Words without Song: a Sonnet
[This sonnet sticks to all the rules for a sonnet except that it is laid out on the page as if it
were five paragraphs of prose.]
Is love a spate of rhyming in the veins?
Or is it even less, a bit of plot (inside a thousand paperbacks)
like stains across their pages? Is it merely hot concessions to the urgent
skin of lust?
Are fornication and adultery love’s only incarnations?
And, therefore, must more honest, dull affections simply be the boredom
of a minnow pond when set in contrast with the monsters of the deep?
Is love a fumbling hand that tries to get a feel without a feeling?
Is love cheap?
Is love just genitals that rub toward rhyme, a combination of caress
and slime?