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Click hereIn crumbling marriage after years I find
One partner changes but one never will.
Encouragement scorned by a stubborn mind
Becomes frustration and then hopeless nil.
Though in the same house we live worlds apart
Our union purely pretense but for two
Sweet children that we love with all our heart.
Our bond is broken. They're our only glue.
Divorce would be the easy path to walk
To flee from long and tortured loneliness
Yet for a daughter’s trusting eyes and talk
I stay despite profound unhappiness.
For years I will endure a backward spouse
My only joy my daughter and my son
Till they can choose to stay or leave the house
Then with this futile marriage I'll be done.
I met a smart and charming lady who
Did shatter careful decades' faithfulness.
I loved her deeply but I lost her due
To anguish for my children's happiness.
She woke hot passions I thought long shut down.
Desires I thought had died so long ago
For tight embrace and sharing common ground
A face that brightens when I say hello.
I ask you who would be the better man:
He who departs at trouble's slightest sight?
He who stays to complete what he began?
Which would you want to keep you warm at night?
If I should seek another lover here
Please don't condemn or label me a fake
I could abandon those I hold most dear
Instead I choose a nobler path to take.
It is a bit long, I admit. Usually I prefer the sonnet or some other form that limits the number of lines I can use. I tried that here, but I felt the emotions were too complex to squeeze into a shorter form. Maybe I'm coming at it the wrong way. Maybe I'm just too close to the subject matter.
I'm no poetry expert; I just play around with it and post stuff here that I don't think will sell to my other markets. It's cathartic for me, and helps me sharpen my prose too.
Thanks for your comments. They are always welcome.
You can obviously write pretty well and you don't wrench your rhymes, I am thankful for but I think, like twelveoone, that this is too long. I think a better approach would be to focus on a single incident or maybe to that sum up the end of the marriage. There is not a lot of 'things' in this poem. Poetry is about feelings arrived at through things. I see talent in you.
Inverted syntax, for the sake of a rime and an obvious reach
Then with this futile marriage I'll be done.
Says way too much, shorten it. Looks like an emotion dump in verse. You are a better writer than that.