Penelope Unchained

This is what I saw that day during MY manic episode. The only thing that was mine! Three stages

PART 1

I. 

A lady laid herself down at night

when she got off her mobile chair.

She could have written a letter, but 

instead she played with her hair.

She had time, she had nothing to 

do with her time. She plays with 

her hair. Her hair,

she worked so hard on her hair.

II. 

The UPS man talks to his wife about dinner;

he is exhausted from work, something us poets

know nothing about.

III. 

A man on his skateboard coasts by,

he has someplace to go.

IV.

A man sitting on the stairs, looking

through his book. What is he doing? He's

looking through his book.

Why did I want to know what he was doing?

Is it because I am doing nothing?

V.

A woman with red hair and a red

coat. She is pretty all the same.

She sleeps just like I do.

When we want to go left we both

get in the left lane.

Her heart is going to pop out of her chest,

leaving a whole between her breasts.

She embraces their smallness, a

smooth caress.

Her hair, she has nothing to do with

her hair.

VI.

The women in the mobile chair. She

owns a clock, ticking and talk-

ing in a mansion where a man lives alone,

and I the only set of eyes.

She chews her fingernails while she

has sex. She plays with her hair, her hair

plays with me.

The spaces between her toes

are where my fingers fit perfectly.

PART 2

It was the year the earth was mined with

precious explosives. We moved among delicate

things, ballerinas tip-toeing over a war-trenched.

It was a world blazed in black and white,

and we welcomed the change.

Our love was the dawn of weird

in the morning of strange

It was a mountain solid of sunflowers.

Our mistake was our strength, and 

our strength was not getting laid.

It was the edge of an ancient compromise,

Our soundtrack was a tortoise losing its hare;

It was a credit card dropped in the Agora.

Our sex was on sale with antique wares;

It was the crescendo of a dream,

It was a whisper trapped in the middle of a scream.

Our favorite dreams were forgotten,

our favorite meal was Red Herring.

It was the dull vapor of a Sunday afternoon.

Our soundtrack was what I imagine hell sounds like

at night when its fires burn down low

(when our hatred melts into torpor, the way

a bald man reaches for a comb).

It was the wrong-side of self-help

(the nice thing about living like children is the

constant reminder never to have any yourself.)

PART 3

The hair of the night laid out in red

red hair of night got laid

night got laid with red hair

hair red laid out of night

laid out hair of the red night

red night-hair laid.