Written during GloPoWriMo 2017 with The Missing Slate, prompt from Nabina Das
A sestina with the six words – dulcet, mixing, cess, really, clot, trick
In the deepening shadows, a glow : tinkling dulcet verses like hilly streams dotting silent rows, mixing ethereal, outlandish, down-to-earth, all without cess oh, none at all, save the promise you make, really only to yourself, to see it as it is, and not let it clot like congealed blood, unspoken, a dangerous trick! Fleeting, ethereal, just a glimpse, is it real? Or a trick of the eyes to lure you into forests flush with dulcet tunes you knew so well. You go anyway, lest you clot on forbidden territories of sloth, so yes you are mixing fantasy & reality, dreams & shredded fear really, even as you hum that old favourite tune without cess; In search of a golden glow half imagined, is there a cess on it? The forest is all dark and thunder rolls, an old trick to frighten even the bold, the darkness is a blindfold really, you walk on, trembling, hanging on by a thought so dulcet so dear, that maybe you then shed your fear, and are mixing visions of utopia with whatever is at hand, before it can clot. Filaments of a golden light, strung on the night, a clot half visible gnawing at it with all its might, that is the cess you have to pay, to stay : fight, fight, fight forever, keep mixing new elements, new lights, new directions, difficult to trick into submission, difficult to seduce with false dulcet tunes so apparent in their folly, transparent, yet invisible really! Golden light, a golden deer? A chimera, a chiaroscuro? Really is it just a figment of the imagination, no sound basis, a clot on the landscapes of mind where all sorts of ripples dulcet and mellifluous flow? Or is it to be gained with a steep cess paid out with sieved thoughts, distilled deeds, where no trick holds you back from seeing it, that golden light, you're mixing. Go forth into the vast and terrible night, where light is mixing into shadows creating chiaroscuros or chimeras, or really playing with your imagination, leading you on towards a trick it loves best, to test you, throwing up phantoms within, a clot within you, a dark spot you didn't know you had, it's your cess you pay to enter ephemeral golden strands with voices dulcet. And when you've battled chimeras and hear voices dulcet, know that the streams were with you all along, asking no cess, It is your darkness in which chimeras hid, now they're but a clot.
Published in: Where I Belong – Moments, Mist & Song (Smeetha Bhoumik, Notion, 2019),and
Witness – A Red River Book of Poetry of Dissent, (Ed. Nabina Das, Red River, 2021)
Yugen Quest Review 