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I wrote this as an experiment with writing in verse. It is complete with all the necessities of Shakespeare: sonnets, over dramatic soliloquies, and a stimulating sword fight! This is a scene between two office colleagues.

Shakespearean Coffee

Shakespeare Scene - Sort of
(Broken Coffee Machine) by Michael Z*****

"Prologue"

Good morrow all to those who wish be told
A tale of much considerable woe
Prithee, for here you drop the words you hold
Then reconstruct your thought as stage will show
A doubly crafted sight, lamenting, aye
The tragic come-to-pass of daily life;
I pray to you, with arm, with ear, with eye
To try and cope our much delighted strife;
A pair of kinsmen, lost as comet's flight
Shall deeper delve the well of blacker dew
And sail upon a sloop into the night
In search of newer waters to pursue;
Now mark their frightful daze and how they fear
In mad and lusty rage for coffee dear

{Enter Larry of Freemarket}

Larry.
How misery and brother labor be
Brothers to coldly crawl the crusted Earth
For what I lack in Midas curses now
I swiftly must return in kind by pain,
For should I mere caress a woman's skin,
The fairest cloud that only pillars reach
As once did stones of Ilium to Helen,
A fairest angel caught by highest roof,
My thin and dainty pillars touching them
Would surely c'lapse and crumble to the ground;
A day has passed in mis'ry, yes, but now
A warm and frothy presence fills the lounge,
Here, and by large, an hour fills a year,
Seasons instead replace a quarter turn,
So dire of a hot and piping song
That all my heart, in vain, would sing for one;
But soft! I spot a tree that grows on hand,
Her wooden arms bestow a fruit so pure
That on a whim she may sprout to the heavens
To have Demeter cry from guilt and sin
Seeing one so true in comparison,
O! But this irony is sickest state,
Be blacken'd is the nocturnal ripe fruit
Yet still I long to taste the juices sweet
That thoughts below and soul in heaven meet

{Larry preseth button. Naught occurs.}

I say, what vile trickery this is!
A cold and spiteful spit upon my smile,
There surely must be somewhere dutied fuel
To turn the willful wheels of said machine
And beans, stacked high, in glory, lie within

As such a ghost would march upon the sands,
The mists of morning parched and lowly reach'd
Depriving on our dear sweet mother earth,
But no, effects of puzzle well in place
To solve the riddle of my discontents;
Alack! I cry, wherefore this dizzy dread
That never shall I drink my coffee black
Wherefore this dizzy dread, I cry, Alack!

{Enter Thomas of 25th and 2nd}

What ho! O kinsman of the office space
Have we resources to machine replace?

Tom.
This fuel I have not, no coal to burn thus;
You?

Larry.
No, for then we should be colliers.

Tom.
Confessed stand I now, afroze in pause,
Admitted am I now, I cannot glean
Of what a horrid source may be the cause
That, damn'd, should be the curse of this machine
The coffee and his distant cousin wine
Are not alike in that they ripe with age
To haste a hasty haste, the curse be mine
We must retrieve the bird from cursed cage,
I long to taste the tasty taste of dark,
My tounge, it dreams of nights that once it had,
To waste the wasty waste we cannot mark,
To do such hellish thing would most be mad
We, with tacticians mind and firm attack
Shall fight to claim our precious coffee black!

Larry.
You have a fired passion

Tom.
As do you

Larry.
My mind is lost

Tom.
But soon it shall be found!
A wrench, so common place a tool could be
Uncommon savior to our tragedy!

Larry.
And where's this wrench?

Tom.
Beside the bench.

Larry.
To round!

{Exeunt Larry}

Tom.
I find myself alone with ghostly shell
Of titan great enough to challenge Cronos!
What form to lack of shape, I beg to tell,
This snake whose venom black could cure all wounds
Has left his fleshy spare for me to stare,
He's shed his afterlife to form a tomb,
I quake, if only time be on our side
We may on barren ocean turn the tide

{Enter Larry}

Larry.
'Zounds! A raw cheat! A Lie! Your soul be foul
For long I searched the bench of which you spoke
To find a thousand vowels, but not a single
One consonant to utter their good fortunes!
This I say, though I cannot help but say,
You knave and wretch, in spiked lengthy chasms,
The whole ordeal be stubborn as the clay
Your putty mind must surely of been made

Tom.
Yours surely made of maddend' redden'd rage,
I do not lie, nor shall I be thus forc'd
Or bothered to explain myself; in truth
You have more cause to lone befall suspicion

Larry.
Wherefore this reaction, you coward slime!
You stand and glow on heel, yet foot behind,
Then grin with teeth as yellow as your legs;
Pure you're not, mutual spine armor be
Equipped on us, thou sorrowed cardecue

Tom.
Only your twisted whirlpool, stomach-mind
Could act that rank retort to surface thus;
For such a yellow grin that I may bear,
Your eyes be color'd same, as crescent moon,
Such coward's eyes look not for brighter things
That would outshine their greasy paled lids,
The captured splendors of the coffee black
Are held within a cavern lair so cruel
That only white-fired sun would light the path
To lead him back to both our hollow'd mugs,
All due to this, your tropic eyes not could
Retrieve the wrench, our sun, to honor'd place

Larry.
Of yet, I've bore you as an unborn child,
Away and latched in prison of my womb,
But now I birth you to a land of pain!
Have at thee, crooked crow and bastard son!

Tom.
Have at not, sir, the fight already won!

{They fight. They stabbeth each other at once.}

Larry.
What's this? Irony blanket bound?

Tom.
So soft

Larry.
Too true, my honest friend

Tom.
Now quarrel not,
For one and one is two, and now we stop

Larry.
A pair of sweet salutes to coffee hot

Tom.
The love, a shape we never could achieve

Larry.
Merry, the odor we not could conceive

Tom.
Wait, Larry, did you turn it on?

Larry.
An ass!

Tom.
O! What an ass you were

Larry.
Before?

Tom.
Your death!

{Both die.}

Poetry by weirdzarun
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