---
title: Exasperated
genre: verse

id: exasperated
toc: "Exasperated"

project:
    title: Stark Raving
    class: stark
    order: 8
    next:
    - title: The Death Zone
      link: death-zone
    - title: Boy on the bus
      link: boy_bus
    prev:
    - title: AMBER alert
      link: amber-alert
    - title: The Death Zone
      link: death-zone
...

| I didn't write this sestina yesterday.
| It's the first time I fell behind in my task
| and hopefully, the only time it will.
| This means that today I must write two
| sestinas.  If I don't write them today, I
| will have to write two later down the line.

| Although I feel I'm slogging through each line
| I think I'm doing better every day,
| though maybe this is wishful thinking: I
| showed my friend my just-completed task
| two days ago (my God, was it two
| entire days?  I've no idea what I'll

| do [after thirty-nine days][].  I think I'll
| feel like [Inigo Montoya][], who'd been in the line
| of revenging for so long, he didn't know what to
| do with the rest of his life), and he deigned
| to be polite, but I could tell the task
| was hard for him.  He told me finally that I

| had made a noble effort, but that ultimately I
| failed.  [So my question][]: when will
| I be a decent sestina writer?  For this is my task.
| Maybe if I just keep cranking out line after line
| I'll finally figure it out.  Maybe one more day
| or another week will do it, or maybe I'll need two,

| or maybe it'll never happen.  Maybe a sestina's too
| involved, too much [weaving][] of words too fine, and I
| will never write a good one, even on my best day,
| even if I employ all my skill and all my will.
| I'm not used to writing poems with thirty-nine lines,
| that must be the problem, must be why this task

| is Herculean.  He only had to finish twelve tasks,
| and I have one less one thousand, five hundred twenty-two,
| and it's nothing but complaining lines
| about [how hard it is to be a person][].  I
| am getting sick of myself with these poems, and will
| soon be loathe to get out of bed every day.

| But I tasked myself with this, which may be the worst I
| ever do to myself.  I thought a poem NaNoWriMo would
| be fun, would line my resume, give me something I could publish someday.

[after thirty-nine days]: http://biblehub.com/2_corinthians/11-24.htm
[Inigo Montoya]: death-zone.html
[So my question]: question.html
[weaving]: tapestry.html
[how hard it is to be a person]: deathstrumpet.html