#490: Sonnet with a Stolen Last Line from Shakespeare that is not a Sonnet about Shakespeare, FYI

When reading sonnets by another poet,
I think to myself, mine aren’t very good.
And I try to dial in the source of that doubt
by pointing at the things I like in his,
the things that make his poems better.
He’s not rhyming, his lines, most all five beats;
I’m not doing or doing these same things.
He never messes with the 14 lines,
and neither have I. It’s not the formal stuff,
I conclude. It’s the wild language stuff,
the things that, while more like “real” poetry,
are the things that obscure meaning for me.
I like those sounds, images, leaping things,
and yet I scorn to change my state with kings.