Extra Credit, The Annotated Edition
My Brit Lit professor is offering extra credit to anyone who writes a sonnet to turn in. Instead, I decided to adapt Pat Benatar into sonnet form. Why? Because it’s hilarious.
We are Young; Heartache to Heartache we Stand¹
We are young; heartache to heartache we stand —
Both of us knowing that, woah, we are strong,
And with that, no one can tell us we’re wrong.
Together — no promises, no demands.
Leave me, believe me, but please understand
We have been searching our hearts for so long,
Finally finding the words in a song,²
Innuendo, for reproductive glands.³
Tell me — will you, if I’m losing control,
Turn me away or touch me deep inside?⁴
If we get much closer, hearts unconcealed,
And yours surrenders, you’ll need me to hold.
I’m trapped by your love and chained to your side.
Both of us know love is a battlefield.⁵
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1 Scholarly contention holds that the work is a satirical adaptation of Pat Benatar’s 1983 hit pop single “Love is a Battlefield,” a song that would have been well known to both the author and to the professor for whom the work was indirectly written. There is a prevailing theory that Benatar’s borderline-nonsensical lyrical content may have heavily influenced the overall incoherence of the poem.
² Apparently an allusion to Benatar and what could be considered the collective emotional consciousness of American Top 40 pop culture.
³ i.e., the typical pop love song narrative as a thinly veiled allusion to teenage sex.
⁴ A case in point of such innuendo.
⁵ The battle metaphor is a common theme throughout classic Petrarchan sonnets, a form borrowed and butchered by the author for this particular work.
