Two Poems Unworthy of Emily Dickinson

I: A Double Dactyl

Rickinson, bickinson,
     Emily Dickinson
     hid from the world and
     wore a white dress.

With quatrains and slant rhymes, i-
     ambic septameter,
     Dashes and — Capitals
     she was obsessed!

II: A Clerihew

Emily Dickinson
thought Nature was magnificent,

except for that dang fly
that went all Kanye West on her when she died.

Double Dactyls from the Potterverse

HARRY
Doot-dee-doo, doot-dee-doo,
    Harry J. Potter to
    invincibility
    strangely arrived:
faced with Avada Ke-
    davra, he magically,
    asymptomatically,
    somehow survived.

HERMIONE
My-oh-me, my-oh-me,
    Granger, Hermione
    (“Hogwarts: a History—
    read it!” she’ll say)
always relied upon
    extracurricular
    bibliomania,
    saving the day.

RON
Wheezy-lad, wheezy-lad,
    Ronald B. Weasley had
    hair the most shockingly
    red ever seen.
Brave for the most part, yet
    spiders reduced him to
    pusillanimity,
    turning him green.

SNAPE
Scuzz-a-da, scuzz-a-da,
    Severus Snape was a
    disciplinarian,
    nobody’s friend.
But then in spite of this
    Machiavellian
    attitude he was re-
    deemed in the end.

DUMBLEDORE
Headmaster A. P. B.
    W. Dumbledore,
    (back for a cameo,
    though he was dead)
gave inconclusively
    eschatological
    counsel to Harry in-
    side of his head.

VOLDEMORT
Moldy-wart, moldy-wart,
    Tom Riddle (Voldemort)’s
    thanatophobia
    drove him to sin.
Sadly, his spell over-
    looked a key factor of
    consanguineity…
    Harry will win.

Shakespearean Double Dactyls

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
What-a-trick, what-a-trick,
    Beatrice and Benedick,
    swore not to marry be-
    fore they were dead.
Almost inevitably,
    irritability
    gave way to trickery...
    then they were wed.

AS YOU LIKE IT
Try-to-find, try-to-find,
    ’Lando and Rosalind,
    both of them banished and
    lost in the woods,
but as she’s two levels
    deep in cross-dressing, she’s
    unrealistically
    hidden the goods.

LOVE’S LABOURS LOST
Three foolish lords and King
    Ferdinand, Ferdinand,
    thought they could study with-
    out any girls,
then shifted drastically,
    anti-monastically,
    soon as they saw all those
    lovely French curls.

TWELFTH NIGHT
Fly-awa’, fly-awa’,
    Lucky for Viola
    (loved by the Duchess while
    dressed as a man)
brother Sebastian is
    monozygotically
    willing to fill in the
    best that he can.

Two Dactyls for a Hip

for my grandfather

Raggada Baggada
Leonard C. Boone had a
hip replaced yester—no,
Tuesday—at noon.

Good metallurgical
musculoskeletal
amplification’s a
definite boon!

A Double Dactyl for Gilbert & Sullivan

Julligan Mulligan,
Gilbert and Sullivan
Went to the palace for
Tea with the queen.

Singing dramatically,
Polysyllabically,
Earned them their knighthoods, and
Chocolate creams.