POETRY IN RHYME - RHYTHM CONTEST-winner

A Poet’s Crying Song

Oh Sestina, why have you come
During the slumber of my poetic place,
And wake the unpublished and blue?
Your daunting complexity spice my dreaming,
Turns me to face another formula,
As I lazily listen to other poetic songs.

Sestina of you must I sing?
I’d rather bathe in the sea’s calm---
Not shoulder the needles of your form,
Nor scramble words at a turtle’s pace.
Good-bye Sestina! I’d rather be a dreamer.
Poke your fun at me, I’ll be yellow.

Why turn a poet’s face volcano red,
Anger the Gods with a repetitious song,
Demand fixed patterns of end words dreamt,
In complex, strategic calamities
Demanding to roost at a poet’s placemat?
Who’s afraid? Not a poet formally.

If you saw a genie of a large form,
With eight eyes, two chins and orange,
Having six, six line stanzas at your place,
And a three-line envoy and he sung,
words in which the perfect Sestina comes,
Would you plagiarize in a dream?

Would you create your own dreamscapes?
Pretend to be Swinburne, or Kipling formerly,
And shun the fear of the old comer,
Even if—mockberry-plum-purple-pink,
Even if---French and holding a sign,
That reads, "Wrong End Word Placed?”

Sestina I welcome you to my poetic place,
Into my creative mind of word dreams,
Waiting to exist in the way they sing,
To the present or to the former,
Ears that hear, or eyes that see green,
And dance to the tone of poetic calm.

For the dreams that exist in my place,
Are vibrant green and faithfully come,
To taste the many formulas that poets sing.