Carol had a neo-plastic emotion that glowed
like a muzzled supernova
whenever you asked a question.
I have seen her pause for hours,
her unwrinkled brow wrestling
with the inexpressible conundrums-
language and existence.
Boris was most likely a double agent,
almost human in his invisible psyche,
but hard-core fiber on the outside.
Basically homeless, splitting his time
between winters in a crowded warehouse
on the East coast,
and summers posing in front of a fun-house parlor.
(Embarrassingly, birds sometimes nested
in the top of his hat)
If Carol and Boris had ever managed to meet,
could they have found eternal happiness
in that place, where touch
and the un-sayable
become mingled together?
Somehow I doubt it, for she
was all naive mid-western cowgirl;
and he, other-worldly sophisticate.
The in-law and logistical problems alone
may well have been
insurmountable.
He was too inflexible
in the arena of inter-personal relations,
and she was the eternal virgin;
there was no way
to intertwine their lives
into a single venue.
Life is lonely for the best of us,
but some are doomed
from the very start,
stuck in a revolving track mentality,
doomed to changeless subsistence.
Patti Masterman
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mannequins-i-have-known/
