Exasperated
- - -I didn’t write this sestina yesterday.It’s the first time I fell behind in my taskand hopefully, the only time it will.This means that today I must write twosestinas. If I don’t write them today, Iwill have to write two later down the line.
-Although I feel I’m slogging through each lineI think I’m doing better every day,though maybe this is wishful thinking: Ishowed my friend my just-completed tasktwo days ago (my God, was it twoentire days? I’ve no idea what I’ll
-do after thirty-nine days. I think I’llfeel like Inigo Montoya, who’d been in the lineof revenging for so long, he didn’t know what todo with the rest of his life), and he deignedto be polite, but I could tell the taskwas hard for him. He told me finally that I
-had made a noble effort, but that ultimately Ifailed. So my question: when willI be a decent sestina writer? For this is my task.Maybe if I just keep cranking out line after lineI’ll finally figure it out. Maybe one more dayor another week will do it, or maybe I’ll need two,
-or maybe it’ll never happen. Maybe a sestina’s tooinvolved, too much weaving of words too fine, and Iwill never write a good one, even on my best day,even if I employ all my skill and all my will.I’m not used to writing poems with thirty-nine lines,that must be the problem, must be why this task
-is Herculean. He only had to finish twelve tasks,and I have one less one thousand, five hundred twenty-two,and it’s nothing but complaining linesabout how hard it is to be a person. Iam getting sick of myself with these poems, and willsoon be loathe to get out of bed every day.
-But I tasked myself with this, which may be the worst Iever do to myself. I thought a poem NaNoWriMo wouldbe fun, would line my resume, give me something I could publish someday.
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