Hand and hand our journey began
As we set off on our journey of marriage
Along the way both have made mistakes
The wounds received a needed bandage
But those wrongs still created barriers
That seems we are unable to overcome
The painful heartbreaks formed the foundation
And our anger is where the walls came from
We've spent years building this home
So our love would have a place to dwell
The home was constructed all wrong
We should have known it would fail
Is this love of ours worth anything to you
Are you still so firmly set on being done
I can't force you to stay here with me
But remember divorces are never won
My knuckles are raw from the cold subway pole,
and the guy next to me smells like damp wool and cheap coffee.
He’s staring at a cracked phone screen,
his thumb scrolling past headlines, dinners, divorces.
We don’t talk.
Nobody talks here.
But under his heavy black winter coat,
somewhere behind his lint-covered tie,
a small fist of muscle is slamming against his ribs.
Thump.
It’s a clumsy, desperate noise,
like an old radiator knocking in a basement.
It keeps time against the black tunnel outside the window,
a persistent thudding negotiation with the dark
that just asks for enough time to get to Tuesday.
We walk around pretending we own the sidewalk,
worrying about the rent, the teeth that need fixing,
the text message left on "read."
Every wet breath is a lease renewal
signed in the dark without our permission.
I look at the girl across from me,
her eyeliner smudged from a long shift.
Her chest rises.
The cold world looks the other way,
indifferent,
and lets her have another minute to figure it out.
It’s not a grand design.
It's just a truce.
A messy, fragile truce,
kept alive by a pound of red meat
stubbornly refusing to stop hitting the wall.
My divorce was reduced to about 7 years, it was a marriage from 1995-2014=19 years, date judge signed divorce decree. In my state a judge has the discretion to decide the length of marriage, thus resulting in money and other divisions of assets.
Like a job, some jobs require us to get 10 years in before being vested, marriage appears to have the same type of ways.
Since everything can be manipulated, by use of friends, money, lies, and more ways not mentioned, the divorce laws should be consistent with federal government law, saying a marriage is from date of marriage to date of divorce decree.
I have suffered many losses as a result of this reduction in marriage length, I am hoping they change the state law and make it retroactive so many like me can get justice, and future divorces never suffer like I have.
Lifting prayer to God, today and always.
Billionaires oh billionaires
Stop counting your stocks and shares
While the workers break their backs
You need to pay more bloody tax.
It is rather funny
That you make much of your money
From government contracts
While the poor face your attacks.
Just stop being jerks
Enjoying tax deductible perks
And resist the need
For unquenchable greed.
Give money to worthy causes
Don’t worry about your future divorces
Don’t worry about IRS raids
You might save someone with HIV/AIDS.
This is something I’m sure you know
“You can’t take it with you when you go”
So make human compassion
The overwhelming fashion.
Please listen to my gentle persuasion
And go easy on the tax evasion
People won’t just like you for your wealth
They’ll be attracted to your generous self.
It’s never too late to start
So think of others and open your heart
Do what the mean spirited lacks
And pay your fair share of tax.
..from that same kid several years and a couple of divorces later...
Dearest Santa,
Here's my list of things for which I am keen,
I've kept it lean,
In case you're kinda short on the green.
Dearest Santa,
I'll pin it near my stocking tonight.
Santa, buddy,
I sure would like a new Smart TV,
Flat screen, HD,
A 60 incher, maybe 3D,
Santa, buddy,
Just stuff it in my stocking tonight.
Santa, pally,
I'd also like a…well…you know what,
And really hot!
Brunette or blonde, whatever you've got,
Santa, pally,
Just put her in mesh stockings tonight.
Excuse me, Santa,
I don't mean to seem crass or crude,
That would be rude,
But I'm submitting this request dude to dude,
So be a buddy,
When you're filling up my stocking tonight.
P.S. Santa,
I have a small confession, I fear,
I haven't been a good boy all year,
And in case you just can't see your way clear,
Dearest Santa,
I'll still dream about mesh stockings tonight.
Thank you and Merry Christmas,
Your friend,
John Dorflemeyer
We are shy women Sheba told me
Close-mouthed
You will never get our stories
I was silent.
She told me about three of her friends.
Revealing many confidences regarding divorces, family deaths, arguments
When her friends discovered this, they told me all about Sheba
Keeping back nothing
Which ones are the shy ones? I wondered.
Having no idea.
In this life,
I have witnessed many folks
who always did bad things to others
and ended up badly.
In this life,
I have witnessed many folks
who always shared their privacies
with some friends and relatives
and ended up blackmailing by their loved ones.
In this life,
I have witnessed many folks
who always avoided problems
with their friends and relatives
but ended up in prisons
In this life,
I have witnessed many refugees
who were riches in their countries
and ended up living worst lives
than their former workers.
In this life,
I have witnessed many marriages of some folks,
their divorces after some years
now they hate marriage
while some singles are up and down churches
looking for god fearing partners
to marry them.
In this life,
I have witnessed many company owners
Some of them are jobless homes
and others are up and down the streets.
October 02/2023
Time
divorces from memory
Moments
refocused sublime
Lost
in sequential detachment
Freeing the message
—unsigned
(The New Room: June, 2023)
Night in Lisbon
Once, I went to a dance hall in Lisbon
an awful place full of desperate middle-aged women
hoping to catch a man, any man.
Ah, for the horrible colours looking putrid on the wall
Was the music supplied by a jukebox when
the accordion was too drunk to play
Scrawny women of the night sat around the dance
floor trying to look sophisticated smoking cigarettes
laughing loudly like ugly sisters
Ogling men’s mid-part while showing spindly legs
meant, I think, to look enticing but only succeeded
In appearing like stick insects
Once these women had been beauties, attracted
to men in suits; many divorces later and partying
time had taken a heavy toll.
Lonely women, chasing what once was, the youth
consorting with contemptible men who feared
being alone on a night when truth spoke piercingly
420
4 - fortify your love
He said to her
Cos now we are fruitful
Let your heart be true
Cos we have gone along way
To have a family now
You have always been here
And all I am now I can't be
With out loving you
Me and you two kids
4 wonder family
2- two of us are now friends again
Just like from the start
Despite all we've shared
This long years
We are now separate in watch
We use to be 4
Now we break like
420
We clash down like a stock market
A man with out his wife and kids
Yet life must go one
Despite not easy lossing a family with you
0- life is like a zero
Never say never
Cos who will ever think
We can fall from 4 to nothing
Broken promises
Broken hearts
Has cost us a broken home
And now I can never say never
Despite your good intentions
Nothing last forever
At the end life is like a zero
Dedication to broken homes and
Divorces
Were broken hearts speaks
In obvious silence
Where Hillbilly Jack
Sent his pregnant wife, Jill,
Was not for a pail of well water.
She tramped up that hill
For some swill from a still,
But returned with a new baby daughter.
Jack wasn't amused
When Jill told him the news,
And he yelled, "Whar'n tarnation's mah likker?"
So she crowned him and drowned him
Where they still haven't found him.
Hillbilly divorces are cheaper and quicker.
We were a country where people roamed free
where you drove cross-country without paying a fee
We were a country where folks dreamed big
outside of Washington where men wore wigs
We were a country known for ingenuity
not for divorces, abortions, and promiscuity
We were a country built by entrepreneurs
not by bureaucrats cranking out horse manure
We were a country where a man said what he thought
not what some PhD. thinks that Mao taught
Yes, we were a country, alright
not a chorus of banshees from the left and the right
Somehow it’s now late April and the things we can’t control,
The mysteries of Spring, they’re gonna rock, they’re gonna roll.
The same goes for divorces and the bills we’ll have to pay,
But since we’re on the road, let’s take the cherry tree way.
We’ll need to make some changes; let the lawyers have their say.
We’ve come this far together; now it’s time we walked away.
Seems nothing lasts forever; not tomorrow, not today,
But if we’ve made our choice, let’s take the cherry tree way.
The overcast above us and the drizzle coming down
Can’t seem to dim the beauty of those blossoms all around.
They stun me with the glory of their annual display,
So baby, one last time, let’s take the cherry tree way.
Giving in marriage to in laws
Growing their children
As spouses their parents
Returning their spouses
Back to their parents
In laws, breeding more children
Giving in marriage and
Bringing to divorce now
A common like business
Arranged marriages by their parents
Divorces all married for their own causes
Marriages arranged on their own cases
Divorces forced by their own parents
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.