Did I mention that I can't stop writing Sestinas?

(Also, I've been taking the six words for each Sestina from particular poems that we've read in my Into to Poetry class. These Sestinas are my final "creative project" for the class.)

from Rorschach by a poet I'm too lazy to look up right now.

----

I hear the flutter of wings
like the twisting of a road
on a map, a stain
on the lips of one who's been kissing a flute.
Every time you light a cigarette,
someone awakes on a deserted island.

On the shore of this island,
the sun rests in the ruby wings
of birds, glowing like a cigarette
left on the side of a road.
The wind blows here with the sweetness of a flute,
but it leaves marks on the sand like stains.

Did you notice that stain?
It's shaped like an island,
abandoned like the cry of a flute
in the night. This night that came in on wings,
and left its footprints on the road.
You pierced that night with your cigarette.

I put out the cigarette
on your shadow, but it left a stain
on your mouth. Your tongue is the road
that I take to our island
where the wind comes in on wings
and sings to us like the whisper of a flute.

We put the world on pause to listen to the flute.
The sound fills our ears like cigarette
smoke, and I can see the morning's wings
approaching. The newborn sun leaves a stain
on the sky, and the clouds sort of form an island-
a sacred place at the end of the road.

Our sacred place is at the end of that road,
where we speak with the purity of a flute.
And when we get to this island,
I will meet the sand like a mouth meets a cigarette.
Until then, you leave yourself on me like a stain,
and I could swear I have wings.

This island is our final road,
and we'll depart on wings that hum like flutes;
a cigarette forever illuminating our stain of sky.

I can't stop writing Sestinas.

For anyone who's never heard of a Sestina (as I hadn't until a few weeks ago), it's basically a poem consisting of six six-lined stanzas followed by one tercet (three lines). The poem is constructed according to an outline according to the last word in every line. If you were to number the last word of every line in the first stanza 1-6, those would be your numbers, and they change order in every stanza from there on out. I'm not going to post the pattern because it's not important (you can figure it out via the poem if you really want to know), and you'll pick up on it as you're reading. So anyway, these are basically all I've been writing since I first encountered one, and this is my most recent and my most favorite so far.

-----

6 words taken from Body and Soul by Charles Wright.
(Also, this is yours.)

I count the colors of your body,
reds and golds and blues melting into the same world.
I count the shape-shifting of the clouds,
merging into houses and canoes and tropical fruit.
Choose a patch of sky, put it in a frame
made by the edges of your fingertips.

Rain runs down the bridge of a nose, like fingertips
in the secret parts of your body.
On Mondays, I miss the entirety of your frame
that you've given to the rest of the world.
You sing and cry and dance, the fruit
of your spirit growing as high as the clouds.

Though they've never known you, the clouds
appreciate what you send from your fingertips:
light and fire and a love as sweet as fruit.
I bury my eyes in your body,
and I do not miss the world.
Your bones are my bed frame.

Sometimes the morning breaks your frame
and pieces of you shoot into the clouds,
then fall with the rain back onto the world.
And people ask you questions with their fingertips,
making your body their body.
You fertilize the soil and produce the sweetest of fruit.

And my veins crave your fruit,
and its your face that I want in my film frame.
I call your body
and wait for the clouds
that I'm sure you've sculpted with your fingertips.
This is all that I need in the world.

For you, I'd swallow the world
and stitch together every fruit
that you desired between your fingertips.
Out of my bones, I'd make a frame,
and fill it with the freshest of clouds.
For only you, an everlasting body.

You sing me your fingertips and I weave them into the world.
We make your body the earth's fruit.
And when I hand you the frame to fill, you always choose the best clouds.

There are two hairs twisted just right on my bed that consequently appear as a double Helix;
I wonder exactly what part of me is evolving.
I'd say my consciousness.
You may suggest my heart.
But what really matters is just the fact that there is transformation.

Maybe next year.