This is my first Sestina, written in, I believe 2006 the pattern is six words repeated at the end of the lines in seven stanzas. like this 123456, 615243. The last three lines are the six words in any order, one in the middle and one at the end of each line. I left the extra stuff in… numbers and verse count because it helped me follow the rules, if any one else wants to try one. It’s hard to write one that makes sense. What do you think of it?

Art is the passion of the mind when the thought is of life or death.

ONE
1) Is one a fake if one must ask “What is art?”
2) A forger of a work of genius is unaware of creative passion.
3) Who will give it thought
4) to decipher the phony from the work of skill except those with an ardent mind.
5) To be a counterfeit is to be unknowing of life
6) and lost to all reflections save for death.
TWO
1-6) In brain and in body, the paint and canvas, breathing death.
2-1) One is like a larva to ask, “What is art?”
3-5) It is Life!
4-2) As a soul of passion
5-4) is an inventive mind
6-3) and an inspired thought.
THREE
1-6) Certainly, to claim original thought
2-1) is to escape death,
3-5) for what is an eternity without the validation of the masterwork? In mind,
4-2) a desiccated worm on a sizzling sidewalk, the canvas of hell is an imitation of art.
5-4) If one is not filled with the maker then one is made empty of passion
6-3) and dead; even the maggot can not feed on the corpse of a hollow life.
FOUR
1-6) One is just as one was before one was born, dead to life
2-1) but given by God the opportunity of thought
3-5) the young insect, by divine passion
4-2) and by God’s command overcomes death,
5-4) caterpillar becomes butterfly, hollow cocoon left to decay, all that is and was and will be, Art.
6-3) To subsist is to understand the lack of euphemisms and not mind,
FIVE
1-6) yet the phony proclaim, air is all that consists of the mind
2-1) and being born one survives to pass away through out life
3-5) and this is true with one exception that carries on beyond the grave, Art!
4-2) So rather than exist to fear fatality in thought
5-4) rejoice in creation beyond death
6-3) that is of God in holy passion.
SIX
1-6) The canvas of heaven is hot with passion
2-1) just as the path to hell scorches the mind
3-5) with notions of perpetual creation without art
4-2) but in a time without end, death becomes life
5-4) when one excepts ones design as willed by God’s thought
6-3) and ones existence as God’s art.
SEVEN
If in life one’s mind can be in this world as artist,
and align each imaginative thought with God’s passion
Then one becomes a masterpiece beyond death as sentient and awe-inspiring art.