Villainy of a Villanelle
by
Frederick Michaels
I spend long days
in poetic hell
seeing my best
wrote rhyme and verse
tortured at
length by a villanelle.
Pushed near a
suicide farewell,
suffering pain
from this writer’s curse,
I spend long days
in poetic hell.
In twists that
gypsy-read palms foretell,
words written
simple take turns perverse,
tortured at
length by a villanelle.
Poem cut lean
like an empty shell,
or still rife
with fat — I’m not sure the worse.
I spend long days
in poetic hell.
Words have life,
why don’t they rebel?
Verbs have a
calling inaction subverts,
tortured at
length by a villanelle.
Rigors of my art
to this form still compel
despite endless
drafts toted off in a hearse.
I spend long days in poetic hell,
tortured
at length by a villanelle.
Bio: Frederick Michaels writes
in retirement from his home in Indianapolis. His poetry has appeared in Flying
Island, So It Goes Literary Journal, The Boston Poetry Journal, Branches
magazine and Lone Stars magazine, among others. A number of his poems are
included in the anthologies Reckless
Writing 2012 and 2013 (from Chatter
House Press, Indianapolis) and Naturally
Yours (edited and self-published by Stacy Savage and Kathy Chaffin
Gerstorff). His first book of poems, Potholes
In the Universe, was recently published by Chatter House Press,
Indianapolis. An engineer by training, Michaels has always been pulled to the
side of the arts by his love of written words and the challenge of painting
sense and feeling with them.