Three Sonnets, After a Shakespeare Workshop (Oct. 27, 2018)

I
What drug is this, the Speech of men?
That Play so dear on the female ear
Yet provoke her jealousy by silence
To remind her, by your warm withdrawal
That one effort more, one coax offered
And you might have lingered a moment more
To gaze and worship Heaven's craft in my eyes;
Instead, I am parched by doubts
That such a moment was sure to quench;
Yet, your inattention has been attentive,
To kill this growing seed, proving the pit a stone
To never germinate, but cool until full dead.
Yet speak: "Arise O'Sleeper, walk with me!"
And prove twice the resurrection and thy fidelity.

II
Think not my heart so weak
As to melt its wrath by your stare
Or fix upon it no hindrance to hasty speech
That seeks to shift your guilt onto my square.
No longer do I match thy cadence
No sooner will I alight thy amusement
Until you learn to keep time in dance
Speak of friendship and not fickle fans
Who know and worship but abandon us
The creatures of his undying meditation
Although he leaves the beauty conscious
Of his smiling yet faithless adoration;
Only a well-wrought and iron cast will save
My opinion from fact, you art a fickle knave.

III
Now let me speak a gentler plea
For I am aware it abides in me
This thud that says "on goes the heart!"
Must also prove the heart functions well.
Not mere passion, but forgiving charity in part:
That looks on a simple man with simple thoughts askew
And endears him to me by his ignorant abuse
Ah, you cannot know yet my value in a friend
Or my fear founded on one too obtuse
To hold up the title, so I can all but see the end
Of your making of my secret hope, please excuse
The open disappointment my eyes and words defend
When again I await precariously
One word, to tip us toward hope or to agony.