zodiac7 Feb 2006

Zeus, in the form of a swan, raped the half-mortal girl Leda. The child he fathered with her was Helen of Troy.

I don't think the standard form is necessarily boring. I definitely don't think it has trouble with modern themes, as long as the rhymes you pick are good and specific to your piece. But I don't want people counting my rhymes instead of being pleasantly surprised by them. Here's a sonnet I used to have here that's more traditional:

When we are wed

I'll never wake you up when we are wed
and I'm just home from closing down the store,
the house and bedroom day-warm, dark, and still,
your shoes and pants and papers on the floor,
an empty bottle, a pack of Marlboro reds
haphazard on the sofa-arm and sill -
some things I'd tell you, things much better said;
but no, I'll never wake you when we're wed.
The faith that holds me to you holds me more
the less it’s stirred. So sleep, sleep well, until
the morning, sleep. I’ll come to bed before
you wake and wake you up - though not to tread
too loudly now going by the bedroom door,
I'll find, is some ungodly act of will.