2022.4 Drake

This one’s all the fault of @poetrynonstop, specifically Ken Cumberlidge, who introduced us to this form (which is, of course, on the magical spreadsheet). On this day in 1581, Queen Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake for sailing around the world. But this might not be about just him...

Be careful; common men fare badly circumnavigating principalities. Pursue a brighter star; climb higher than them.

They call you names,
the ones within your sphere.
No matter now.

Can you see them still?
The ones you left there?

Images put together by me and taken from Google Image searches on, respectively: “Drake meme”, “Francis Drake”, “drake dragon”, and “Drake equation”

2017.24 - Birthday Clerihew

Malcolm IV of Scotland
Feared to get a shot hand
He spent half his life in chain mail
Which made his later love life a bit of a fail.

Afonso II of Portugal
Said: “haven’t I ever taught you, gal?
“Make sure you’ve got the best hand…”
His daughter sighed and replied: “Yes dad, that advice is grand.”

John de Vere
Employed a kind of seer;
Not to tell the future,
But as a sort of gambling tutor.

George of Poděbrady
Loved a stubborn countess sadly.
Said she could never wed him
Until he’d taught her entire court how to swim.

Joan of France
Liked to underwater dance
Said there was nothing like it
Although her local facilities were frankly a bit of a pit.

Robert Fayrfax
Invented the chair tax
Those levied, on the whole,
Tended to club together to temporarily hide them in a massive hole.

Julius Caesar Scaliger
Was not your average scavenger:
He was a great collector of unconsidered trifles,
Which people considered a far safer hobby than his previous one of collecting prototype rifles

Alexander Ales
Was mortally afraid of gales
He wouldn’t go out in them in case someone might
Sneak up on him unheard in the bluster and put him in their sights.

Johann Stumpf
Wrote an awful lot of gumpf
Would insist on taking it to parties
Where he’d regale people with hot air in a voice considered almost offensively hearty.

Georg Fabricius
Liked a lot of birthday fuss
He’d celebrate for a whole week
Which, some people muttered, was frankly a bit of a cheek

William Shakespeare
Was caught up writing King Lear
He didn’t notice it was his birthday
Until people interrupted him with hip-hip-hooray!


I’ve just realised that this is the part where it becomes particularly clear that I’m writing one day ahead; all these historical figures have their birthday on 23rd April, according to Wikipedia, and it was a case of write a poem about one of the seemingly endless series of battles that took place on this day (a notion that may make its way into a poem by itself at some point), or write some daft Clerihews (there are other kinds?!) about as many of those listed until I lost the will to string any more words together. I made it to Shakespeare without feeling sick on gorged ridiculosity. Done. :)

2015.21 - Gloriana

She has seen the past
And she wants no part in it,
Glimpses the smallness
That she rejects with every breath
In the relentlessness of
Other people's pessimism.

She does not know what she wants,
Yet,
Only what she doesn't -
Dullness, the fading of
Her name and face.

She was born for glory,
To be a sharp outline against
The backdrop of the rest of them,
And she thinks she's ready
To be literally monumental.

And she finds it does not stop,
That being good enough is never
Good enough,
And that a warrior must learn
To trade and craft
And train, and be placating.
And that sometimes best means
Finding someone better.

But she wages war on the mundane,
Battles bland,
Grabs for grand,
And stands, alone,
The way she always meant to,
Burning, and learning
To take the pain of light.

__________

I was reading about Hatshepsut, the longest-reigning female Pharoah. It's fascinating, especially the way she managed her own legend, but she was also genuinely brilliant, and did an amazing number of things that changed Egypt's fortunes for the better…