Sestina - First Half

I didn't get where I am today by promising to write poems based on the most complex forms imaginable.

In chaos, dreaming of an epidemic,
passed across the seas and skies,
we wait for dawn and mechanism,
in daily rags and lists of panic,
how the world will end this cycle,
how we missed the signs of Armageddon.

Which madman listed Armageddon,
as the glimmering end of epidemics?
Which historian foresees this cycle
of rain and fire from the skies?
I request whole nations panic,
at the oiling of the mechanism.

We manufacture inefficient mechanism,
from the cooling fires of Armageddon,
with our heuristic joy at panic,
and our seeking out of epidemic.
How they mock our eyes to skies,
the single exit from the cycle.

What Makes You Think That the Blame Culture is my Fault?

It being Bill Da Bard's Birthday I need to think of something appropriate. Well here is an article by Ian McMillan about how so many poets kick the bucket on this date. Obviously there is no attached data to prove this; it is all just anecdotal and you know how I feel about anecdotes. I suppose that if Seamus Heaney thinks Eminem is a poet then Johnny Thunders must be.

The most interesting bit of the article is the mention of the poetic form The Sestina which is so structured in terms of the words ending each line that I imagine it must be hard to get anything across in such a poem other than your technical prowess. Despite this I'm tempted to have a go but 39 lines is a lot of work isn't it? The order of the last words of each stanza can be analogised to kneading bread in that each outer word in a triplet is folded into the middle though I can't be bothered to understand it exactly - the list of numbers is enough for me to get the message. I just looked up Iambic pentameter because I have no real idea of what it means exactly but reading how the various subtleties of its use can be employed to slow down the pace I'm a bit bewildered. In reality poets just put down what they think sounds good and of course it always important to say it out loud. I think I used to know all this but like blossom in the spring showers it has all vanished and decayed, just seasoning on the compost heap.

I'm actually in the middle of a proper poem though it doesn't rhyme or anything sissy like that. Unfortunately I'm thinking of entering it into a local competition and it cannot have been available anywhere even if that is a quiet backwater of the interwebs visited only by email-scanning robots and the occasional person looking at that cartoon of Sylvia Plath. Just like the photo for the Iron Men competition, it will be available later.