The first and only sonnet I’ve thus far written. After reading all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, three times each out loud, I found myself sitting in a public bathroom seeking personal relief. All around me were homedork taggings, hatefully racial comments, lewd remarks, etc. You know the drill. When I went back to my table in the restaurant I was hanging out at, I wrote this.
Shithouse Sonnet
As here you scan this product of my mind
And seek relief from some anxiety,
There is no such relief for you to find
While reading words from this society;
The troubled minds of half a nation scar
The walls about you in a base display;
Foul scribbles from the crude ones near and far
Encompass you in putrefied array;
And, even tribal markings basely claim
Some ownership of this quaint place of rest
Amid the angry notes that weakly blame
Their fellows for some anguish in their breast;
The horror of our state is manifest
In such grim markings by the ill-possessed.
