Poetry: September 2007 Archives
A little more revision and breaking the sonnet visually into its constituent quatrains and couplet.
Damn words won't sit still.
Keep moving around on me.
sit
I put them in one spot
Now, stay where I put you!
still
They end up getting themselves
Mixed up in odd combinations
That don't make sense any.
I didn't put them there.
They moved around in secret.
(sneak) (sneak) sit
Made a mess out of everything.
Beat the hell out of them
Sit still!
They just cry (sniff) like a whiny-baby. (sniff)
I pick them up and hug them
And put them back where I had them.
So I re-worked my ballad a little bit. Trying to make it more of a ballad:
Who walks into a bar?
Guy fatsky and guy thinsky
Thin one gets a martini,
Guy fatsky orders whiskey.
Who is it got brains?
Asks guy fatsky. You?
They say it ain't me
Guess it must be you.
Guy thinksy: You're ignorant.
Only the enlightened deserve
To have any substantial say.
But guy fatsky holds brains in reserve.
Who is the smarter?
The flinger or the stung?
I guess it all depends
On who it is gets hung.
The flinger gets hung
(or hangs himself).
Not the stung.
Speaking figuratively, of course.
Note: For this exercise, I had to take the fourteen ending words of a Shakespearean sonnet from our textbook and reuse them in a sonnet of our own. Turns out it's really, really difficult to create something that makes any kind of sense when you're forced to reuse another poet's words at the end of your lines.
Mosquitoes the hammer, an anvil the sun.
I between them, my hatless, bald head, red.
Miserable and lathered: mare sorrel, colt dun.
Chasing a bee, the youngster flicks his long head.
Mare comes near me, takes the hay with a bite.
Humidity slaps me and leaves red on my cheeks.
Her colt bounds toward us. A mother's delight
For any mother but her. I dig out the treats.
Someone should see this. But no one would know
What to make of a mother who hates the sound
Of her son coming near. I turn and I go.
Dry crunch under feet. Desiccated ground.
I force them to be together. The nuzzles are rare.
To what can this mother's disdain compare?
