Cicatrix (Sestina)

My tongue and lips kiss the word cicatrix
and I've created a small butterfly
with my mouth. Each gossamer syllable
unveiling a particular cadence,
intricate, delicate kaleidoscope
of sound and meaning, the word wings singing.

Each inflection tells something new; singing
the soft first ci of my own cicatrix,
slowly turning the fresh kaleidoscope
to reveal love; brushed by mouth butterfly,
it pulses clearly, the deepest cadence,
beginning and end, truest syllable.

And now hard ca; the second syllable
tells of loneliness, a hidden singing
to oneself, flat sound on blank wall, cadence
of sorrow, token of loss, cicatrix
as sadness. My poor broken butterfly
drums inside a crippled kaleidoscope.

I say trix and my clear kaleidoscope
fills with polychromatic syllable,
reawakening my tongue-butterfly,
which burrs with playfulness and fun, singing
fleeting and fractured pleasures. Cicatrix
clicks, blooms into unexpected cadence.

Then gone. Love, sorrow, pleasure, which cadence
can settle the turning kaleidoscope,
christen my scar, my speckled cicatrix?
Ci follows ca follows trix, syllable
after syllable, prism of singing,
multicoloured lament. My butterfly

mouth brushes three sounds, lilting butterfly
wings carress again each humming cadence,
until there is only rainbow singing,
chattering barrel of kaleidoscope,
sounds merging, weight of every syllable
needed to sing the song of cicatrix.

Small butterfly, spinning kaleidoscope
New cadence in each precious syllable
So I'm singing of my own cicatrix.


This poem is called a sestina. One of the professional poets on a facebook group I'm in posted that she had written one for a poetry reading and I didn't know what it menat, so I looked it up and gave it a go.
A sestina has six verses of six lines and one verse of three lines. It doesn't rhyme. Each line has ten syllables. The words that end each line of the first verse - in my case cicatrix, butterfly, syllable, cadence, kaleidoscope, singing are repeated at the end of every line in the poem but in a different order each time.
Verse 1: 123456
Verse 2: 615243
Verse 3: 364125
Verse 4: 532614
Verse 5: 451362
Verse 6: 246531
In the last verse, one of your key words should be in the middle and at the end of each line, in this order: 2/5 4/3 6/1

Apparently the secret is to try and make sure that the repetitions aren't too obvious, so that they give an underlying ethereal quality to the poem, making it mesmerising when read aloud. I'm not sure I've managed this but I'm dead chuffed with myself for giving it a go and succeeding! It's like word sudoku!