Friday, May 11, 2018

Villanelle: Anxiety Furniture

You attach yourself to things like a cockleburr.
How can you lift one if it has no weight?
You live by moving anxiety furniture.
Worries have no weight, they’re pure
air, no more bonded to the ice than a skate,
but you attach yourself to things like a cockleburr.
Cockleburrs are light and without ligature.
They breed by sticking like the knife of fate,
so there’s always quite a lot of anxiety furniture
to move—that’s what your little sticky tines are for—
they help you land a berth, a job, a mate,
just by attaching to something like a cockleburr.
And this fine union, how can it endure?—
cockleburr on pantleg, or on china plate?
Sure, you have to push a ton of anxiety furniture
around, but what good is it? How could you hate it more?
No help in your quest for a serener state!
You attach yourself to things like a cockleburr.
You live by moving anxiety furniture.