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.