Rolled bones, Gods' plans or simple twists of fate,
By fire, age, or poison from a friend
Each term of life will some day come to end.
Come now untimely death; you're much too late.
These eyes, they've seen so much of life go by.
The cruelties I've witnessed, senseless war.
Come death, be kind and close at last the door
That lets these memories flood my poor mind's eye.
"How lucky." people say, "To live so long."
And hope that they may reach this bitter age,
But should they, just like I they too will rage
And curse the heart within them beating strong.
Had I the strength I'd rip away these wires
And reach the nothingness this heart desires.
Playground Of The Mind
We're children in the playground of the gods.
Mere time? Illusion made with flashing suns.
Eternity, the mind forever runs
Although the drooling body sits and nods.
What cares the mind for crass corporal things?
While souls go echoing through time and space.
Look past the lines that etch this Earthly face
To where the child's laughter ever rings.
'Tis there you find me now, will ever find.
Escape from drudgery, it is more real
Than bones, bites arthritics constantly feel.
Come. Join me in this playground of the mind.
We'll play forever in this park we've made.
While bones and other fleshly bothers fade.
Larry Tilander, sonnet parody of Silver by Walter de la Mare's
Silver
Silver
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
It's a nice poem, and as I said somewhere five double beats isn't an iron rule for sonnets, but I've never seen one that had an odd number of syllables in some lines and wasn't iambic, beat-BEAT, beat-BEAT, beat-BEAT beat-BEAT, beat-BEAT is the perfect form, but a lesser number of such pairs is still a sonnet.
Let's take the same subject and make good iambic steps. If I were re-writing it for someone as an exercise these are the changes I would make. My apologies to the author.
