4/15/08

I haven’t written a poem in more than 15 years. I decided a long time ago that my life hasn’t been tragic enough to be a good poet. But Prairie Home Companion had a contest for a “Love Sonnet,” for which the grand prize was a Sleep Number bed.

I submitted this poem below, with the following comment, “This poem is being submitted by an unemployed English major with a saggy old bed and a bad back, who has always wondered why the phrase “iambic pentameter” isn’t pronounced as i-AM-bic-PENT-a-MET-er.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t win. Didn’t even make the final cut. Oh well, told you my life hasn’t been tragic enough.

Sonnet 1-800

Shall I compare thee to my mobile phone?

Thou art more human and more passionate:

The silence sliced by shriek of modal tone,

And care of neighbors shall evaporate:

Sometime too weak the tower signal comes,

And often is the airtime bill too high;

And conversations cut to flapping gums,

When minute after minute’s counting by;

But discontent will come with any pair

Your absence makes my heart slow down in pace;

In passion and in slumber do we share

A perfect fit like phone and molded case:

So long as comfort visits while I slumb’r,

So long will I hold tight upon your numb’r.

Modeled after William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.