Like Soured Milk

THE PROMPT: 2006

Write an autobiographical poem with the rhyme scheme ABCABC ABCABCD ABCABC ABCABCD. You may repeat the pattern twice for a total of eight (8) stanzas. The poem does not have to represent your entire life; however, the subject matter must be about you and an event, special memory, relationship with another person, etc. Keep in mind you are the main subject matter, the central figure.

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Like Soured Milk

I once believed that love was like a fine, ripe cherry,
And that everyone who was halfway kind of smart
And smiled a lot and laid down the fabric for their life
Would never have a love that’s only temporary.
After all, permanence was the role of the darted heart.
But it's all a lie. Love is a crystal that breaks with strife.

Alas, you romantic poets were definitely at fault.
You wrote your lovely sonnets; then you lived alone.
Shakespeare, you left your poor, lonely wife behind.
Lord Byron, you traded wife for lovers, marriage by default.
And none of your lies, those beliefs on which I’d grown,
Prepared me for my own love to sour and unwind;
Affection is more brittle than a dying autumn leaf.

I've discovered that love is crayons in the noonday heat.
When they’re left in the trunk to wait for better times,
Forgotten on the outdoor table or in the ocean sands,
They lose their shape and melt into a flat, flaky sheet
Of distortion. The color is no longer true, and the rhymes:
No more sweet nothings, kisses of lust, or held hands,
Just outpoured words, and that final, fatal drumbeat.

Truly, romantic love is more like milk left out too long,
Abandoned on the table, pooled inside a bowl
To thicken into slowness, dense as curded cheese,
Leaving lovers unaware, until the stench smells all wrong.
Amiable chat peters out, words commence to freeze,
As all conversation results in grief and disbelief.

Next arrives the chaotic slide that pushes down and out,
No more chance to resurrect what was possible and not:
No more time to look for what was right or wrong,
The mind is churning, eyes crying and filling up with doubt.
One day your spouse says he wants the antique teapot,
And your rage at the injustice becomes a daily tag-a -long.

I once believed in poets. Byron, you used to soften my heart.
Shakespeare, if still alive, even Juliet would have finally realized
That when love is a fine, ripe cherry, sweetened on the tree,
It plummets down completely rotten, squashed, and extra tart.
So no more romantic poets; your poems give me heartburn.
I’ll take my career, my stock certificates, and my closets free.
For love is worse than soured milk, and its falseness is a thief.

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