have completely failed to determin which platform at Tornio the train to Petrograd would have departed from, so naturally I chose the one that rhymed.