Here is the wonderful Sestina structure poem I wrote the other night. I hope you enjoy reading it a lot more than I enjoyed writing it because, if I'm utterly honest, I hate writing in this form.
Sestina #1
My blood burns for you, melting winter's ice
That had found it's way to encase my heart,
Dulling the music that plays through the world
To it's ears. It's clouded mind drowning, cold
'Til you stepped in to my dripping dim cave,
Making dark retreat like a dying wave.
How you wash over like a misting wave
So the wind tickles me like blades of ice
Drawing wakefulness from it's drowzy cave
Raising happy beatskips in my tired heart
Which, satisfied, doesn't mind morning's cold
And finds it now simpler to face the world.
Did you know that you are my whole wide world
And my love grows wave after crashing wave?
That to protect you from night's bitter cold
As it covers the windows with thin ice
Is the only thing I want in my heart
As we hug in a make-shift blanket cave?
But sometimes life's pressure could make me cave.
We live in a sometimes cruel, fickle world
Made crueler by some other's rotting heart
That proves to be just misfortune's first wave.
Who knew August could be so filled with ice?
So hazardous, so lonely and so cold.
But I guess that's the thing about the cold.
No mind how frigid it gets in your cave,
Wear extra jumpers to stave off the ice.
One day the warmth will return to the world
And we'll relax beneath the sunshine's wave
Of glory as it warms my weary heart.
No harsh lie will stop the beat of my heart.
Feral bear rampaging through arctic cold,
Nor wild horses or violent tidal wave,
Will halt my march through deepest, darkest cave
Or over highest mountains of the world
'Til I'm back to her who melts my heart's ice.
It is you who drew this wave in my heart
Who breaks the ice when all is drab and cold.
Tara changed my cave to a vibrant world.
Fin.
If you want to give it a try, it works like this.
There is no formal rhyme scheme so feel free to choose whatever 6 words appeal to you most. I picked a couple of rhymes or half rhymes because I wanted to see how it worked out. Try to make these words things you can apply in a variety of ways because things like the names of animals and the such aren't so great when you use them 6 times.
These poems are formed of 6 stanzas of 6 lines each and one stanza of 3 lines for a total of 39 lines. Each line has 10 syllables and is typically written in the form of Iambic Pentameter (You'll notice I dropped that but still went with the 10 syllables.) Each of the first six stanza lines MUST end with the same 6 words as the 6 lines from the first stanza. Not only this but there is typically a specific structure to how these words must be places in each stanza. For instance Stanza 1 includes the final words in this order (123456.) Stanza 2 MUST then include them in this order (615243) this continues in the following way
3. (364125)
4. (532614)
5. (451362)
6. (246531)
Your final stanza of 3 lines must then include all 6 words, 2 per line only in a specific order.
1. (6,2)
2. (1,4)
3. (5,3)
These lines also must end with the second listed word of the two (so line one must end with word 2, line two must end with word 4 and line three must end with word 3.)
Give it a try and good luck!
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