Poetry Place Collected Poems

Fibromyalgia Villeinage

Fibromyalgia Villeinage

I have fibromyalgia pain
Wracked with severe pain every day
The pain never goes away

At times, it is quite a strain
Nothing to do but pray
I have fibromyalgia pain

Especially when there is rain
The pain will there come what may
The pain never goes away

But I have learned not to complain
Not much to do to keep the pain at bay
I have fibromyalgia pain

The pain keeps me from the fast lane
At times, the pain drives me insane
The pain never goes away

Like the proverbial ball and chain
Sometimes I smoke some Mary Jane
I have fibromyalgia pain
. The pain never goes away

The villanelle has evolved from a French pastoral into the rigid form it is today, with a nineteen-line structure and a rhyme scheme of a1, b, a2/a, b, a1/a, b, a2/a, b, a1/a, b, a2/ a, b, a1, a2, where a1 and a2 are refrains, as described and demonstrated in the following links:

https://poets.org/glossary/villanelle

Rules of the Villanelle Form
The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.