[@PlatinumSkink]  I loved my poetry classes and took a lot away from them.  I also love playing with language, and what you can do with sentence structure.  There's a general form, but because of how English is inflected, you can say "she went to the store" or "to the store went she", and this helps format things so that a rhyming word falls last in a line, as well as meeting the meter.  I love doing it, and it (in my opinion) adds flair to a poem.  Also I tend to use a slightly more formal feeling for sonnets, not entirely sure why.  Possibly because iambic pentameter makes me think Shakespeare, and that style of speaking.  And the strict rules make it feel elegant but also a bit stuffy?  *shrug*

There are likewise words that often get syllables dropped.  O'er (over) is one, as is e'er (ever).  That means fore'er is forever.  Every can be two syllables /or/ three (ev-ry or ev-er-y), depending on how strictly you enunciate; I used e'ery to ensure it would be read as two, because I often default to three -- though as you can see, not consistently since I used it as two earlier.  x.x  I actually only caught the second use of it after.  *sigh*

You can absolutely remove chunks of words to fit the meter -- within reason.  For example: bril'ant ((brill-yant) instead of brill-i-ant, I see "heav'n" instead of heaven a lot in music (though I find that one awkward, like it has a bit of a hiccup at the end).  My guess is to'er from Dark's poem is "to her".  An interesting smushing, but quite clever, I think.

Slant rhyme -- rhymes that don't /quite/ line up -- are fair game in most situations, though the rigidity of a sonnet would make me lean away from using them.  There's all sorts of techniques for poetry, including splitting a word across linebreaks (which I have yet to try, but man it can be so cool if done right!)

I don't really have any specific feedback, sorry.  I'm not the best when it comes to critique.