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Villanelle written for my Creative Writing class.
~ :: ~
The (in)Sane Man
They say you were always sane,
But in truth your heart is black;
Every attempt to fix you was done in vain.
They say there is something wrong with your brain,
Perhaps it is from your time in Iraq,
But they still insist you are sane.
Laymen, they do not understand the pain,
The horrible pain you endured through every attack.
They try to help you, to heal you—but it is all done in vain.
They lie to you, trying to wane
Any possibility of you getting your true self back.
They keep lying, saying you are sane.
They won’t give you freedom, force you to wear a chain,
Won’t give you anything to get back on track.
They think it will help, but they are just vain.
Everything they do is inhumane,
Every word you say is answered with a vicious whack.
They keep telling you you’re sane.
But you do not believe them; their efforts all done in vain.
~ :: ~
Okay, so, I'm not particularly pleased with this (hence just posting it here and not in COT), but I figured I'd post it anyway. It's taken from an idea I had a while ago for a short story, and I really think I should've just left it for a short story, but my poem was due in a couple hours and this was the first semi-workable idea that came to mind, so I went with it. I still hope to write the short story some day, as I like the idea (which wasn't even exactly correctly portrayed here), but for now this is it. I'm really not a fan of having to write a fixed form poem (i.e., having to comply with rhyming, structure, etc.), which is the main reason I didn't like writing this poem as much as the others I wrote, but I still did enjoy it -- it was something I hadn't done before, and I had to challenge myself.
Comments/etc. are welcome.
~ Velox
Anyway, you are correct in that this would make a better short story than it does a poem. The ideas are a little too...I don't know, they way you present them sounds insincere. The biggest problem is the fixed form, or at least the way you used it. I don't think it would have been too distracting, but unfortunately you used the words "sane" and "vain" too much. Perhaps if you had only used "sane" two or three times it would have flowed better, but reusing two different words throughout the poem doesn't work. Of course, these are flaws that you acknowledge, and I understand that this was a requirement, so much is forgiven and this obviously doesn't change my perspective on you as a writer (other than signalling to me that you have troubles with structured poems).
I look forward to any short story that comes of this.
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