.
The clerihew is a relatively new poetry form introduced by Edmund Clerihew Bentley in 1905. It is usually a single quatrain of light verse rhyming aabb, without a standard meter. The first line usually ends with a name, often one difficult to rhyme with, and comes up with a ridiculous rhyme for it in the second line. At the SCP, we usually require meter. Could the lack of meter in the clerihew be an attempt to capture a charming sense of school-boy doggerel or is it just a lack of skill and aversion to the modern stigma placed on tradition? At any rate, this contest seeks a specifically metrical clerihew just for the fun of it.
Talbot Hook has submitted the below metrical clerihew to get the ball rolling:
.
The ever straight-shooting Diogenes,
No stranger to creatures’ biologies,
Gave Platonic depiction a lickin’
By presenting him with a plucked chicken.
.
Post your metrical clerihew in the comments section below. The meter does not have to be the same as Mr. Hook’s above.
.
.
Antonio López de Santa Anna
Met Yellow Rose in his cabana.
They say he scored, but when he snored
At San Jacinto he lost the war.
Everybody knows that Johnny Cash
Was up for making bets considered rash.
He ate a pound of peppers, then retired.
When morning came, he felt ‘The Ring of Fire.’
As an orator, young Aristotle
was renowned for a voice epiglottal.
Over time, as he waxed syllogistic,
he was deemed, sad to say, egotistic.
Joy Behar
Looks like she should be smoking a cigar.
She dominates “The View” —
A screechy, estrogen-challenged crew.
1
Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Was genteel and almost saintly,
For he liked to poke fun
And wound with a pen, not a gun.
2
“Don’t mess with a Biden,” said Joe Biden
“I am Biden-in-chief and know how to frighten,
Why only the other day I was let loose by the podium
And let me tell you the carnage was truly odious.”
3
“We will fight to the end,” cried Boris Johnson
But the end came to soon, now he’s lonesome,
For the good times have ended
And now Carrie’s garden he’s tending.
4
“I am The President,” says Donald Trump,
“The one who comes first and will never be last-
Everyone knows I was not defeated
But was truly and roundly cheated.”
5
“ Please,” observed Charles the Third
“ Why can’t I say, Off with his head!
What is the point of being crowned King
When one is constantly told what to think!”
The Swiss have a cheese they call Klaus,
With more holes than a derelict house.
Guaranteed by elites to be better than sweets,
Though it’s spurned by the hungriest mouse.
Delightful.
Ever since they elected Liz Truss,
Our economy’s under a bus,
The news is so painful to foller,
Now the pound is worth less than the dollar
Great Clerihew!
A cynic might think it is almost as if she is going to ‘Truss’ the UK..
Pardon the pun, of course I couldn’t possibly comment.
The poet Fernando Pessoa
Was a difficult writer to know-a:
Every week he seemed a different man:
The sign of a short self attention-span.
The repressive tyrant Qin Shi Huang,
Believed in the right of the pitiless strong;
He buried alive some hundreds of scholars,
Then went belly-up with mercurial hollers.
Ketanji Brown Jackson,
When asked her reaction
To womanhood: just an apology
For not being versed in biology.
His Royal Highness King Charlie the Third
was once considered a nerd.
An original climate change battling warrior,
he’s watched our planet’s state getting sorrier and sorrier.
Senator Chuck Schumer
Would be improved with an inoperable tumor.
We thought he’d kick off
From a COVID-based cough
But alas, that was only a rumor.
George Joshua Richard Monbiot
(He’s “Moonbat” to those in the know.)
Is saving the earth from the terrible trio:
True Tories and beef and no snow.
Turkey has a president called Erdogan
Who boasts that he is friends with everyone,
Look at Armenians, Greeks, Syrians or Kurds,
They could be friends if they gave him their turf.
The man who keeps the border is Mayorkis.
When we say it is open, he will “Bork” us.
But when the border’s like a leaking sieve,
that makes it hard for honest folks to live.
If you want to kill off Count Dracula,
try U-V effects of a facula,
which to those in the know is a luminous spot
on our Sun’s solar disk – like an over-bright dot.
I just watched the 1931 Dracula with Bela Lugosi for the first time a week ago, so this made me smirk. It’s an oldie and a goodie. And I love the scientific nature of your clerihew.
The Hungarian Bela Lugosi
With the commies was overly cozy;
Fleeing his home to avoid further scares,
He was type-cast in Horror on account of his stares.
“Arrogant girl!” cried Athene,
when Arachne boasted of her very fine weaving,
“You can indeed be the weaving queen,
catching flies for your tea!”
Persnickety Maurice Ravel
Made audiences endure hell:
He took a theme the weight of a sparrow
And tortured it into his bloated Bolero.
Oktoberfest
A full-page ad gave readers’ sound advice.
“Do not binge drink or drink out of a shoe.
While the brass band plays with tubas and lutes,
I’ll start a new fad and drink from my boot.
The Debates
The wise old owl said “I don’t give a hoot
Because their posture and cant are truly moot.
With skullduggery vows, they quibble, refute—
But each with their snoot licks the hand pledging loot.”
Let’s spare a thought for Julius Caesar –
A statesman, a soldier, a true Roman geezer.
He died two thousand years ahead of his time,
the very first victim of senseless knife crime.
The Greeks were cultured; but in truth
The Romans were a bit uncouth.
And yet, when all is said and done
The Greeks lost and the Romans won.
Great clerihews.
This one though is thought- provoking.
Sadly the cultured lose and the uncouth win. It sounds a bit like the kind of essay question we used to get in school many years ago. The one that always made a statement and ended with Discuss.
Thanks Mia, glad you liked them. I remember those essay lead-ins, but I doubt if my clerihews will provoke any dissertations!
Witty and neat!
Thank you Lucia.
It’s said the Olympian Hermes
Could travel on winged sandals for his journeys
He could flit from the mortal to divine
Shame, I can’t even walk a straight line
You can write a clerihew so well done.
The man’s wife Lydia
Gave her husband Chlamydia.
So he lived in the shame
Of his daughter’s new name.
Very witty.
A Clerihew to the Environment
Public, John (and Jane) Q.
their vehicles garaged because there’s nothing they can do.
Animals roam freely, air quality improves.
As the quarantine is lifted, the Earth again disapproves.
Is it possible Robert Frost
in a bright yellow wood, got lost?
It all began when he was urged
to try to find two roads diverged!
Neatly done, Lucia.