April 29 - NaPoWriMo

I hope everyone has had an enjoyable Sunday.  Callisto and I went to church this morning and I had work after.  We reached over 1000 kids for April (I work in a supervised play area of a grocery store) and we still have one day left.  Needless to say, days at work are getting busier and busier lately and school isn't out yet.

The end of April will mean the end of NaPoWriMo and we will be about a week away from Sean's surgery.  He is on his way home from visiting friends in Indiana.  A bike trip before his surgery.  And, before you know it we will be picking Aria up from school for the summer.  This year is flying by it seems.

Sean Patrick Dougherty
Liked his cups of tea
Throat cancer almost beat
He can't wait to eat meat

 

Today’s prompt is to write either a clerihew or a double dactyl. These are brief, usually satirical poems. The clerihew is a four-line biographical poem, with an ABAB or AABB rhyme scheme and no regular meter. Here is an example:

Sir Humphry Davy
Was not fond of gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Double-dactyls are a bit longer and harder, with an extremely rigid rhyme/meter. A double dactyl consists of two four-line stanzas. The fourth lines of each stanza rhyme. But the meter is where it gets complicated: The first through third lines of each stanza must be six syllables, in the form of double dactyls (Stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables). The fourth line of each stanza is only four syllables long, with no particular meter requirements.

Finally, the first line of the first stanza is usually “Higgledy-piggledy” or some other repeating non-sense, like “Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake.” Note that both “higgledy-piggledy” and “pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake” are in the double dactyl form!