In honor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's recent birthday and John Milton's perpetual relevance, here are two pieces from Doug Lang’s funny, dazzling, and supremely inventive sonnet collection, dérangé (which full disclosure requires me to acknowledge that I happily helped bring to publication):
Paradise Dude sonnet
Of Mans First Disobedience, dude, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, dude, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, dude, OMG, and all our woe,
With loss of EDEN, dude, till one greater Dude, dude,
Restore us, dude, and regain the blissful Seat, dude,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, OMG, that on the secret top
Of OREB, dude, or of SINAI, dude, didst inspire
That Shepherd, dude, who first taught the chosen Seed, dude.
In the Beginning, dude, how the Heav'ns and Earth, dude,
Rose out of CHAOS, OMG: Or if SION Hill, OMG
Delight thee more, dude, and SILOA'S Brook that flow'd, dude,
Fast by the Oracle of God, dude, WTF; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, dude,
That OMG with no middle flight intends to soar, dude, just sayin’
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Yo, Yo, Oz sonnet
Yo, yo, I met a traveler from an antique land, yo,
Who said: Yo, Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert, yo. Near them, on the sand, yo,
Half sunk, yo, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, yo, and sneer of cold command, yo,
Tell that its sculptor, yo, well those passions read, yo,
Which yet survive, yo, stamped on these lifeless things, yo,
The hand that mocked them, yo, and the heart that fed, yo;
And on the pedestal, yo, these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, yo, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair, yo!”
Nothing beside remains, yo. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, yo, boundless and bare, yo,
The lone and level sands, yo, stretch far away, yo.