Wheel Challenge - Spring Shakespearean Sonnet

Piscator

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This week's challenge is a Shakespearean Sonnet on the theme of the Spring season. The challenge runs from Tuesday, April 8 to24:00 local time on Sunday, April 14 but late posts on the theme are welcome.

The penultimate entrant will decide the next challenge.
 
Shall I compare thee to a springtime day?
Thou art more wet and twice as annoying.
The trees that dripped their leaves in March
Speak now of April your perfume cloying.

The crashing thunder portrays your voice
Till birds shall drop from crumpled wings,
As your snores now make my heart rejoice
No more to hear those strident vocal rings.

What once I looked upon as sweet and coy
Your simpering coquettishness at every whim
Was not just only girlish, youthful play
I now perceive at last my god you're dim.

As long as you still take breath, alas
I must survive your chronic problem, gas.
 
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You have been absent from me in the Spring
When joy should be a'borning in my blood,
Unfolding in me like awakening,
Like green, like crocuses come up from mud.

But now I'm slow and clumsy, winter dead,
Ice floe. Where did you go beatitudes
More fragile than the flowers, and my bed
Dark like a thick gray sky. These latitudes

Feel wrong, the ground should warm. I am alive,
Grass growing under feet, hugging the breeze.
Innisfree is solitude: me, the hive,
Alone within the bee-loud glade lies ease.

Sometimes I hear you when the branches sigh,
A tree man in the leaves, poems in the sky.
 
You have been absent from me in the Spring
When joy should be a'borning in my blood,
Unfolding in me like awakening,
Like green, like crocuses come up from mud.

But now I'm slow and clumsy, winter dead,
Ice floe. Where did you go beatitudes
More fragile than the flowers, and my bed
Dark like a thick gray sky. These latitudes

Feel wrong, the ground should warm. I am alive,
Grass growing under feet, hugging the breeze.
Innisfree is solitude: me, the hive,
Alone within the bee-loud glade lies ease.

Sometimes I hear you when the branches sigh,
A tree man in the leaves, poems in the sky.

Well now you've made me cry, this is so beautiful :heart:
 
When your head is filled with the craziness of love,
all the clichés one is advised to never cross thy pen,
so that your foolish poems speak of heart and dove,
the stars or moon, I'll love you there and back again.

Everything. we're told, has oft been writ before
and these much more than any other, truth be told,
but I cannot seem to shift away, so write je t'adore
until once more I can you in my loving arms enfold.

From all of this I only may surmise, and still suppose ,
what is love if not to bring alive in hearts across the globe,
the biggest cliché of all time, and yet to us new prose?
I fall into your arms with eyes of love as you disrobe.

My Lord, this heaven here on earth, yet far, far away
is ours, I'll love you for now, and until my dying day.
 
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sorry, shakespeare :)

I don't believe the slur sweet April is
"the cruellest month of all" within each year;
her sense of humour simply is the biz;
it may be deeply warped but brings the cheer.

You never really know just what to wear
so messy wardrobes bulge with odd array;
don welly-boots and gaudy summer gear,
a duffle coat, bikini, shiny shades.

A thermal hat you team with strappy vest,
a neon pair of saucy, lacy socks.
What April does, oh man, she does the best;
she flops and flips, she drops. How April rocks!

It's true I'd love her more, her colour splashes,
if not for all these allergies and rashes :(
 
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I don't believe the slur sweet April is
the cruellest month of all within each year;
her sense of humour simply is the biz;
it may be deeply warped but brings the cheer.

You never really know just what to wear
so messy wardrobes bulge with odd array;
don welly-boots and gaudy summer gear,
a duffle coat, bikini, shiny shades.

A thermal hat you team with strappy vest,
a neon pair of saucy, lacy socks.
What April does, oh man, she does the best;
she flops and flips, she drops. How April rocks!

It's true I'd love her more, her colour splashes,
if not for all these allergies and rashes :(

Bravo sonnet sister! :heart:
 
Are the lines too long in my 2nd one?

they're supposed to be 10 syllables in iambic, so, yeah, you've gone over the count a bit :D

still, as with all poetry, it's the resulting poem that's really important. if it messes it up to lose syllables, well just accept it for the poem it is :cool:

that one i wrote was 8 per line, iambic, originally, till H reminded me it should be 10 so i had to insert a couple in each line :eek:
 
the moon, it hangs, a clichéd cheesy rind
as if the rest was swallowed by the sun;
it's counting down the days till summer finds
the moody days of spring are fin'ly done.

may mowing recommence with timely haste
before the greens resent the turning blades
and toss the rubber belts from pulley's waist
to be replaced beyond the cooling shade.

the tulips, vivid, show - violas too;
the clematis, where dancing butterflies
sip nectar, and the blushing cherry blooms
all light the days despite the weeping skies.

too soon, sweet spring will be mere memory
as summer's desp'rate heat is broiling me.
 
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Are the lines too long in my 2nd one?

William Shakespeare in his sonnets went over ten syllables often. The excessive regularity was considered, and for a good reason, a clear drawback (even Shakespeare at one time was criticized for just that, for being overly regular). What truly counts is accents.
 
a commoner

-




a commoner​

to be or not to be to me to worry?
i work to feed my wife and my three children
the royals wrestle with my question in my story
the stage is my home at home i am a pilgrim

the spring's foul breath will claim so many mortals
the kings forever live on stage superior
the theater's closed_ the poetry opens portals
i write new sonnets playfully like a bull terrier

now is the time for the rich to read my mind
my rhymes serve as a biconvex reading lens
their silly curiosity is ill-timed
the actors on the stage clearly make much more sense

it's just spring _the people need no enemies
to be will live or not for centuries​







wh,
2019-04-09/10


-
 
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Shall I compare thee to a springtime day?
Thou art more wet and twice as annoying.
The trees that dripped their leaves in March
Speak now of April your perfume cloying.

The crashing thunder portrays your voice
Till birds shall drop from crumpled wings,
As your snores now make my heart rejoice
No more to hear those strident vocal rings.

What once I looked upon as sweet and coy
Your simpering coquettishness at every whim
Was not just only girlish, youthful play
I now perceive at last my god you're dim.

As long as you still take breath, alas
I must survive your chronic problem, gas.

:heart: :D :heart:
 
Shall I compare thee to a springtime day?
Thou art more wet and twice as annoying.
The trees that dripped their leaves in March
Speak now of April your perfume cloying.

The crashing thunder portrays your voice
Till birds shall drop from crumpled wings,
As your snores now make my heart rejoice
No more to hear those strident vocal rings.

What once I looked upon as sweet and coy
Your simpering coquettishness at every whim
Was not just only girlish, youthful play
I now perceive at last my god you're dim.

As long as you still take breath, alas
I must survive your chronic problem, gas
.

Damn, I swear you've been communicating with my wife.
 
okay, using some slanty-rhymed end-of-lines but hey...

My love, he raises arms up to the skies
and bare-limbed by the window he reminds
me of the lofty trees that greet my eyes
beyond the window's frame; and from behind

his daylit silhouette becomes like them
whose branches call the spring-time sun to shine
that greening of their buds will come again
and, daily, for their season's sap to rise.

Though there are times his bark's a little rough,
most often softened by a loving touch,
if that should prove to be not quite enough,
exfoliation's great -- but not too much. :eek:

I beg dear reader's pardon that they could
excuse my poor allusions to spring wood
 
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A poem is but a string of gangly lines
Scraping like angry trees at windowpanes
"I will be heard, my words, I'll throw gang signs,"
But it's just branches heralding the rains
That gray the weeks of icetime's last hurrah,
Persephone is waiting in the wings,
She'll green things up. Forget the cold: voila
This poem warms you as if its rhymes were springs
Creaking, months leaping from the tired walls
And all the breeze blowed in, the mountains sweet
Honeyed with bees and misbehaved baseballs,
Words turn to flowers, blossoming, full leafed.
We are such stuff as poems and dreams can be,
Transitory, tempestuous then free.
 
My love, he raises arms up to the skies
and bare-limbed by the window he reminds
me of the lofty trees that greet my eyes
beyond the window's frame; and from behind

his daylit silhouette becomes like them
whose branches call the spring-time sun to shine
that greening of their buds will come again
and, daily, for their season's sap to rise.

Though there are times his bark's a little rough,
most often softened by a loving touch,
if that should prove to not be quite enough,
exfoliation's great -- but not too much. :eek:

I beg dear reader's pardon that they could
excuse my poor allusions to spring wood

:D You are awful!
 
spring-loaded

from stumpy sprouts to full-on colour riot
the flower beds ablaze for all to see
as if somehow their overnightly diet
propelled them forth with supernatural glee

the grass i'll swear has grown at least a foot
since last i blinked my pollinated eyes
the ditch is choked with superpowered weeds but
that happens every spring so no surprise

the birds are freaking out and madly zooming
from bush to frilly fruit tree and compete
with bees and butterflies all busy rooming
alongside bawling calves and fluffy sheep

when everything's spring-loaded to the max
i'll overdo the words, in sonnets wax
 
I know the magic of April showers
yet May is still a month away
it's hard to think of blossoming flowers
beneath skies overcast and grey.

From softest zephyr to boisterous gale
the wind is always in my face
and soft light rain becomes a stony hail
just as I leave my sheltered place.

But with time's passage the days grow long
each sunrise gains on yesterday
at dawn, bird's chorus greets with sweet song
while robins joust in courtly play.

Yet through it all, we persevere
as end of term, at last draws near.
 
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Wild Green Onions

Warming weather, April says, 'Come love me,'
So I go; down the garden path to find
Place a hand to earth's breast, lay for me sweet
let me plunge and thrust, turn soil with forks tines

Down the rows we go, dark rich soil exposed
Tenacious green winter guests evicted
armies of squirming worm, there nematodes
Ivory pearls revealed as inspected

Tiny bulbs doing well in rich bed made
each year your harvested glistening bounty
fine fertile loam where learned hand oft plays
discarding those gems but reluctantly

Pampered furrows give up all easily,
hidden last years potato's, so lovely.

Dig on...
There's that old same dream plays in between stoops
of wild green onion and vegetable soup.
 
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