Celebrating Poetry and the Villanelle

April is National Poetry Month and so, of course, I could not allow the month to go by without writing a blog post that contains a poem. I wrote this poem a while back while I was experimenting with different poetic forms. This is not just any poem, you see, this is a villanelle. What is a villanelle, you ask? (Admit it, you really, really want to know.) Thanks for asking! 

A villanelle is a nineteen-line poem usually written in iambic pentameter (a ten-syllables line of poetry with the stress on every other syllable). It consists of three tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quatrain (a four-line stanza) in which the entire first line is repeated as lines 6, 12, and 18 and the entire third line is repeated as lines 9, 15, and 19 so that the lines that frame the first tercet weave throughout the poem like refrains in a song and form the end of the concluding stanza. There are only two rhymes in the entire poem, and it is considered one of the most difficult forms of poetry to write well. The most famous villanelle is probably "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas which contains the famous line, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." My favorite is Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song," because I have a teeny, tiny obsession with Sylvia.

Anyway, while I am certainly no Dylan Thomas or Sylvia Plath, here is my attempt, in my own quirky way, to write a villanelle. You have my permission to laugh. Out loud, if necessary.


Dieter's Lament

There is nothing but lettuce on my plate,
Since tight-fitting clothes have ruined my day.
I wish I could fit into a size eight. 

Lettuce costuming is my game of late,
Romaine, bibb, iceberg dressed three dozen ways.
There is nothing but lettuce on my plate.

I yearn for thinness to be my true fate, 
But chewy fudge brownies stand in my way.
I wish I could fit into a size eight.

Tasty low-cal meals I strive to create,
But salad is starting to taste like hay.
There is nothing but lettuce on my plate. 

I would scrape away the fat that I hate, 
If only my stomach were made of clay.
I wish I could fit into a size eight.

Someday I hope to be proud of my weight,
To be thin once more I constantly pray.
There is nothing but lettuce on my plate,
I wish I could fit into a size eight. 


So there you have it. My attempt at one of the most difficult types of poems to write. And no, I don't really want to fit into a size eight (my skeleton wouldn't even fit into a size eight!) but there weren't enough words to rhyme with the word twelve. That's why I keep my poetic license up to date at all times. 

Life as a Lemur

Last year we visited Busch Gardens in Tampa, specifically to see the animal care center featured in a television show we often watch. The center had pretty much closed down for the day, but two veterinary technicians were carefully weighing and measuring ingredients to formulate some sort of animal concoction. We engaged them in conversation and learned that they were making food for a sick lemur. We watched as they created a precise mixture of ingredients essential for the lemur's health, carefully weighed into the correct proportions. But this lemur was a persnickety little guy and had not been eating well, so the vet techs had the challenge of adding different flavors to the same base to see what they could get the lemur to eat. Lemurs happen to like fruit, so they added honeydew to one mixture, mango to another, and then created one with banana. Anything to get this guy to eat so he could regain his strength. But the base -- the essential nutritional package -- was always the same.

Now, it seems, I am the lemur. Not a sick one, but still. I am spending my life as a lemur. I have entered the world of Medifast, or, as I enjoy referring to it, Planet Lemur. In the vast universe of weight-loss plans, books, ideas, notions, far-flung stupidity, and flat-out whackiness, planet Medifast is not one on which I ever expected my spaceship to land. After living for so many years in the comfort of the largest planet in the weight-loss universe, planet Weight Watchers, I voluntarily launched myself into the unknown and had been floating aimlessly (although sadly, not weightlessly) through space looking for suitable atmospheric conditions upon which to land.

After successfully losing 125 pounds on Weight Watchers and keeping them off for six years, several painful events occurred which I did not have the emotional coping skills to handle. So I stuffed them down using the only tool in my familiar toolbox: food. I stretched my daily points at first, telling myself I was sticking with the program, but eventually it became obvious I had veered quite far off course. By the time I could face the scale and fully assess the damage, it was bad. Very bad. So, as any good little Weight Watcher would, I went back to diligently counting, weighing, measuring, and dutifully recording everything I put into my mouth. I stepped up my walking regimen. I did everything right. But it didn't work. The scale wouldn't budge. My clothes did not become looser. My body, it seemed, wanted no more of this tried and true program. My body, it seemed, was stuck. The points program was suddenly pointless.

Then I spoke to my dear college friend who had recently started the Medifast plan and had already lost more than 30 pounds (she has since lost a whole lot more). She knows the intimate details of my struggles with food, and although she never suggested or advised me to try Medifast, I was intrigued. On the plan, I would eat five Medifast meals a day and one healthy meal of lean meat and vegetables. I thought about it for weeks and vascillated back and forth between thinking it would never, ever work and that it was a terrible idea to wondering just exactly what I had to lose. Well, the simple answer is weight. Weight is what I had to lose. I had a closet full of clothes that no longer fit, my blood pressure and cholesterol were climbing, and I felt, yet again, like a failure. I began to research the program more thoroughly. The meals are completely interchangeable, having basically the same nutritional stats, the same nutritional base; hence my crowning these meals lemur food. But instead of fruit flavors to entice a sick lemur, Medifast entices me with a variety of flavors of bars, shakes, soups, etc. As I looked toward my friend, pounds lighter and happily living and losing on planet Medifast, I made the decision to try the program.

So far, it has been an incredibly successful journey. Since I began in April 2014, I have lost more than 50 pounds. I'm almost to where I want to be, at which point I will begin a period of transition and then maintenance. I know this is not the route to weight loss for everyone. I never thought it would be for me. But for right now, I feel good. I am less self-conscious, I have a closet full of clothes that fit again, and I can see my collarbones. It's the little things that make me happy.  

So here I am, a lemur in my new world. I have carried this theme to every corner of Planet Lemur. Wherever there is lemur food, there is a photo of a lemur. My desk drawer at school is labeled "Lemur Headquarters." At home, both my kitchen cabinet and my box filled with extra food feature photos of lemurs. The lemur is my official mascot of this journey. On a recent road trip to the Midwest, we went to a zoo and I made a beeline to the lemur exhibit. Once there, I pulled out one of my lemur bars and one curious little ring-tailed lemur was so intrigued that he grabbed the cage and looked at that bar so longingly and with such intensity, I swear he wanted it. If he could have jumped that fence and landed on my shoulder, I would have shared it with him. Those lemurs and me, we're on this journey together. 

Airport Limbo

Here's my current situation: I have traveled to a new land, one in which I will no longer eat emotionally. It has been a long, exhausting journey, and I am still half loopy from the Dramamine I took to keep from becoming ill on the journey. The plane lands and I gather my tote bag from under the seat in front of me and take my carry-on from the bin above me. I walk down the ramp toward the interior of the airport, and with every step, I can feel my will becoming stronger. This is it. I am going to end this. Forever.

I walk confidently toward the only obstacle I have left: passport control. I approach the stern-looking German in charge (seriously, who better to represent my subconscious than a stern-looking German?) and hand him my passport. He looks at it, glances at me, slams the passport down firmly and says, "Nein!"

"But my papers are all in order," I plead. "My passport is here. I have photo ID. You have to let me in."

"Nein!!" he says more firmly.

I gaze past his broad shoulders to the beautiful countryside behind him. I see a pastoral landscape. Peaceful. Filled with lovely mountain lakes, Adirondack chairs on expansive porches, meditative walkways, biking trails, lots of cats and dogs waiting to be loved. Everything one could want during a time of anxiety or emotional upheaval to calm oneself with something beyond the siren call of food.

I look back at the passport control agent. "Why?" I ask.

"You are not yet ready," he says matter-of-factly. "You are to stay here and learn what you need to learn until it is time to enter this land. Now turn around. Schnell, schnell! Next!"

I turn slowly, dejected, and look around at the holding area in which I am to remain. The room that surrounds me is both my worst nightmare and my wildest food fantasy. Surrounding me on all sides is -- what else -- food. Tables are stacked with the finest marzipan, women hand out samples of every flavor of pie imaginable, and freshly baked cookies are stacked sky high on silver trays. There is an entire table with authentic Key lime pie, while another is devoted to nothing but piles of fudgy brownies. Trays of scones and danishes are surrounded by muffins as large as a baby's head. Approximately every other delectable food table is followed by a coffee kiosk, serving coffee, latte, cappuccino, and tea. Tables with books of poetry, works of great literature, and blank journals are set up in the middle of a grand courtyard, encouraging the patrons of this vast wonderland of sweets to get comfortable and stay put, eating and drinking for as long as possible.

I look around and slowly come to the realization that I have been sent to my own personal hell.

If I Were a Shoe...

If I were a shoe, I’d be a Birkenstock. I first became familiar with these wondrous shoes after Bill and I went to Germany in the early 1990s. As we walked around Bonn with my cousin Wolfgang and his wife Sabine, these shoes were everywhere. It seemed that every third pair of German legs was being transported around that beautiful city on a pair of Birkenstocks.

“Those shoes,” I finally asked Sabine after my curiosity was sufficiently piqued. “Are they good?”

“Oh, yes,” she said enthusiastically. “Very comfortable and good for your feet. But not very pretty, I think.”

Pretty or not, I was intrigued. When we returned home, I had to drive all over North Jersey to find a store that sold them. Apparently Americans don’t feel the love for Birkenstocks like the Europeans do, because this was no easy task. Keep in mind that this was before the days of that wondrous shopper's dream called the internet. Eventually I found a store and I bought my first pair. They were expensive, but I was sure that thousands of German feet could not be wrong. So I wore them one day, but after a few hours I realized I had made a costly mistake. They were horrible; not comfortable at all. I put them back in the box and shoved them in a dark corner of my closet for at least a year.

Then one day, guilt over the purchase price got the better of me and I decided to give them another try. I wore them once. Then I wore them again. And again. Soon I wanted to wear nothing else on my feet. Once I had broken them in, I realized, they had become my own personal shoe. I don’t know the exact science or mechanics behind them, but apparently when pressure from walking and the heat from your feet are given time, the foot creates indentations in the cork bottoms that basically mold to your feet. They become like slippers, only better because you can wear them out in public. I’ve been obsessed with them ever since. I wear my Birkenstocks almost every day—winter or summer, clogs or sandals. I even have one pair of dressy black ones.

To walk in a nicely broken-in pair of Birkis is like talking to an old friend—it molds to you and you to it. Even after being put on the shelf for the winter months, come spring, my sandals—or the relationship—still fit perfectly. No need to get re-acquainted or experience another awkward break-in phase again. I find that the best friends I have are like this: a perfect fit no matter how much time or distance exists. No break-in phase necessary. Just slip into the comfort of the relationship and start the journey right where you left off.

The Death of My Youth

At the innocent and delicate age of ten, I became convinced of two things: I had cancer and I was going to die. I’m not sure if my fledgling medical knowledge came from something I saw on TV or from one of my mother’s women’s magazines, but I knew with absolute certainty that blood emerging from certain bodily orifices definitely meant cancer. Followed by inevitable death. I had other signs as well: fatigue, extreme pain, and stomach distension. This was so unfair! I was only ten and already it was all over for me!

I retreated to my room and fearfully contemplated my next move. I had to tell my parents, I knew, but such uncharted conversation came with many potentially frightening possibilities. Would they be terribly sad? Angry at me? Angry at a God I wasn’t even sure they believed in? Would I have to go to the hospital and receive horribly painful treatments? Would they be able to find someone who could cure me? No, I was certain I’d be dead in a few months, may even weeks.

I went into my mother’s sewing room, where she sat at her old Singer focused on the current seam. I presented her with the bloody evidence and informed her I was dying. Instead of tears or anger or shaking her fist at the heavens, she just sighed and led me into the kitchen, where my father stood at the stove. Now, my father is an incredibly hard worker, but not someone you’d typically find stirring a large pot on the stove. No, this ritual happened only once a year and only if luck was with him. 

What my dad was doing at the exact moment I announced my imminent death was boiling the flesh from a deer’s skull and antlers. If my dad shot a deer during hunting season that had mount-on-the-wall-worthy antlers, the boiling off of the meat was necessary for sanitary reasons. Rotting flesh would not be a welcoming smell while showing off your collection of deer antlers. Thankfully, I never had to experience rotting flesh, but the smell of boiling flesh? Well, let’s just say that if I never, ever smell it again, I’m good.

As the smell permeated the kitchen, the house, and my dying nostrils, my mother said, “Remember what we were talking about last week?” “Yes,” my father said, still stirring. “It happened,” my mom informed him. “Hmm,” I heard my dad say as he attempted to scrape a particularly stubborn piece of brain matter from the skull. “I guess I’ll have to talk to the gym teacher at school,” she said.

And with that, the conversation about my death seemed to be over. At this point, I was several miles beyond confused. Had they been expecting me to die? Did I have some horrible diagnosis they never told me about? And what the hell did the gym teacher have to do with it?

The next day my mother, who was our school’s library aide, came home with a little pink pamphlet for me to read. It turned out I had an affliction that would be with me for a very, very long time: I was menstruating.

Taking Aim at Weight

When I was about 13 years old, my dad taught me how to shoot a gun. He was an avid hunter and gun collector who even did his own reloading. It was what he poured his spare time into and where he found joy. As soon as he determined that I was old enough, my dad and I drove to the shooting range at the conservation club where he was a member and the lesson began.

After stapling the target to a piece of wood that backed up to a large mound of packed dirt, by father commenced my lesson on gun safety. Always keep the safety on until immediately before you are going to shoot. Never, ever point a gun—loaded or unloaded—at anyone or anything. Treat every gun like a loaded gun.

When he determined that I understood these and other crucial instructions, my dad finally handed me the gun. I could feel its power immediately. I gently raised it to my shoulder and tried to find the target, but my upper body strength was poor and the more I attempted to hold the gun steady, the more it swayed. My dad then instructed me to kneel down. With one knee on the ground and the other raised to use as a brace for my arm, I was able to hold the gun steady. This was much better.

When I felt comfortable with the gun butted up tightly against my right shoulder and had the target in sight, my dad told me to turn off the safety. Then he told me to breathe in, hold my breath, and gently squeeze the trigger. The .22 caliber rifle gave off a mild popping sound at the same time that I felt the barrel of the gun recoil into my right shoulder. I hit the target—nowhere near the bull’s-eye—but I hit it. I instantly wanted to do it again. And again. I loved the singular focus of shooting a gun; the challenge of one person, one bullet, and one target. The sheer concentration it took to coordinate the actions: eyes, breath, focus, squeeze.

I bring this up because this is precisely how I go about losing weight. I zero in on my target, inhale, focus, and squeeze the trigger which, in the case of shedding excess pounds, is taking the laser-like focus of shooting a gun and aiming at nothing but my target weight until I hit that bull’s-eye. I am not always successful. Sometimes my aim is off or I close my eyes and lose sight of the target. But when I am truly focused, I can maintain my aim by closing my eyes to temptation, breathing through the triggers of emotional eating, and focusing on that target weight. Then I gently squeeze the trigger and begin. At that point, like the bullet piercing the air toward the bulls-eye, I am unstoppable.

If I Can Do It...SHUT UP!!!

If I hear one more weight-loss company ad, newly svelte celebrity making the talk show circuit, or any other humanoid within earshot of me utter the ridiculous phrase, “If I can do it, you can do it!” I swear I’ll scream, yell, throw a tantrum, have a hissy fit, or maybe even do something more drastic. Perhaps even violent—like rip the skinny wench’s picture out of the magazine ad and, I don’t know, maybe black out her teeth before placing her in the shredder. I cannot stand that phrase; I simply can’t bear it. What does it really mean? If some other person, be it a celebrity or a random person posing for a weight-loss ad, lost a bunch of weight, why does that mean I can do it? What does that person have in common with me? Are our lives identical? Does she have the same unquenchable sweet tooth I have? Does she hate to exercise as much as I do? Does she have the same aversion to vegetables that leaves me staring at kale in disbelief that people actually eat this stuff? Do we share any traits at all that would lead anyone to believe that she and I can succeed in the same way on the same weight loss plan? I mean, it’s just a stupid thought.

I suppose that, originally, the statement was intended to make the speaker appear humble. Like, if even a pathetic loser like me, the rich celebrity, can manage to dump these pounds then all of you schleps out there within the sound of my voice can most certainly make it happen. But to me, it comes off sounding smug. Kind of like I did it and if you can’t, then you really must be a moron. And a pathetic loser.

Beyond lifestyle and personality, I also think the statement is ridiculous because of any one person’s particular skill set. Just because Dr. Oz can perform heart surgery doesn’t mean I can. My brother Pete can treat patients; he's been doing it for more than 30 years. But I can’t, not because I don’t have the training but because I never would have made it through the training. I don’t understand the fundamentals of medicine because my mind simply doesn’t work that way. I don't get math or science. My brother can’t write a sonnet. Should I tell him, “If I can do it, you can do it?” And really, should he even try? Would anyone appreciate his diagnostic and healing skills any more if he wrote all of his charts in iambic pentameter?

Imagine Einstein saying, “This relativity thing? No big deal! If I can do it, you can do it!” Or how about a successful athlete or an amazing singer or a talented artist? Should all of us be able to do what they do? I think not.

What seeing others who have lost tremendous amounts of weight does do, I think, is speak to the possibility. Maybe what they mean to say is, “If I can do it, then it really is possible.” I see all the commercials and hear the testimonials of people losing 50, 75, or 100 pounds and, after screaming at them to stop using that idiotic phrase, I am left with this: the possibility that one can change one’s weight. It can happen, it does happen, and perhaps I, too, can make it happen. After I stop screaming.