Why I Can Never Be a Sonnet?
written by: SmithaV
To be a sonnet written by Shakespeare
or Milton or Petrarch or Spencer, no matter who
and be contained within 14 lines
like one of those minuscule Bobby Brown
face cream jars that you have to pay a bomb for
To follow the rules and form
as if I were training
for the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy
In The Nutcracker, it is hard to imagine
Not to have the freedom to glide and swirl
as I please, but to follow a discipline as if I were a soldier.
To be restricted to an octet and a sestet
or quatrains and couplets
It’s like being put in a prison cell under 24/7 surveillance.
To be a sonnet is like a tiger caged in a circus and trained to growl
in just the right way so it rhymes.
That’s not me at all. If I must be poetry,
I choose the free verse kind-
unrestrained, like a river.
Flowing through crevices and across boulders.
Contain me and I’ll seep out.
To measure me in pentameters
as if I were a window frame or Gigi Hadid
Walking the ramp is an invasion
of my privacy and my right to freedom.
I am no rocket whose propulsion needs calculating
to the last decimal point to avoid exploding
If I had to be a poem, I choose to be one
that reads like an abstract painting or one of nature –
the Swiss mountains,
the rivers of Asia, the wildlife of Africa.
Transparent as watercolours,
layered as acrylics or glossy as oil
But to be a sonnet is like having a stiff neck,
or a tennis elbow- unpleasant and uncomfortable.
To be flowery like a sonnet and romantic is all very nice
Like walking down the aisle and saying, ‘I do.’
Like the confetti and the three-tiered wedding cake,
The lace veil and the bouquet of white lilies
But to be a sonnet is knowing you can never be you –
free-spirited, adventurous and fun.
Because, to be a sonnet, you must confine.
- Fall - November 17, 2025
- Why I Can Never Be a Sonnet? - July 29, 2025
- An Epiphany - May 3, 2025
