WDC Survivor Challenge -- 2011

Nothing Left ~ Challenge #4

Prompt: Your challenge is to write a poem with at least ten lines, where every line has the same number of 'beats'. (Essentially, the same number of syllables.)

Nothing Left
~A Villanelle~

I search my empty heart today
For rays of faded love’s lost trace
Adieu is all there’s left to say

Life scented once with love's bouquet
on bitter wind blows from this place
I search my empty heart today

Our story penned in lower case
My passion null in your embrace
Adieu is all there’s left to say

With ardor dwindled, flit away
Frustration threatens fall from grace
I search my empty heart today

We danced the waltz in love’s ballet
Lambasted silence, poker face
Adieu is all there’s left to say

A soul insists, can't disobey
It needs fresh air and open space
I search my empty heart today
Adieu is all there’s left to say

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 repeat in alternating order throughout the poem as lines three in the remaining stanzas, and they appear together in the closing couplet (last two lines).

In addition to these traditional guidelines, this Villanelle is written in iambic tetrameter, meaning there are four metric feet (or exactly eight syllables) per line.