October Snakeskin is full of good things, but its most noticeable feature is a Festival of Double Dactyls, featuring the work of several excellent versifiers. For those of you who don’t know the Double-Dee, this Wikipedia page gives a good summary. But if you go to October Snakeskin and plunge in, you’ll get the idea pretty quickly.
The Double-Dactyl really must be the jolliest of light-verse forms (I much prefer it to the limerick). Here’s one I wrote a very long time ago:
Chungalow Bungalow
Hans Christian Anderson
Wrote of sweet mermaids who
Grace the sea-bed.
When people asked him for
Gynaecological
Details he stammered and
Went very red.
If you’ve any double-dactyls of your own, why not add them to the comments section of this post?
Meanwhile, today (October 1st) is National Poetry Day, an annual occasion which I celebrated in verse a while back. You can read the poem here.
Snakeskin's Blog 
October 1, 2020 at 10:16 am
I adore this form! I had missed that it was coming up. Will go and take a squinny!
October 1, 2020 at 12:47 pm
Rhymingly Chimingly,
Helena Happenstance,
Always so full of
Poetical life,
Snakeskin sends happily
Double-dactylical
Greetings to you in your
Fortress in Fife.
October 1, 2020 at 11:42 am
That’s a tricky form, but fun. Here’s one …
Hip Hippopotamus
Louis of Battenberg’s
Name is preserved in the
Battenberg Cake.
Although not Prussian-like
Un-vorsprungdurchtechnik
Quirky, delectable
Easy to bake.
October 1, 2020 at 12:49 pm
Good one, Richard (but the Battenburg didn’t look so easy to bake in last week’s Bake-Off.
October 2, 2020 at 2:59 pm
I cheated a bit there, George. Love this poetic form. It’s new to me and quite challenging. I’ll practice.
October 3, 2020 at 3:08 pm
Ooyakah Booyakah
Dear Queen Elizabeth’s
ninety-third birthday turned
into a rave.
She did the running man
extraordinarily,
crafting a move from her
famed royal wave.
October 6, 2020 at 12:41 pm
Here are a couple of failed entries to the recent Spectator competition looking for double-dactyls celebrating musicians.
O-bla-di, O-bla-da,
John, Paul, George, Ringo Starr,
Lovable Liverpool
Lads – the mop tops!
Spawned Beatle mania,
(Entomological
Madness?). Just once
Playing Top of the Pops.
And
Scaramouche, Scaramouche,
Frederick Mercury,
Killer Queen, laser beam,
Bohemian
Rhapsody (Parody!)
Melodramatically,
Hit the high notes,
Needing no helium.
October 25, 2020 at 9:11 pm
Oops. Incorrectly formatted last line on both examples. (First word of last lines should be last word of penultimate lines.)
October 24, 2020 at 10:46 am
Fumbly bumbly
Captain Calamity
“Follows the science” with a
Grin and a wink.
Just as he, riskily,
Characteristically
Peers optimistically
Over the brink.
October 25, 2020 at 9:25 am
Finding this rather addictive!
Tearily beerily
Lily Labotmy
Lives in obscurity
None know her name.
Reckon the chances are
Infinitesimal
This double dactyl will
Shoot her to fame.
October 25, 2020 at 1:11 pm
Last one, I promise!
Bankable bunkable
Valery Singleton
Still brings a tingle on
After so long.
Picturing clearly her
OneImadeearlier;
Flashes of childhood these
Forty years on.
October 25, 2020 at 2:11 pm
Last one? No, John, give us a couple more.
October 25, 2020 at 5:03 pm
One more then. Appreciate the vote but I badly need to clear my head of spinning dactyls!
Prodigal shodigal
William McGonagall
Lived in an age where great
Craft was admired.
Now, it seems, dissonant
Incomprehensible,
Unstructured poems are
What are required.
October 26, 2020 at 11:04 am
OK, here’s the second. It came to me, unwelcome and uninvited, in this morning’s bath. Perhaps this is to be my eternal torment. . .
Trampily Trumpily
King Ozymandias
Lives in a fable of
Power and greed.
Whether dynastic or
Climatological,
Featureless desert is
Where they will lead.