Of Machines and Men

It was a moment such as this that led me to write the opening line of the sestina. Lying on my back in the middle of a blazing afternoon, I listen to my own breathing as the sound of mechanical blades slicing through the air fills my ear. When I made you guess what it is, its actual answer was one farthest from your mind.

As the surrounding air is being sucked into this same machine, the movement of the blades causes for the current ahead of it to move faster- everything follows the natural order. Perhaps, that's why this sestina, a complex form for a poem, seemed to be a natural choice for the next project. 

This cycle of writing, which started as a game, has led us to the ending of a wonderful story between a boy and an ant and another wonderful beginning of our own. 

And so, we keep on writing...

A sestina written by Mycota & Pyrrhic

Blades slicing through the same air I breathe, a cycle
of fate piercing with the ticks of time- an agony of silence.
These blades and clock hands though forged in fire are just man-made machines,
that clink in unison with their creator, that slowly decay into dust.
The organisms die and so do they. Steel creaking, steel breaking,
before the face of merciless fate that intertwine


A weary man drinks from a cup of wine and poison that intertwine
and diffuse into blood, while the heart beats a numbing cycle
of stygian blood flowing through mortal veins, breaking
hope as the cried muffled by eerie silence
breaks faith into pieces finer than dust.
Life is no better than half broken machines.

The weary man meets a clockwork whose body is run by machines.
The sirens of time tick, weaving a melody that intertwine
with each movement to fuel mechanical souls before they in turn, bites the dust.
Such an empty wonderment as the world turns another cycle!
Such a beautiful song wasted into ears that hear nothing but silence,
leaving in its wake - tears- glowing and breaking!

The steel hands reached out for a fragile human heart that's breaking.
To find love that vanish in the cruel time machines.
To grant love where there is war, to speak of it where there is apathetic silence.
To finally weave two hearts separated by fate in love that intertwine.
To rest in a love free from the torments of a creaking, tiring cycle.
One that will stay, even when everything turns into dust.

This is the substance that reassembles life out of dust,
like a warmth that come by spring, breaking
through the thick blanket of cold white in a terrestrial cycle.
It is the tenderness even in this world of machines
with gears that turn in two opposite directions yet still intertwine
and keep echoing warmth even in the most eerie silence.

It is the sweet voice in my head as I embrace the silence.
It gives my life meaning, even if I'm nothing in universe but a little tiny dust.
So, I hold out my weary iron hands, hoping for my mechanical existence to intertwine,
melting within heart's beating, witnessing the barrier, slowly breaking,
my eyes blinking, my lungs expanding, like a human's and not that of machines.
With the thawing of the long frozen heart, it is the beginning of a new cycle.

Mortal blood and engine oil intertwine in the arteries of this heart that pumps in steady silence.
A new life, a new cycle, springs from death and dust.
Love is an engine, turning, breaking the customs, coldness and cycle of self-condemnation of machines (and men).