Sestina for a September day

I thought I'd have a bit of a stab at a found poem sestina, which is a device I have used before. I create the first stanza from a line from one of today's news articles (I try to look across a variety of outlets), then build the poem from that base.

The sestina is a weird form, anchored by the final words of each line of the opening stanza. The pattern is:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE

In this pattern, A is the final word of line 1, B is the final word of line 2, and so on.

Source articles:
1. Quote from President Trump in The Guardian live feed
2. Artificial intelligence to dominate Australia's future economy, but who will reap the benefits? by David Taylor (ABC Australia News)
3. Brett Sutton quoted in "'We never want to do that again': Brett Sutton on the lessons that must be learned from the pandemic by Neil Mitchell, Nine News
4. France transfixed by murder trial without a body by Hugh Schofield, BBC News
5. Three Australians lay dead as investors of Optus's parent company Singtel were buying up its shares by David Taylor (ABC Australia News)
6. PEN America interim co-CEO Summer Lopez quoted in CNN article "Kimmel’s show to return Tuesday, but Sinclair will continue preemption" by By Elizabeth Wagmeister and Brian Stelter

SESTINA FOR A SEPTEMBER DAY

Don’t take Tylenol. There’s no downside.
It's the biggest gold rush possibly in the history of capitalism.
There's no hard hat-wearing, ribbon-cutting solution that's going to make it all good;
there is no body, no blood, no confession, and no witness.
The word "sorry" has little meaning if you know there is a possibility you will transgress again.
When people speak out to hold the powerful to account – it matters.

Caught up in daily frenzy, where everything and also nothing really matters
the drowning flood of data carrying darkness on the downside.
The world twists sideways, shapes and moulds again
as empires stumble and the bell tolls out for capitalism.
Standing in the lintel, alive and bearing witness,
with no way yet to see if these ends are good

or if the blood of innocents destroys what might have been good,
the journey, not just the destination, matters.
The century no longer newborn, a silent witness
to all the ways the future's collecting downside
caught in the dead man's grip of decaying capitalism
watching the corpse juice of old power snake out again.

And here we are, back in the same debates again:
What causes pain, and what pain we decide is good,
across the world, and in the heart of capitalism;
whose crying can we hear, whose misery really matters.
Money growing wild in code, and where's the downside?
Where's the path to hear the other witness?

So strange and so confounding, to stand witness
to the moments when the clock rewinds again,
everything happens multiply, both up and downside.
Hindsight may be the only sight that's good;
the leavening of time to see what matters
freed from the grip of everything, even capitalism.

There may be no real roadway after capitalism;
the dead ends of the commune speak that witness.
Perhaps instead we'll learn how to price what matters,
to fully value lives and living things again.
It once was written, if we more valued food and cheer and song as good
the world would be a merrier place, with less downside.

The future may be coming fast, with all its downside,
but the robots may just need love too; the little seed of good
will sprout if planted, after the storm, again and yet again.