Articulating My Youth: A Sestina

[Sestina: One of the most complex of the various French forms, the sestina is a poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. It makes no use of the refrain. This form is usually unrhymed, the effect of rhyme being taken over by a fixed pattern of end-words which demands that these end-words in each stanza be the same, though arranged in a different sequence each time.]

Not long ago, I misspent my youth trying to learn the chords of a guitar.
A minor, B flat, C major, there were too many to confuse my head.
So I often switched off and listened to my radio, fishing for tunes
and I stopped if I could catch a song by Dylan or Dire Straits
and harmonise a white canvas with bold strokes of colour.
(But I'd soon give up, being equally impatient with art as I was with music).

Linseed oil anointed my futile efforts with the canvas and colour.
But I loved my brushes, their crisp strokes with cool music
warbling in the background. Brothers in Arms was the Dire Strait
record I adored. That album had powerful lyrics with great tunes
And the cover was tastefully done with the photo of a steel guitar.
Perhaps youth wasn't that misspent, I still have fond memories in my head.

I remember my first sip of alcohol, which went straight to the head
I remember then watching a television blind to the primaries of colour
I remember buying my first instrument, which did not resemble a guitar;
I remember it being a clever little keyboard with built-in tunes.
I remember my record collection growing with different genres of music:
I remember separating the genres and eras with little gaps, like tiny straits.

Though it could’ve been a daring youth, and I could’ve ventured in search of music,
I didn’t travel. Only in my imagination, I saw places, heard unknown tunes.
I had many friends, who hung around me, and uselessly strummed a guitar.
When I’d get bored with them, I read books and stored facts in my head.
Those books trekked me through African villages, crossed the Magellan Straits,
And I discovered a Manhattan jazz joint, by when I was stoned on a high colour.

Women: I dated all types, for they could narrow those chasms and straits
That otherwise widened without any rhyme or reason in my head.
The last girl I dated, I shared my passion with her; she was artistic and loved music.
Thought we “clicked”, but she said my personality was dull, it lacked colour.
So my heart lost faith in monogamy. It married the six strings of guitar.
But I could never stop quarrelling with any of them. They sang melancholic tunes.

I thought I would paint forever or create my own repertoire of tunes.
I was merely nineteen; I had my tubes of paint and strings for my guitar.
But the subtle rustle of my paintbrushes, and my jingle-jangled music
had me unprepared to face real challenges; I neither had the heart nor the head.
And before I knew, my vision had a fracture, and my life was in complete dire straits.
The alchemy of my artistic ambitions had lost the lust for colour.

Today, I lie on my back and watch my cuticles grow.
My guitar stands by my head, not looking for tunes, but Dire Straits music
still makes me dive deep in nostalgia, to atone a magnificently misspent youth.

© Ahsan Akbar MMIV