Sonnet 93

Sonnets? It is, always, a discipline.
The fourteen lines, choice of Petrarchan or
Shakespearean rhyme. And stuff your protest in
the octet if you can, in order for
line nine to play the volta or fly half.
The resolution on the rhyme depends:
in Petrarch mode, the sestet’s bitter laugh
drags out the calvary of penitence.
In the Shakespearean, ’tis brutely fact,
that final couplet shall poignard disclose.
Marry, it doth, and sentence eke enacts
among super-abundant King James hose.
Some bodkin’s stabbed up some unguarded arse;
churned tragedy curdles as Whitehall farce.