sestina

I crash into the terror of the waves,

Bruising my ankles to a deep purple.

The ripples shatter the surface of the moon.

My sense of calming,

Overwhelmed by the carnal desire for greed,

The worries of my sorrow settle with the sunset.

The artist’s canvas of a sunset

Brushes against me in strokes of deep waves.

The canvas is consumed by greed.

My heart is bruised a deep purple,

As its strings strain for a calming.

I beat to the drum of the rising moon.

Eyes are a reflection of a scattered star and moon,

Trying to swim their way through the sunset.

Brushing against the line of insanity and calming,

Are the never-ending waves.

No wonder, the sky is always a magnetic purple.

The moon rises faster than the sun, for competition, for greed.

I no longer see the difference between love and greed.

To love, is to steal the shine in their eyes: the moon.

To have greed, is to choke an i love you to a purple.

I cry for symphony into the reckless sunset;

Yet, my cries are muffled by the shushing waves.

All I want, need, is rest, to crash into an overdrive of calming.

The tide is sweetly calming,

Brushing against my feet without a venomous greed.

I float with the waves

As one, no longer staring at the moon,

But at an overflowing sunset.

I no longer see the moon, as the moon is sickeningly purple.

My eyes are blinded by hues of purple.

It’s irrational, craving a prospect of stability and calming.

The sun never falls, in the despair of my own creation: a sunset.

A perfect sky, a perfect world, built with nothing but greed.

Is it greedy to banish the light in their eyes, my moon?

Why do I fall doubtlessly into the waves?

I rise gently, out of love, out of sorrow, out of greed.

Doesn’t it shine so bright up here, my moon?

Death is a feared entity; yet, here I lie, rocking with death in the bloody waves.

++

Upon introduction to the poetry style of a sestina, I immediately felt a beckoning toward it.

The 6 words I used were the following:

• waves A
• purple B
• moon C
• calming D
• greed E
• sunset F

The pattern of a sestina is as follows:

ABCDEF

FAEBDC

CFDABE

ECBFAD

DEACFB

BDFECA

ECA 

++

I wasn’t planning to continue this poem. I wrote the first two lines, got hit with no inspiration, and didn’t touch the saved draft for a while.

Fun fact, I started the first stanza with no particular order of words. I put them in as I see fit, and that became the order I used for the rest of my poem. I put the words in order again – just for convenience. You’re welcome.

The word that inspired my poetic process was the word bruising. My whole poem hints to something much more evil within. I admit that my poems never have an exact meaning to them. I write whatever my mind comes up with.

(It’s the reason I don’t leave explanations after my writing. I say that the reader should interpret it however they like.)

Waves

The waves represent insanity. In the first stanza, I describe the waves as terrifying. The character’s viewpoint of this changes throughout the poem. By the end, they had accepted the waves as one, and that leads to their evident death. They went insane.

purple

I didn’t have a particular reasoning for choosing this color, but I allowed it to represent the bruises and sunsets. At times, I used it to describe the bruises inflicted. As well, I used it to describe the sunset they constantly see. Purple isn’t a happy color in this poem. I think it represents more of the inner pain the character feels, as something so beautiful, like a sunset, is their nightmare.

moon

The moon was their sense of rationality. When the sun set, they could finally rest with the moon in sight. Without the moon, they’d go insane, as referenced by the last two stanzas. Another take I took on the moon was related to love, as I connected love with greed, describing the light in someone’s eyes as a star and moon. They took away someone’s light (aka their life) out of love, not realizing that its greed. I use my moon to show the character’s possessiveness in regards to love. Someone else’s life is theirs to keep.

calming

This word didn’t have any deeper meaning to it. The character desperately wanted a sense of calming, to rest. They finally got to rest when they died.

greed

Greed is the one factor that kills them, slowly but surely. They struggle against greed itself, not wanting to be consumed by its toxicity. As I stated earlier with the moon, greed and love were portrayed as the same in the character’s eyes. I believe that, despite resistance, they were consumed by greed from the very start. I hinted at greed greatly with the use of a canvas (stanza 2) and the moon (stanza 3).

sunset

The sunset was their doom. Among the sunset, the character was plagued by their sorrows and thoughts. They couldn’t rest. Despite the moon always rising, the character slowly slipped into insanity and created their worst nightmare. They became trapped in their own sunset, with no way of getting out.

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