What We Fail To Learn…

Two households, both alike in dignity
nemesis, blood feud of old

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
in our mother’s womb we battle

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
prejudice, evil’s spawn blurs our sight

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
forces hands to do its bidding.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
we are equal; our hearts all follow the creator’s drums

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
but fall victim to hatred, passed on through the ages

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
unmoved; set in crumbling stone
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
a thousand deaths won’t make the frenzied eye see ~

The fearful passage of their death-marked love

so we tread; siblings’ blood drowns sacred ground
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,

wrath and envy still on the march;
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,

deaths have no meaning, but to grace the news
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage—

stupidity’s tragedy limps through the ages
The which, if you with patient ears attend,

and we remain deaf, dumb and blind ~

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
what Shakespeare uncovered, our deeds still antagonize in blood. 

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Today, Anna over at dVerse Poets Pub invites us to write Postmodern Poetry. She provided this wonderful list of Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments which we are allowed to choose from. I chose: “Type out a Shakespeare sonnet or other poem you would like to learn about/imitate double-spaced on a page. Rewrite it in between the lines.”
I’ve always been fascinated by Shakespeare’s Prologue to Romeo & Juliet… so I took it, fiddled with it a bit and the above is what came out of me (by now you know that I did not end up imitating it.). Hope you enjoy… Come meet us at the Bar!