Shakespearean Sonnets: Writing Part 2

Once upon a time back in the year blah-blah-blah-blah, I was a lot younger.  Apparently I also had a lot more time on my hands.  I must have had TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS (Styx reference.  I saw Styx right after I got back from Egypt in 2023.  They were pretty amazing live.  Tommy Shaw is a small little dude who can rock!)  Anyway, I used to write a lot when I was younger.  My goal was to write a science fiction book.

Okay.  Let’s stop right there and start this over.

If our last “Writing” post took place when I was writing in high school, we should probably move to college.

Okay.  It’s my senior year of college at UNC Chapel Hill.  I’m an English major.

Oh!  We should probably back up again.

Okay.  The year is 1995.  I finished my first year of college.  I quit.  Went to work at Pizza Hut full-time.  Realized that was not the life I wanted forever.  Wrote a “please take me back” letter to UNC begging that they would take me back.  Went back to UNC in 1996 and gave college a decent shot.  Couldn’t figure out a major until the spring semester of my junior year in 1997.  Decided to major in English because it was the only major I could graduate with on time within 4 years.

Whew.  Okay.  We’re back to senior year at UNC Chapel Hill in fall 1997.  You’re up to date now.

My friend Brandon (who I had been in a metal band with me a year beforehand) and I decide that we’re going to write a science fiction book together.  We do a whole lot of world building and then nothing else happens because I felt like I hadn’t read enough real science fiction books that I didn’t know what I was doing.

So, I started reading science fiction novels.  A lot of them.  The most famous ones.  And then more.  And then I just kept reading and reading and reading.  I felt like no matter how much I read, I had not read enough.

But I started writing.  Something else.

As an English major I was exposed to a whole lot of different writing.  Obviously.  Some of it was good stuff that I enjoyed reading.  Other works were often (in my opinion) archaic, out-dated, and flat-out boring.  But to each their own!  I still read the material.  And I believe that exposure was a good thing.  I know Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen and the poetry of John Donne and George Herbert.  Yeesh.  I didn’t care for it too much.  However, I have always been a bit intrigued with William Shakespeare.  Julius Caesar has always been one of my favorite plays.  I used to teach that play when I was a high school teacher.  And I used to always read all the best lines.  We would read the entire play out loud in class and I would cast students in all the supporting roles, but I would read all the great lines.  No one else had the opportunity to say “Et tu, Brute?” and “Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war” except me.  It was great!

Once again, I went too far forward.  We’ll back up a couple years again.

So, after I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with my major in English I started writing (this was years before I was an English teacher).  But it was poetry.  I decided to give my best attempt at Shakespearean sonnets.  If Bill could do it, maybe I could too!  What is a Shakespearean sonnet, you ask?  It’s a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter with a specific rhyme scheme (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) and a structure (three quatrains and a couplet).  Personally, I feel like I function much better when given specific rules by which to follow.  I wrote a few of these right after college and kept them in a Shakespeare journal my mom gave me. Not sure if they’re any good at all, but I wrote them many moons ago.  No.  I’m not going to share all of them.  However, I’ll provide a few so you can see what I was up to 25+ years ago.  We’ll classify these under the “Love / Love Not” category.  Enjoy!

M Sonnet #1

Could it be the look in your eyes

That’s hard to find and oh so rare;

The touch of your skin I realize

Is the tenderness I seek to share.

Your lips I truly love to taste –

Excuse blunt words, but they are true –

For I need to look into your face

And see if I see that special clue.

Your mind, your thoughts, I want to know;

I try to guess what makes you tick

And knowing not is our chance to grow

To discover if we’re meant to click.

So what I want is in your heart,

That place, I hope, where we will start.

T Sonnet #1

Last nite you visited me in my dreams – 

Please don’t deny our secret rendezvous

‘Cause I swear in your eyes I saw the gleam

That once long ago I thought was so true.

Yes, those days are forever gone and done;

The remains are merely soul-broken dust

That’s been reborn from Shakespeare to John Donne;

But after it rained, our hearts shaped with rust.

Message I know not, whatever it be

The meeting for us was better this way.

One thing is for sure in my memory

That how you felt then remains to this day.

Call this an error, but I believe not,

For writing these words I wish I forgot.

Thumper Sonnet #1

“Follow the leader and stick with the rules.

The only sure bet: don’t try something new.” –

Says the fish who never leaves shallow pools,

Enjoys the water and admires the view.

Just like a bottle that sails in the sea,

We’ve floated together in a new way.

Unlikely it may seem that this could be,

Our meeting when we are so far away.

So soon we shall see where all this will lead,

A future for us that’s ever so near

Awaiting to grow from this fertile seed;

Together there’s nothing for us to fear.

Sooner, not later, you’ll see that it’s true,

My love for you that I have to pursue.

ds

April 10, 2025