Lament of a Failed Villanelle

I’m part villanelle always looping around,
repeating myself. I move forward in fits

and starts, get caught in the unsteady rhythm
of one-step-forward-two-steps-back. Without

the sexy sway of a cha-cha-cha or
a tango’s grace. When I tell a story,

I sashay around the facts, take listeners
on a long promenade, rehashing for emphasis,

sometimes forget where I’m going.
No doubt some reader will tell me I should

write this lament in a three-line cadence
with an aba-rhyme pattern over at least

five repetitive stanzas. But I despair
of expressing myself that way. How I long

to be a sonnet, elegant and highbrow,
but I can’t keep the beat. The unstressed-

stressed syllables of pentameter tangle
my feet. I thought my mother was a sonnet,

a red-headed beauty with proper manners.
And my dad bragged he was a ballad.

They say opposites attract. But their union
made me a blank verse no particular form.

Were I a true villanelle, I would have already exceeded
the required nineteen lines, messed up the beat.

My poetry handbook says villanelles refuse
to tell a story, so what am I doing here?