A Poem for a Woman

[zimmie]

When the distance between the shores become so wide?
When did the stillness give way to the riptide?
How did we miss that mist that now clouds the view of the stars?
Why won't the sun shine on the water once more and sooth our scars?

The bridges are burning right across the river.
I stand alone and hidden, covered by a blanket of ash and a head full of dust,
My eyes dry from the wreckage, my feet burning from the flames,
Each part of me crumbling into the Styx, yearning to be completely crushed.

Hoplessly hoping and waiting for the reprisal,
Desperate for you to remember what I selfishly betrayed:
That love is the only engine of our survival.
When will the stars you gave to me shine on this shameful masquerade?

I can no longer see you standing on the other side,
Only the flames and the smoke and the bitterness it leaves in the mouth.
The bridges are burning still but yet I feel so close to everything lost.
We never had to lose it and there's still time to save,
We never have to lose it again, not at any cost.
If only that icy wind would change.

I need you now more than ever.
Without you everything's a meaningless collage.
I know my mistakes better than I know myself;
They haunt and taunt me; howl at me when I begin to think its all a mirage.

You told me that I gave you a sign of life when it was all so remote,
But now the silence and the desert belong to me.
If I could hear your sweet voice again it would be the most desired note,
I would do anything, I would be anything that you wanted me to be.

The love I have for you has always been true,
The fear of loss I could just never break through.
I know it all seems so far away now,
I'd do anything I could, it's all I could do,
I'd sell all my dreams just for you to spend.
Please don't let such a special, precious thing end.

How the distance between the shores become so wide?
Why did we let those bridges burn?
You stand in the fog in your blizzard of ice,
As I shiver from the heat of the flames,
While my open veins bleed, and pray that the wind will turn.

[YesNo]

I think this accurately describes the emotions a male would feel at the end of a relationship in which the male was more attached than the female. I don't know who is responsible for the breakup, however, based on what was presented here.

It is too easy for the male to accept responsibility for the female just to keep the relationship going.

All relationships end eventually. There is death to make sure of that. The real problem here is the attachment.

[hillwalker]

There's the framework of an excellent poem here but it runs slightly off course 3/4 of the way through before the final stanza gets it back on track.

There are a few difficult metaphors to get to grips with - I'm not sure how love can be an 'engine' of one's survival - the 'engineer' perhaps, but even then it's not in keeping with the rest of the poem's imagery of two banks of a river growing further apart - perhaps 'bridge to survival' would make more sense.....

and where has the 'icy wind' that has to change come from?

This would work much better if you trimmed it down and removed some of the clashing imagery - flames/smoke/desert/dust/wind/blizzard - it's as if you've collected as many metaphors as you can find for a failing relationship and bundled them together.

I also think that each line seems to have stretched out of control until we almost end up breathless waiting for the next one. Line 3 in v3 is especially clunky with the 'miss' and 'mist' internal rhyme distracting rather than memorable.
Also 'hopelessly hoping' and 'I need you now more than ever' sound more like something out of a Barry Manilow song than an original piece of poetry.

If you were able to condense your thoughts into 3 or 4 shorter verses - avoid repetition (burning bridges appear 3 times for example) and do away with verses 5/6/7 which sound desperate - then you might have an original piece of work.

H