<!DOCTYPE html> <!-- AUTOCENTO OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE --> <!-- vim: fdm=indent --> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="generator" content="pandoc"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes"> <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth"> <title>Exasperated | Autocento of the breakfast table</title> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="trunk/favico.png" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="trunk/style.css"> <script src="scripts/randomize.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script src="scripts/hylo.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script> <![endif]--> </head> <body id="exasperated" class="stark"> <article class="container"> <header> <!-- title --> <h1 class="title">Exasperated</h1> <div class="header-extra"> </div> </header> <section class="content verse"> <p><span class="line">I didn’t write this sestina yesterday.</span><span class="line">It’s the first time I fell behind in my task</span><span class="line">and hopefully, the only time it will.</span><span class="line">This means that today I must write two</span><span class="line">sestinas. If I don’t write them today, I</span><span class="line">will have to write two later down the line.</span></p> <p><span class="line">Although I feel I’m slogging through each line</span><span class="line">I think I’m doing better every day,</span><span class="line">though maybe this is wishful thinking: I</span><span class="line">showed my friend my just-completed task</span><span class="line">two days ago (my God, was it two</span><span class="line">entire days? I’ve no idea what I’ll</span></p> <p><span class="line">do <a href="http://biblehub.com/2_corinthians/11-24.htm">after thirty-nine days</a>. I think I’ll</span><span class="line">feel like <a href="death-zone.html">Inigo Montoya</a>, who’d been in the line</span><span class="line">of revenging for so long, he didn’t know what to</span><span class="line">do with the rest of his life), and he deigned</span><span class="line">to be polite, but I could tell the task</span><span class="line">was hard for him. He told me finally that I</span></p> <p><span class="line">had made a noble effort, but that ultimately I</span><span class="line">failed. <a href="question.html">So my question</a>: when will</span><span class="line">I be a decent sestina writer? For this is my task.</span><span class="line">Maybe if I just keep cranking out line after line</span><span class="line">I’ll finally figure it out. Maybe one more day</span><span class="line">or another week will do it, or maybe I’ll need two,</span></p> <p><span class="line">or maybe it’ll never happen. Maybe a sestina’s too</span><span class="line">involved, too much <a href="tapestry.html">weaving</a> of words too fine, and I</span><span class="line">will never write a good one, even on my best day,</span><span class="line">even if I employ all my skill and all my will.</span><span class="line">I’m not used to writing poems with thirty-nine lines,</span><span class="line">that must be the problem, must be why this task</span></p> <p><span class="line">is Herculean. He only had to finish twelve tasks,</span><span class="line">and I have one less one thousand, five hundred twenty-two,</span><span class="line">and it’s nothing but complaining lines</span><span class="line">about <a href="deathstrumpet.html">how hard it is to be a person</a>. I</span><span class="line">am getting sick of myself with these poems, and will</span><span class="line">soon be loathe to get out of bed every day.</span></p> <p><span class="line">But I tasked myself with this, which may be the worst I</span><span class="line">ever do to myself. I thought a poem NaNoWriMo would</span><span class="line">be fun, would line my resume, give me something I could publish someday.</span></p> </section> </article> <nav> <div class="anchors"> <a href="backlinks/exasperated.html" id="backlinks" title="Links to this page"> φ </a> <a href="index.html" id="coverlink" title="To cover">◊</a> <a href="#" id="randomizelink" title="ERROR">ξ</a> </div> <a class="prevlink" href="amber-alert.html" title="Previous article in Stark Raving"> AMBER alert </a> <a class="prevlink" href="death-zone.html" title="Previous article in Stark Raving"> The Death Zone </a> <a class="nextlink" href="death-zone.html" title="Next article in Stark Raving"> The Death Zone </a> <a class="nextlink" href="boy_bus.html" title="Next article in Stark Raving"> Boy on the bus </a> </nav> </body> </html>