House-shaped [Edit 3]

[REW]

House-shaped

We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us.  - Winston Churchill, 1944


A home is not a trap, a house may be:
The home may form or break, depending on
Each person who arrives, abides, departs,
Who loves or hates, who dies or procreates.
Each one shapes home-life - but the house endures.

The single man who buys a house invests,
Pays tax directly, not through fee or rent.
Depreciation’s his to bear, repair;
Appreciation swells his sole net worth.
But if he never marries, fails to form
A family, his house fills with the dust
Of years, possessions, everything but trust
In others.  He’s shaped by its walls, constrained,
Chained to its town and neighborhood, which change.
His house is comfortable, so is he;
But as he, childless, tries to break their chains,
Each book, each chair and etching forms a link
That binds him, owned by all the things he’s bought.

As sad, or sadder, is the fate of those
Whose family disintegrates but leaves
Their house of many years, once home, a prize
To be fought over, all its joy escaped
Like laughing gas or baby’s breath, reduced
To walls and cellars, plumbing, attics, floors,
Maintained with envy, gripped with empty hate. (not sure what you mean by maintained with envy...do you mean that the envy of others is the 
motivating drive to keep up the home nice rather than more loving emotions? If that is the case perhaps adding a word or rephrasing to indicate)
We shape our houses, Churchill said, but then
They mold us.  If the cast is too exact,
Too hard, unless we melt we cannot leave,
For we’re no longer shaped to pass their doors.

Hi,

This is thoughtful and evocative.  Although I certainly have been touched by the nature of a house/home, I have not really thought about it in depth.  I can think of a person who I grew up with, who is still kind of a friend.  She lives in a sterile seeming McMansion, a sterile seeming home for desperate housewives even though she has two children.  You have to take off your shoes upon entry.  Did she shape the home or did the home shape her, or a combination of both?  My home gets really messy sometimes...

Your piece is sad.  It made me think of the difficulty faced by a man who buys a home only to never fill it like he intended, something I have not thought of before.  Indeed there are plenty of homes who go through divorce and that changes them (the home and the people).  The quote you found to introduce your poem works wonderfully.

All in all I think you have a nice piece here.  I really like the idea of writing poetically about the nature of the home.  Actually, I think you could do more with this if you wanted in a longer poem or with a series of poems.  There is so much you could do with this topic in depth.  What a great idea to write about, from a poetic, sociological, and psychological standpoint. 

For me there is nothing sadder than the vacant foreclosure home, overgrown and unkempt, but bearing evidence of one having been a beautiful home.  

I wonder what my emotions I will go through in the future over homes, such as seeing a home sold and/or etc?

I love your ending about no longer being shaped to pass through their doors, wonderfully put!

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Blank verse; something of a song of experience.  All comments and suggestions for improvement welcome.