I usually tend to stick to free verse when writing poems, but I thought I would try to write in a restrictive form to see how it affected my ability to write. Turns out, it was as difficult as I imagined it would be, but I also enjoyed building on Shakespeare’s typical sonnet structure and writing a sonnet about how a muse overshadows the poetry they inspire.

If you knew that all of the poetry

that has ever flowed out of my body

is for you, your angles, your symmetry.

It breathes for you, concealed under shoddy

penmanship, hasty metaphors, scratches.

Trying to morph itself into something

more unclear, a hue that never matches

your vibrancy. Doing its best, hiding 

away still, in the dark, when it sees you.

In your absence, it soars, blossoms and blooms.

But then it shrieks and screeches, needing few

words of approval because it assumes

that without you, it is nothing; null, void.

But with you, it’s a world with colours devoid.

Image: by Jaci XIV on Flickr Commons