His family pretended not to cry
But both his sisters had no heart to spare;
They said they loved him, yet it was a lie.
The blazing sun one summer day drew nigh;
Its orange radiance it could not share.
His family pretended not to cry.
There was a man in hell beneath that sky--
Discerning now that care, like warmth, was rare.
They said they loved him, yet it was a lie.
All that his soul could utter was a sigh;
The shattered saints in Heaven said Lord's Prayer.
His family pretended not to cry.
Like sunlight, his disease bore down to dry
Emotions spent without concern or care.
They said they loved him, yet it was a lie.
Upon the desert ground he lay to die--
Addiction was much more than he could bear.
His family pretended not to cry;
They said they loved him, yet it was a lie.
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Author Notes
A Villanelle is a nineteen-line poem consisting of a very specific rhyming scheme:
aba aba aba aba aba abaa.
The first and the third lines in the first stanza are repeated in alternating order throughout the poem, and appear together in the last couplet (last two lines.)--Shadow Poetry.
This is written in iambic pentameter.
I am using the three syllabic pronunciation of family and the one syllabic pronunciation of Prayer.
I had to use nine of the following words: family, cry, spare, heart, orange, factor, bore, shatter, saint, hell. I left out factor and used shattered and saints, both of which are acceptable.
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