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Villanelle: Don​’​t kill yourself but the hours instead - Kathryn Hummel

from The Night's Insomnia by Jen Lush

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Poets commentary:

Lately I’ve been thinking that a poem is a half-dead thing (and that the poet is a perennial thief—not only of fire). This seems especially true of a poem written years ago. Even if it’s possible to loop a vague context around it, can you revive the hit of emotion that ignited it? Really, do you even want to? Perhaps ‘half-dead’ is too harsh; maybe a poem exists for its writer as more of a souvenir that follows the shape of a memory but contains nothing close to its substance, like a seashell that loses its lustre when scooped out of the ocean. I know that I started Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead in the course of departing Bangladesh in my 20s, miserably plunging into a grey haze of future no-plans and fancying myself broken-hearted at leaving a tall, bony artist/student politician who seemed frankly elated at my exit. Following a friend’s advice—duly recorded in the poem—I tried to get busy. By the time I had finished writing it, lying on my sister’s lounge in Canberra, Don’t kill yourself had become more of a technical exercise than an outpouring of angst. Interested in using traditional forms like the villanelle to express contemporary themes, I wrote to avoid making the rhyme too obvious and the tone too stilted. You could say that the poem healed me—though I think it’s more accurate to say that it distracted me. Although it contains a kernel of the sadness I felt at the time, Don’t kill yourself has a wry distance to it: as if I was aware that I’d survive my transit and that my villanelle would one day return to its roots, and flourish with music.

Kathryn Hummel is the author of Poems from Here (which contains ‘Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead’), The Bangalore Set and the forthcoming chapbook The Body That Holds. Her frequent travels and diverse publications can be tracked at kathrynhummel.com

lyrics

Poem:

Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead
when confronted by naked emptiness,
better think out the minutes, keep your head.
Time has more value than the tears you shed,
for all they seem equal in weightlessness.
Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead.
Even friends who regard each step you tread
Say, ‘Eyes straight, hon, to get over the mess,
Better think out the minutes, keep your head.’
Plan them, from sun salute to wakeful bed,
in case you succumb to regret’s caress.
Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead.
Though fine-boned schedules can’t revive what’s dead
or repair fraying love, again I stress,
Better think out the minutes, keep your head.
Oh yes, down that last path I’ve been misled
And found this remedy for heart’s excess:
Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead
Better think out the minutes, keep your head.

credits

from The Night's Insomnia, released April 21, 2017
Jen Lush

Music composition and vocals.

Chris Parkinson

Electric & acoustic guitars, bass guitar, vocal harmonies.

Richard Coates

Accordion, keys, iPad.

Produced, recorded, engineered and mixed by Chris Parkinson at My Sweet Mule — A MSM Production. Mastered by Mick Wordley at Mixmasters.

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Jen Lush Adelaide, Australia

Jen Lush is known for her spacious and emotive, starkly modern folk songs wrapped around expansive storytelling. From her 2017 album of poem-songs ‘The Night’s Insomnia,’ to her 2021 album ‘Let Loose the Beating Birds’ Jen and her stellar band have appeared at festivals and venues throughout South Australia, Victoria, NSW, WA and Tasmania. New album 'Hum of the mettle' is out now. ... more

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