Runaway Blues Villanelle
A poem by Tim Seibles
Maybe we could all just fly away
Time will say nothing, but I told you so
Not sure what else time can really say
Not sure I wanna write this anyway
Woke up feelin like I jus don’ know
Maybe we could all just walk away
No use runnin hot and yellin all damn day
Mom told me No one monkey stops the show
Guess she didn’t know what else to say
Maybe I should put my mind on layaway
Can’t turn it off—can’t tell where it’ll go
Think I might just turn away
Summa y’all go to church and pray
I look at the sky— I jus don’ know
Maybe we should all just run away
Gotta try somethin, come what may
When that goes wrong, they’ll shrug I told you so
Ain’t that some worthless shit to say?
People worry ‘bout who’s straight, who’s gay:
The body’s the arrow, the heart’s the bow
Someday we’ll all just fly away
When I go, just let Omar Sosa play
Then rock’a my soul at a Funkadelic show
You give me half a chance, I’d get away
When you think about it, same thing time would say
Tim Seibles, a former Poet Laureate of Virginia, is the author of several poetry collections, including Fast Animal (Etruscan Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award and winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Prize and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award for Poetry, and, most recently, Voodoo Libretto: New & Selected Poems (Etruscan Press, 2022).
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