23 ‘How Affairs Succeed’

           For no-one reads an article or book
to think yes, that’s the way to run it.
At least I don’t. Those reasons some Cosmo-hack
gives in ‘How Affairs Succeed’? We’d all begun it,
whatever it was, generations before.
The early-to-mid-twenties of this family man
slotted into an inevitable mosaic, sure;
but Barb liked me. She never, per se, planned
to share another’s words breath body farewell-kisses:
which seemed the silliest events on earth,
at the time. For me simple going at it
wasn’t simple. I’d other ways to please the missus
if not excite her. Don’t try them? Then you’re not worth
that pinch of proverbial. No, something bettered mattered.


24 The moon of your marriage

           Yet, she’s seeing someone. Doesn’t need a barrage
of love-bites to be hit, for one more crater
to pock the moon of your marriage.
Oh you always hear from clever men, years later,
what they would do: stay very single, forget
if any kids were ever hatched.
          But Barb, I and Sam lived what we had, for that?
Pragmatics are too passionate. Try it detached,
you still need to conceive (italics/
capital H) Him. Enough contenders bound
from the blocks, most you’ll never meet (the price
of a good imagination). The issue, the smart alecs
know, requires a more soluble state. They pound
the problem (yes, you have one) with advice.


25 Man-to-man

           So when friends mind your business it’s an art
to wear their blunt moralising:
Man-to-man Rog, you married a tart.
A skill, sure, like Barb disguising
not Him but her despair: the hocus-pocus
affairs need to continue. (or love, who knows?)
           I’d get myself asleep hardly rousing notice
at the hour she might return, stoned I suppose.
By spring Barb seemed caged to the haywire pulley
of infatuation. Near Christmas she came clanging
back: their trysts, assignations, dates
had closed. And I’d the future: enough to sense bully-
the-lot-of-it: sharing her round, hanging
out for what’s thought martyrdom, by mates.


26 The Heaths (vi)

           Since most times we’d adjust. Those nights I’d end
on some past-the-heel edge of the city:
or her quotation marks round ‘catching up’, ‘friend’
(fugues that curled out and back to routine).
                                                                              Self-pity?
Less happier men can’t tell themselves
She’s fucking this guy it doesn’t matter much
because I say this someone else
is only lucky now . . . (He was as clutched
to what us kids, for we were kids, believed;
and that was passing.) . . . with all their perks
of love a highly probable grand finale
approaches.
          So much for those ghosted entries heaved
into Open Marriage: How It Works.
I never over-dupe myself on books, Charley.