A sonnet, a sestina, a villanelle

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Today I was hypomanic and I wrote three poems. I thought they needed space, so in between I added photos that I’ve taken, something for you to rest your eyes on rather than jumping straight to the next poem.

Sonnet

This sonnet is in the Shakespearean tradition: three quatrains with ABAB rhyme schemes, plus a rhyming couplet, all iambic pentameter.

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It’s easy to be vain, and not to see,
and easier to let things pass away—
time, ambitions, people you might be—
it’s easy to do nothing in a day.

It’s easy to do nothing in a year
and easier to let things pile up:
emails, hurts you carry, things you fear;
it’s easy to look down and never up.

It’s easy not to look things in the eye;
there’s always something for you in the glow.
You cross the street, look down, someday you’ll die;
it’s easier to live if you don’t know.

It’s hard to see a person, and be seen.
It’s easy not to look behind the screen.

Sestina II

A sestina has six stanzas of six lines each, plus a final three-line stanza. What’s predetermined is the ending word of each line; they rotate in a set order, and each line of the final stanza contains two of the anchor words. I am not a master of this form, so mine lacks meter. It is called Sestina II because it’s the second sestina I wrote today; I didn’t like the first.

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the sun is up.
the world is still here,
and that’s all
that matters. not
anything anyone says to you.
nothing else.

just this world, where maybe someone else
is watching the sun come up
and loving you.
as long as the world is still here,
it doesn’t matter if you’re not
the best or smartest of them all;

at least you’re here at all.
and so is everyone else,
for this moment. (now they’re not.)
we’ve made up
many things. we made up ‘here’,
the number zero, me and you.

we can make up more. you
can. we all
can, as long as we’re still here.
that’s the thing that comes before all else,
prerequisite for making anything up:
buildings, faces, arguments. all the things we’re not

in control of, which is not
quite everything. (you
might disagree). come up
to the roof and watch the sunrise (don’t fall. you’re all
that matters.). everyone else
may be asleep, but you are here.

you are here
without the people who are not,
which is almost everyone else.
and someday it will come for you
and probably for us all,
and all that we’ve made up.

the sun is up. the world is still here
and so are we all, until we’re not.
all that matters is you, and everyone else.

Villanelle

A villanelle is five three-line stanzas with repeated lines and a strict rhyme scheme, easier to show than describe.

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talk to specific people, not the masses:
the people who you love, and hope will hear.
we write to try to seize time as it passes—

the fleeting things, the pitfalls and morasses,
the things that we find precious and hold dear.
talk to specific people, not the masses—

everyone’s just covering their asses,
not showing what’s inside themselves that’s real.
we write to try to seize time. as it passes,

your life becomes a series of vague flashes—
things that used to be now, or be here.
talk to specific people, not the masses

who’ll never know you or your heart. the grass is
green, and cold, and realer than your fear.
we write to try to seize time as it passes,

but we can’t—but writing’s realer than the past is,
and all we have to show that we were here.
talk to specific people, not the masses,
and write to try to seize time as it passes.