Penelope Motel

[Exit]

(Note: this was posted yesterday and someone realized that a line I’d used appeared in an old song. No good! But thanks for the catch, Exit. I reworked it and have had way too much fun in the process. I think it is too long and redundant and just needs editing. In short, I need opinions. Please share yours.)

I missed you more darling
when you weren’t here.
How I longed to hold you,
your sweet voice in my ear.

But then you came back
and I soon had my fill.
I’m not homesick no more,
I’m a new kind of ill.

Long nights I spent honey,
dreaming of you.
My heart beating lonely,
my heart beating true

You appeared in the morning
and I awoke from the dream.
Maybe we shouldn’t 
have changed horses midstream.

So here we are it’s 
now and always my dear
Babe, you know I can’t miss you
if you’re always here.

The waiting is over
There’s no more reason to grieve
But I’ll never want you 
if you never leave

What’s that you said 
about forever and a day?
You can’t be my dream lover 
if you are planning to stay.

I’ll be your dear, 
sweet Penelope
Loving wife, she’s a model
of patient fidelity 

Here I sit, sweet Penelope 
welcoming my hero home
But I can’t help but wonder
if she was just happy alone. 

Hello Valarie Please,
I think this is pretty good. I've got no problem with it playing around with a single concept, ie. "familiarity breeds contempt", and each quatrain giving inventive and amusing articulations of that; it's in that kind of playful lyrical poetry style. There are cliches but they are there to be subverted, so they don't really count as cliches. For example "you can't be my dream lover" is a terrible cliche but it is made funny by the following line "if you're planning to stay." and so on. It's basically messing around with our expectations of a traditional love poem cannily using Odysseus and Penelope as archetypes of that tradition. 

With that being the case my criticism is the meter needs to be tighter. Because it's supposed to be tongue in cheek I feel like you have to be really spot on with the rhythm. Like a good stand-up, you've got to hit every beat. And this doesn't. For example, instead of "The waiting is over / There’s no more reason to grieve" maybe "The waiting is over / no more reason to grieve". And so on. 

Also, I don't know if it's some typos or what but I couldn't quite follow who was supposed to be speaking in the last couple of stanzas. I think you went from Penelope to Odysseus?

anyway, thanks for sharing.