Following my humiliating (but not unexpected) recent defeat at the hands of the NYC Midnight judges I have meekly returned to my roots, cap in hand, to bore you with silly poems. Some a lot sillier than others but none requiring any serious thought – on my part or that of the reader.

I remember discovering, to my youthful dismay, that the plural of platypus is platypuses and not platipi. This is an outrage. How can such a delicate and graceful little animal be given such a cumbersome plural when a relatively clumsy oaf like the hippopotamus gets something so much more poetic? I won’t stand for it!

Anyway, I was considering the platypus last night whilst drinking heavily and cursing, yet again, the NYC Midnight judges, and thought it high time to express my feelings on this poorly appointed plural.

*

We are but mammals, you and I
Together with the platypi
Our species not in short supply
Such is our wish to multiply
We live on land yet yearn to fly
To hope just once, before we die
This gravity to yet defy
To rise one day, and touch the sky

*

By way of factual information, by the way, for those not familiar with this wide brown land, the platypus does not, it would seem, multiply veraciously, as I might have suggested for poetic convenience. Kangaroo, on the other hand (no plural required, they are almost never seen alone) breed like rabbits, and there are eight or nine of them on my front lawn right now.