The following poem is a reprint from my Yahoo 360 blog, July 2009 (yahoo discontinued 360 in July 2010). I wrote this poem about one year after my divorce was finalized in July 2008.
WHAT MARRIAGE WROUGHT
That single word 'marriage'!
Well, in metaphor, it was like Cinderella's carriage,
I guess I was like that pumpkin
In simile, like a country bumpkin.
Oh, at first, I thought it would be best
But those first ten years they were a test.
I know, that seems so awfully long
So many verses for such a melancholic song.
I know, but she and I were tossed
She and I were both quite lost.
I know, I said I do
But standing there beside me, she said it too.
So years went by, I watched the moon
I know she thought I was a loon.
That old moon would climb the sky
She and I, we both would vie
We tried to meet this challenge
Before it died.
But time went on
She was mostly gone
Under that hot summer sun
When life should be fun.
Well the two of us,
We weren't one.
At midnight when the clock struck twelve
She would be there, and I would delve
To hold her hand,
Or kiss her cheek
Well she would look at me like I was a freak.
Okay, that spell of marriage
Like that Cinderella pumpkin carriage
Was so much less than wedlock should've been
But when love is absent, with nothing really in between
Where one and one doesn't equal two
And loving kisses were so few.
So marriage, yes it scares me
Like that hanging tree.
Over all those vacant years, and yet
When love didn't grow
In all that rain
And all that snow
Well in the end we both just let go.
So with fairy god-mother casting her spell
With all those rats in a row, unable to tell
That they weren't footmen and they weren't horses
That unruly magick with its unseen forces
Was just a glass slipper
But it didn't fit her
So when that clock struck one
She and I were finally done.
We both sighed relief
In years gone by there'd been much grief
But when we signed those final papers
Cut those chains and dispelled those marriage vapors
We both went our way
She and I had little left to say.
But that word marriage
Like that pumpkin carriage
Still makes me sweat
And I just don't get
And I just don't see
How that word marriage
Applied to me.
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