Friday 22 July 2016

Sonnet frenzy - and Sonnet 21

Having written the first half of Odour Issues by February, I abruptly left off in order to get stuck into a welter of short stories. Having written eight or ten stories, probably by the beginning of May, I took up anew with the Montpeliad, which had been languishing for a couple of years as the 40 line introduction to a Papist (Pope - giddy?) satire of the follies of Montpelier in Bristol, where I have lived for over a decade. The Montpeliad being completed, very swiftly published in Bristol 247, and daubed as previously described on the walls of Meat/Liquor, I have now embarked on a sonnet frenzy. The thinking here is that Shakespeare wrote - correct me if I'm wrong - 154 sonnets, so I can write 155 of the bastards. Anyway, I've written 21 so far, in a variety of Petrarchan and Shakespearean rhyme scheme, although none so far in the Spenserian style. My latest effort is a sort of experimental reverse Petrarchan, insofar as the sestet precedes the octet.

Sonnet 21
Has Earth to show anything more uncouth?
Dulled to a greyness now, the underpants
cling limply to his calamari cleft:
their seventh week as barnacle to youth,
a scowling spitting verminous pissant
of all the social niceties bereft.
Fair maiden, pharmaceutically fatigued
carps like a slave in his triumphant ear;
joins, renegade, the world against him leagued.
Where is the valium of yesteryear?
Not to be had at 6am, for sure.
Watch from your window as the forms recede.
A brief crescendo. Someone slams a door.
You lie upon your bed and try to read.

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