Take Me Back, Ariadne!

I'll stack my books in a dusty room
Singing "Take me back, Ariadne!" (X)
I'll sweep the floor with a horsehair broom
X

I'll eat my fill on crusts of bread
X
I'll all day long wish that I was dead
X

Oh, take me back,
Oh, take me back,
Ariadne!
Ariadne! (C)

I'll give the poor what little remains
X
I'll soak in tea to relieve my pains
X

I'll sit and play my ukulele now
X
I'll teach all m'friends and m'neighbors how
X

C

I'll cry myself to sleep each night
X
I'll pray for things to be set a-right
X

I'll sicken and wither when the snow comes 'round
X
I'll die and m'soul will leave the ground
X

C

I'll call for you from way up above
X
I'll cry for you, my erstwhile love
X

And you will hear me and cry for me
But you can't have me back, Ariadne!
I've left for a better kind of love, you see,
And you can't have me back, Ariande!

You Weave, I Unravel

I fell--
I grabbed ahold of your thread
And tumbled through space,
Dead,
But for the racing of my heart.

At some point,
The thread had to have
Run out;
I doubt I would have made it out alive
Had you not pulled me
Back.

You saved me.
The thread,
Gone slack
And sprawled at our feet,
Smiled at us.

You did what you do best.
You wove
At your loom
Of whom I had only heard--
Never seen.

I remember,
More clearly than even the fall,
The creation:
The spindle spiders
Danced
With string--
With string!

The resulting tapestry--
The two-tone splendor of your travail,
Depicting
A waterfall made wine--
Stared back at me
From the machine of your craft.

A gently chiding hand,
A gliding reprimand,
And you reminded me:
"I shall weave, Dionysus,
And you shall unravel.

The caveat?
You must not unravel what I weave;
You do not undo what I do;
Rather, we two,
We do different things.

You have your revelry,
I have my strings."

I stared at you,
Dumbstruck by your beauty
As much as by your words.

By and by,
I replied:
"So,
You shall make the stories,
And I shall tell them?"

A smile--
From you, this time,
Not your thread--
And you said:
If that is how you would best
Remember it."

Something New

These ancient verses only show
We know no more than we did know.
Is it the wait that strikes us dumb,
Or weight from some eternal thumb?
We sit and while away the days
While far away they bale their hay.
We talk about that ancient vice
To which we owe our days and lives,
While all around us bellies grow--
Nine coffee cups all in a row;
A hundred trillion tiny towns
In water bitter, rank, and brown.
We stain our knees in futile search
For something new. Our stomachs lurch
And spill their contents on the floor,
And still we have learned nothing more
Than Ramses Great and his wives knew--
That this and that makes something new.
Our twins entwined in helices
Do float in quiet apathy
Until they have their chance to show
We know no more than we did know.

BUSY WEEK AHEAD!

So here's how the next six days of my life will go: (And I am very excited!)

Tonight, I am going to a scholarship banquet thing at Xavier University.

Tomorrow morning, I am going to an English teacher conference with some friends of mine (one of whom is also my teacher).

Tomorrow night, I am going to see a friend of mine in a production of Seussical.

Sunday evening, I am hosting a big party. (Well, big for me--like ten or fifteen people.)

Monday night, I am going to my very first Joanna Newsom concert.

Tuesday morning, I am leaving for vacation to Fripp Island, SC.

Be jealous of my awesome life. :-)

AP English Woes...

So, we have this strangely huge project for AP English due tomorrow and I'm stressing out about it... It isn't coming together very well.

Just putting that out there.

A Haiku

Tiny grains of sand--
A hundred thousand million
In my own two hands.

Petty Little Frustrations (Of Which I Have My Fair Share)

Okay, so you know how they always make you type in the word to verify that you aren't just a machine? Doesn't it seem like those are getting harder and harder and harder? Like, they used to be like actual words or two words smashed together, but now they're just nonsense most of the time, and I actually have to sit and stare at my computer screen and try to comprehend the meaningless garble of letters. Maybe I'm just stupid that way.

And then there's the fact that when I say "Joanna Newsom, this," or "Alela Diane, that," or "Mariee Sioux, the other," NOBODY KNOWS WHO I'M TALKING ABOUT!!! Aargh!

And then there is AP English. Dear old AP English. I swear, when it gets to the point where I find myself doing literary analysis of my life--that's a red flag that AP English has infiltrated my brain for good and always. Yeah. No joke. AND--what's more, it can ruin a perfectly good night at the theatre. Yeah. I went to see my high school's production of Guys and Dolls and when Sarah Brown started singing "If I Were A Bell" I'm like, oh, that's female genital imagery, right there. And then I thought to myself, wait a minute, this isn't AP English. And then I was too busy chastising myself that I was zoned out for the rest of the song. (On a side note, one of my best friends was Adelaide and she was outstanding!)