22 - Disambiguation (a rhyming infodump)

#NaPoWriMo Day 22 and I wrote a clerihew inspired by a prompt the Porcupine (disambiguation) page of Wikipedia, which is pretty much fully down to my Prompt-o-matic Spreadsheetatron™ telling me to write a Clerihew (okay, I cheated a bit in the first stanza; don’t tell Bentley) about Porcupine, except it was me who decided to expand it to a five-stanza series by picking things that intrigued me from the “It could mean these things” page.

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the twenty-one preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/fayroberts/posts/disambiguation-162117475

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The rodent that’s called Porcupine
has quills on its sides, rump, and spine;
whether it’s the Old World family of Hystricidae,
or the New World (totally no relation) family of Erethizontidae.

The Porcupine Caribou
is an exotype not found in the zoo.
This subspecies of reindeer is super-migratory,
which makes them a nomadic-existence-inspiring quarry.

The slow-moving Porcupinefish
has one easy-to-grant wish:
it mostly wants to be left alone,
which it hints at by making itself spiky and overblown.

The HMS Porcupine
could be any one of various ships, numbering nine.
The first one was launched in 1743,
and the last one torpedoed in 1942 in the Mediterranean Sea.

Porcupine homolog (Drosophila)
is a human gene whose mutations are associated with focal dementia hypoplasia.
The protein it encodes
is not an easy thing about which to write odes.

On the grounds that anything is better than getting GenAI to vomit something up, I drew this nightmare fuel fusion of images associated with all five things described above

2019.10 Clerihewn

Explanation at the beginning again, as you may need to brace yourself for the ridiculousness. I was a little desperate after the last one, so requested help from social media: give me some names, and I’ll give you clerihews to match. Probably. The result is a mixture of friends, friends of friends, famous (if occasionally obscure) people, and legends such as Washing Machine Trev...


Somhairle Kelly
Is obscenely fond of jelly.
Ask what their favourite flavour is
And they’ll tell you surprisingly sternly that it’s none of your biz.

Katherine Burr Blodgett
Had a most peculiar pet.
She’d explain that she’d simply made it invisible,
But the other physicists took pains to let her know that they considered this risible.

Kasha-Faye Pascoe
Is inordinately fond of eating snow.
When queried on the source of this compulsion
She informs her interlocutor that it’s the thing that fires her extraordinary propulsion

Elly Merry Hadaway
Likes to swim like a manta ray.
They owe this remarkable aquatic prowess
At least in part to their skilled fashioning of a fetching, neoprene, wingèd dress.

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant
Kept an enormous army ant
She liked to decorate it with feather boas and glitter,
But never trusted it with cash as she suspected that was something it would fritter.

Keir Thomas-Bryant
Is rather amazingly pliant
His displays of this quality sometimes cause the neighbours consternation
But they say nothing to the effect because he’s very generous with his libation.

Paul Darrow
Is the owner of a silver-plated harrow.
He says he doesn’t mind that it’s a tad impractical,
As it’s surprisingly helpful in matters parallactical.

Washing Machine Trev
Prices all his business transactions purely on the lev.
While this would be perfectly acceptable in Bulgaria,
It makes the prospect of his ongoing prosperity in south-east England that much hairier.

Alan Rickman
Would always end his handwritten notes with a stickman.
When asked why he would even do this at home he
Would generally mutter something about the venerable clan called Nakatomi

Toby Dylan
Is a master of the brass-cast quillon.
When queried about his choice of profession
He expounds upon his love of cross-guards with a remarkable quantity of self-possession.

Jorge Luis Borges
Liked to talk at parties about his latest fork case
It was said that if he ever started to wax lyrical on the subject of the spoon
That would be a sign that the Apocalypse was due soon.

Lee Nelson
He’s a man you’ll never quell, son.
You may think you’ve got some lustre, kids,
But when you go against him, you go against his fiercely loyal gang of mustelids.

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. :)

2015.27 - Shades of Bentley

Hereward the Wake
Ate a lot of cake;
Drowned his face in orange squash
Then refused to have a wash.

Rosalind Franklin
Liked to straighten lank pins;
Decorated lampposts
With things that looked like damp ghosts.

Stephen Hawking
Loves to watch a cork spin;
Doesn't know why,
If you ask him, he will sigh.

J.K. Rowling
Will often stop for bowling;
Gets fed up as hell
When asked to do a spell.

"Syd" Barrett
Imitates parrots;
When asked if he likes cages
Says: well, it's all the rage, yes.

Susanna Clarke
Goes punting after dark;
Sings carols to the bats,
Says they have some lovely chats.