Hey everyone,

I have always been a little cautious to try writing sonnets – the stereotype is always that they are for romance.

In one of these poems, you will find a flavour of that romantic stereotype, but I found them taking a whole ‘nother direction, in the end. It’s sort of just where my mind goes.

I try not to dwell on my poetry, and just let it flow out. There are never any drafts because that’s not really the point of why I write it. I will just call these ones “I” and “II” because I expect I will be posting some more (and it gets me out of naming the damn things!).

Believe it or not, despite the stereotypes, I had fun with these.

I played with a couple of different Petrarcan Sonnet rhyme schemes, as outlined here: “I” is written as abbaabbacdedce, and “II” is abbaabbacdcdcd. I didn’t try to write in iambic pentameter though, that’s a step too far.

Anyway, enough commentary.

Enjoy the poems!

Richard

I

She holds my hand as we walk down the street,
a little looser as time carries on;
a little looser still when my felon
heart skips a beat. We settle on a seat
placed awkwardly on the path. Our eyes meet
for a moment – only once, for upon
the tree across the road sits a heron,
its tiny wings dancing as its soft, sweet
melody drifts towards us, buffeted
by busses, bouncing briskly to and fro,
the sound too slow to make any sense to
us. It glances at us, and as I throw
my gaze it dives and gets hit. Gutted, it’s
guttered, and we sit shocked – a silent two.

II

How can we just sit and wait for the world
to change? How can we hold them to account
when we don’t hold them for the count:
their bodies pressed into the floor, then hurled
out of the ring; out of sight. We’ve unfurled
a deadly scroll and there’ll be no amount
of begging that will save us; no amount
of pain that can equal that of our world.
So we sit and hope it will stay the same,
we’ll help if it’s easy, and wait and see
if we can find someone else we can blame.
We pretend we’re the best that we can be –
blameless and pure – but when those chances came
we scrunched the note and cast it to the sea.