A poem in two parts.

[anaka]

Part I:

Sonnet 147
My love is as a fever longing still,
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
-- Shakespeare

Part II:

When first I looked upon old Shakespeare's poem
It seemed to me a paltry thing, a waste.
Not his best at all, a whining hymn
In which he suffered quite a lack of taste.
Then life occurred, and suddenly I found
Myself unsettled, mourning my own fate
Upset and disconcerted all around
I missed those calmer seas, all gone of late.
As wildly I swing 'twixt two extremes
It seems now tempests are my daily fare,
Now cursing ruefully my waking dreams
I slide from joy, past Reason, to despair.
Fate, it seems, finds all of this quite rich;
Love's made of me a whiny emo bitch.