Not at all Rhinocerus
a collection of verse
by
Barnaby Wilde
Copyright 2012 by Barnaby Wilde
Barnaby Wilde asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover picture 'Rhinoceros' from a woodcut by Albrecht Durer (1515)
Footnote: Etymology. Rhinocerus (noun) is an erroneous form of rhinoceros, which has been back formed from the equally erroneous plural rhinoceri, by analogy with Latin words that end in –us that become –i in the plural.
Given it's origins, rhinocerus is therefore neither a misspelling nor a synomym of rhinoceros. It's just plain wrong! (but Barnaby Wilde doesn't care).
Other published works by the author.
A Question of Alignment – a Tom Fletcher novel
I Keep Thinking It's Tuesday – a Tom Fletcher novel
Animalia – a collection of quirky verse with an animal theme
Life… -- a collection of verse on a vaguely 'life' related theme
The Blind Philospher and the God of Small Things -- more verse, with a philosophical theme and bad puns.
Barnaby Wilde is the pen name of Tim Fisher.
Tim was born in 1947 in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, but grew up and was educated in the West Country. He graduated with a Physics degree in 1969 and worked in manufacturing and quality control for a multinational photographic company for 30 years before taking an early retirement to pursue other interests. He has two grown up children and currently lives happily in Devon.
Visit www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk for the author's blog and more information about the world of Barnaby Wilde.
A psychiatrists guide to empathetic garden design
I gave him grass because he was forlorn.
A sheep to crop it short. He called it Sean.
I gave him hedges lest he take offence.
A greenhouse as his orchid passions were intense.
A gravelled route to fit with his pathology.
Surprise at every turn sustained geology.
I gave him herbs for when he needed thyme.
Flowers, because his case was borderline.
For thrills, two narrow water sources,
With the finest stone laid down in ordered courses.
I placed a little hut where he could shed his worldly cares,
A soaring flight of steps to beat his neighbour’s stares.
I installed bovine sculptures for his moodiness,
And hoop petticoat narcissi to ease him in his stress.
I specified old sleepers to make the new raised beds
Roses and lilacs made sense in pastel mauves and reds
And will he be contented? Will he forget me not?
Or in his paranoia see just another plot?
(October 1999)
A sense of gravity
Eve believed the Devil’s hype,
And picked an apple not yet ripe,
Inventing, thus, depravity.
Whereas, later, falling fruit on,
(Not yet knighted) Isaac Newton,
Lent him a sense of gravity.
The moral of this little verse,
Is that it’s worse to swipe an,
Apple from the knowledge tree,
Than let it fully ripen.
(September 2001)
A Staggering Gait
A man in a van with an evident plan, ran a hand through his hair
with a distracted air and continued to stare, at a gate.
I stood in my hood on the slope near the wood while
he edged round the hedge with a hammer and wedge
which he pushed in the hinge with no twinge of remorse,
and I watched as he botched his first bash with the sledge
hammer, notching the gatepost but missing his leg
by a fraction. To his satisfaction his nimble reaction
enabled infraction (that’s theft through impaction) to go on apace.
With feet spread for traction, he renewed the action -
strong muscle contractions behind each compaction – (contrast my inaction) -
and standing his ground he continued to pound
while that sound wound around and around in my head.
I knew that I should, if I could, call the cops,
but stood in that wood, in my hood, indecision
invited derision, while full in my vision
with care and precision he made his excision
completing his mission to pilfer my gate.
So he ended his raid and made haste to evade,
while I stayed in the shade near the glade in that wood.
Now it’s hardly a chortle, to lose one’s main portal,
but I’m merely mortal, not really the sort who’ll
stand up in his own defence. Besides, where’s the sense?
If I turned him in now then he might take offence.
(August 2000)
Dual Personalities
Summer happy, some are not,
Whither joy? Or, wither, rot.
I see a place, an icy spot,
Where herbs once grew, in thymes forgot.
Made in heaven, maid in hell.
If sound is frail, ephemeral,
Where does truth lie? How would you tell?
In yon yew wood? In sense of smell?
In fallen rose, or site unseen,
Or dew that has already been?
An average man who isn’t mean?
A simpleton who’s dull but keen?
It doesn’t sum, so don’t tell me,
Of history that’s yet to be.
Or give me rhymes of landlocked sea,
Mere tales, in frozen poetry.
Uncertain shores, how can that be?
It sounds like inconsistency.
Contrary meanings struggle free
From words bound in duplicity.
(January 2000)
Ghoti
I’m almost sure
it was George Bernard Shaw,
Who invented a word
to show how absurd
english spelling can be.
The word was ‘ghoti’
(pronounced ‘fish’).
The ‘f’ was from cough,
with the first bit knocked off.
And the ‘i’ came from skimmin’
the first vowel from ‘women’.
The ‘s’ ‘h’ was fashioned
From ‘t’ ‘i’ in ration.
(making ‘fish’)
Equally daft are the unpronounced letters
Like ‘p’ in psychiatrist; ‘b’ in debtors.
Redundant ‘e’s and surplus ‘u’s
That lurk in catalogues and queues.
Superfluous ‘g’s in naughty and gneiss.
Do we really need ‘h’s in when’s and why’s?
Why an ‘n’ in hymn and a ‘k’ in knight?
Or a ‘w’ in wrong and write?
What use is that extra ‘b’ in lamb?
We manage O.K. without it in ham.
Can science absolve it’s additional ‘c’?
Why do we maintain this eccentricity?
This nonsensicl riting that we purpetrate
Is only caprishusnes; hazard not fate.
So resist this opreshun stand up for your rites
And use lojicl spelling, starting tonite.
All those unneeded letters can just be ignord.
Let today be the day the fish finaly rord.
(June 2001)
A Gneiss Romance
I found a little pebble that I’m keeping as a pet,
He’s hiding in the corner, muc
h too scared to come out yet.
If I treat him kindly then before he gets much older,
I hope he’ll learn to trust me and become a little boulder.
He’s very nearly round in shape, with just the merest knobble,
I like to roll him down a slope to watch my cobble wobble.
We run together in the park to keep our muscles honed,
Once he overdosed on grass and got a little stoned.
We chill out in the evenings with some music - jazz or soul.
Sometimes we play a little blues, but mainly rock and roll.
He tells me all the things he’s done, about life in the shingle.
I recall the girls I’ve known, the joys of being single.
He says he’d like to settle down, to put an end to travel.
Maybe find himself a mate and hear the pattering of gravel.
I took him to the coast today, waves washed him from my reach.
I guess it’s true for pebbles that life really is a beach.
(October 2000)
Off at a Tangent
There were two flies walking on a bald man’s head,
When the older fly said, ‘What’s the rush?
Look around. Note the absence of brush.
Don’t you think all this pink’s a bit odd?’
The juvenile fly stopped and polished his eye with his leg.
Then he yawned. What was that? Boring stuff.
But he looked. Sure enough there was nothing but fluff.
Not a molecule of follicle in any of his compound views.
They stood for a while and picked at their mouths with their feet.
‘When I was a lad,’ the older fly said,
‘I was courting your mother. We came to this head
For a spot of the other.’ (He was mumbling a bit at this point).
The younger fly kept his eyes turned down,
But he found that with vision all round,
That was not easy. He pecked at the ground
With his mouth as the old fly rambled on.
‘All this space you now see at the top of the face
Wasn’t here. Just acres of curly brown hair.
Yes, life really was a jungle back there.’
He sighed as he spoke as he tried to recall
That day in the fall. The thrill of it all.
When they came, virgins both,
To make love in that thick undergrowth.
His eyes misted over with the memory.
Just at that moment the bald man frowned,
But both flies defiantly stood their ground
As the ripples of flesh flowed around them.
‘Earthquakes,’ muttered the old fly. ‘Nothing serious.’
They wandered a while in silence looking for scraps
Of food or any dead skin to eat.
Silently pounding that plateau of meat
With complete disregard for the man under feet.
‘Just a footpath. That’s all it was then,’ he went on.
‘Dead straight, for mile after mile.
We had to walk in single file
Just to reach this small glen at the end.’
‘Whoa there. He was losing his hair even then?’
Asked the youth, giving proof
That he really had been listening,
While his thoughts raced ahead to recall what he’d read in a book about trigonometry.
‘Do you mean’, he went on,
‘That this place where we’ve been -
Where you tell me my mother got laid -
Was the actual scene where that memory aid we were taught for mathematics was made?’
‘But of course,’ said the fly. ‘This is the true source.
That’s why we came here today.’
But he choked as he spoke and he started to sway
And his eyes clouded over. His legs all gave way.
And he died. Just like that. He fell flat
On his back with his legs in the air, as flies do,
On that erstwhile track, in the absence of hair.
But he’d passed on his wisdom to one his heirs, at least.
This sudden cessation caused some consternation
To his son, and a ticklish sensation
To their host, who most churlishly slapped
At the source of the itch with a flap of his wrist.
But the youngster, though dazed by events
Was unphased and quickly took off.
Somewhere in that small fracas,
Unnoticed, the older fly’s carcass was