I've tried doing the standard sestina form but I didn't dislike it because it was difficult and long- it was long but that wasn't why I didn't like it. It was so repetitive that the words seem to lose their power or whatever relevance they would have had and the point of having those 6 words included in the repetition of the line's pattern seemed to be destroyed because it was like I would become habituated to heartng them, expecting them, and ending up not reading or listening to the poem at all but just counting off the number of skips on a broken record. I imagined that if I were to hear another writer's ssetina poem I would just be trying to predict how the words were going to be used next, if they were going to take on new meanings, and after all, once you know the words that are going to be repeated six times each, in a particular structure you're aware of, you can pretty much start guessing with good accuracy what the poem is going to say, where it's going to say it, which only leaves it open to wonder what the writer hoped to do with this pattern. And I couldn't hope to do anything while I was writing like someone with severe anterograde amnesia. So the tritina, which I found my my book Adventures in Poetic Form, was a wonderful surprise because it is also preictable but when read or listened to it's short enough to not leave time for trying to keep a step ahead,. The words are also only repeated in a 3 time pattern (not including the envoi) so there's not much risk of habituation. So I picked what seem to be some favourite topics/common theme or image in what I write i.e city, sleep, and teeth. Here goes. I included the tritna line pattern below in case anyone feels like trying it. I also felt ambitious as I got into it and ended up including a little inner rhyme. My first tritina attempt:
Look for lullabies elsewhere. Too too blunt for berceuse, here, where. nothing beats at the heart of the city.
You know better than to look for comfort in the clang of hands that cradle you to sleep.
They curve like apostrophes, quotes of strangers talking in their sleep, crowds of skull-heads grinding teeth.
We are all just clinging on, it seems, whether we know it or not, and only by our teeth,
trying to save face but keep up with the pace, lying to say that it's not a pretending place, the city.
I choke on the great smoke but it's not for signals, only screens. Either get lost or lose it. I've lost sleep.
While I collected my lost mind back in scraps, I happened to misplace almost every trace of sleep.
Estranged at night, I stay awake with what I recognise- daylight chews into shadows with gold teeth,
Dawn and its bite are so pretty that I rarely notice night untiI I see daybreak shatter across the city.
I'm not afraid of the city. I'm afraid of sleep, afraid of believing what I may be hearing lying through my teeth.