Three Classic Greek Plays

Lysistrata

I wait at the airport for my wife
but she doesn't arrive
reading things from books at the newsstand
for three hours
I wondered how (new word) I was
I found a formula in a book

 /salary (in thousands) \     /               marriages \    
| ------------------    |  X  | Years in    + children   | =  [result]
 \ age - career changes /     \               mortgages /      

"You're acting like a [___] year old"

I finally called customs and found she was not on her plane
but I waited for her like a puppy dog
just the same


Electra

She cons the calendar
and marks the day
on which her cunning plot destroyed her father
She sees herself as a pillar
a tower
A subway sandwich
an ogre
with layers
like an onion
See, Donkey?
The siren song comes
and she tells of her love like Scylla to Charybdis
Orders a Happy Family
and loses the reason in a bottle of saki
and I'm not kidding
damned if you don't
damned if you do
And tell me why I am teaching my daughter
that hitting someone is a sign of love
the filming and black fingernails
and blogging just gets in the way
I once was lost was blind but now I see
how selfish of you to believe
See?
Layers


Oedipus the King

Metal heart the riddle of the Sphinx on the road to Thebes
my swollen feet carrying 140 years of pain
I'd rather be kissing a duck billed platypus
I'd rather be sailing
The HMS Jacosta Accoster
Weather fair
Our coin of the realm, a woman holding the tiller
and a sheaf of wheat - fate is kind
and suddenly cruel
she lifted her soul
from a dark country road
and left her child to be raised by chipmunks
the kind with worn out halos
and slightly dirty wings
and squirrels with devil's horns and tail
and he learned to climb trees and chatter at eagles
and reach for the devil's feet
the joke's on me