So why not use a classic form but bend the rules from norm,
like this, which borrows artistry of classic sonnetry
but switches ’round the flowing sound which sonnets will perform,
whose shards came down from greater bards whose words had been set free?
Should this be done? Would anyone of sanity agree
to mock such grace and then to place them kiltered, at a slant?
Their numbered lines and their confines of syllables would be
laid on their side. Can it abide when others say, “You can’t!”?
Yet here it’s done—but has it won or lost the heart of those
who claim to own forms set in stone as this comes to its close?
Ken Gosse prefers writing short, rhymed verse with traditional meter and generally full of humor. First published in The First Literary Review–East in November 2016, since then in Pure Slush, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years, usually rescue cats and dogs underfoot.