Mitchell gave his blessing, so here's the syllabic sonnet of his that I mentioned above. The meter does reappear here and there, and its reappearance is particularly effective in the final line, I think.
1984
When Billy was dying, grotesquely gaunt,
he said to me, "No one touches me now
but nurses. And that's all I really want --
a pat on my cheek, a stroke on my brow."
So I obliged him; touched his fevered face;
he managed a grateful skeletal smile.
Reluctant fingers steeled themselves to trace
those porphyry lesions -- ominous, vile.
An endless hour passed, and at last he slept.
Compelled by fear, and ashamed of my breach
of reason, into his kitchen I crept
and plunged my hands -- to the elbow -- in bleach.
My friend never knew how I'd lost my head;
he was, in weeks, delirious, then dead.
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