Villanelle #3

racing between mythology and reality//i can’t catch my breath;

rapturous prosody and meticulous rhapsody// i’m stuck on an antinomy;

imagining stagnation is blasphemy//death in motion seems my destiny;

even in my languors there is malaise//a still tongue seeking its epithets; my labours are shy before their own fruit//cracked lips imbibed on malady; what’s reality without myth? asked about my own narrative—i’m breathless;

there is no good in a poet gone silent//my lungs will shrivel living wordlessly; clumsy hands figure my disappointment//a dry larynx croaks a dead melody; each keystroke comes senselessly penned by anxious fingers without destiny;

what good is this tongue-tied language that leaves myth trapped in my chest? what of my reality that lives survives on a diet of only hallucinogenic waste? where am i to stand when neither can bring their breadths to an intersection?

form abandons itself, forgets its function//the ink inside of my pen ossifies; every page i’ve written begins to oxidise//the quiet in my voice metastasises; this dichotomy divides itself even further//my own genesis is testing me.

so i must live caught between the dialectic of my didacts,

tongue turned tip to base in search of symbols that last.

somewhere between mythology and reality is where i’ll find my breath—

someday when i come to acknowledge my delusions as my destiny.

Inspired by:

“#3 came about while I was reading Mark Stand and Eavan Boland's The Making of a Poem which featured Elizabeth Bishops's One Art. I thought that the poem really played around with the villanelle form and thought maybe I should try that while also addressing my relationship with the tools and themes of my own poems. Still not sure if the poem achieved everything (or anything) I wanted it to do but it's my baby and I love it.”