'Kiss Me Kate! (For Helen) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

A Blazon sonnet?

That’s the one an
Elizabethan lover

would turn his
Elizabethan Miss

into a
list

itemise her attributes
(hidden or otherwise)

& tick ‘em off
bit by bit

like a ledger clerk
closing an account.

From the colour
of her eyes
(always had to be blue)

to the colour of her
hair(always a blonde)

from toes to tit
in one hit.

Sincere...not
the least little bit!

Yawn...stop me if you have heard this one!

A fashion accessory
for the gay young blade about town

already fallen out of fashion
before it had barely begun.

“Oi...darling! ”

“Yeah...you love! ”

“Get your ruff on
...you’ve pulled! ”

“I got 14 lines
Petrarchan or Shakespearean

...know wot I mean? ! ”

And a clever
clearheaded Elizabethan lady

would more than likely
(but politely)

tell ‘em

“Oh...f***est thou
off! ”

******
As Shakes puts it in Sonnet 106

Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

Shakey also turned the blazon upside down in his famous sonnet 130:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,
Coral is far more red than her lips' red,
If snow be white, why then her breast are dun;
If hairs be wires, blackwires grow on her head.
I have seen roses, damask'd red and white,
But no such rose see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, - yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go, -
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare!