Anything but a Sestina- Introduction

I wrote this poem which, despite its title, is a sestina. It was written for my Poetry Workshop class with Dr. Thornburg who has, regretably, retired from teaching. The idea I had was to write a poem about things which are assumed to exist, but in actuality do not. The six concepts I chose (six, because that is a requirement of writing a sestina), time, darkness, cold, sound, color and holes are all either the absence of a real concept (in the case of darkness, cold and holes), a human conception (such as time) or the mere mis-perception of reality (for sound and color).
I tried to maintain the Gothic terror which I usually implement into my stories and poems as well. This worked well with the theme of the poem, I think, where I challenge ideas that we are all taught to take for granted and the challenging of the foundations of common thought can be frightening in of itself. However, by using negative words such as blood, deafen, absence, cry, fear, etc. I tried to enhance the negative feelings throughtout the poem.

Read Anything but a Sestina