The Republican

The man, they said he was insane,
Threw himself into the Seine
Lamenting the horrors he could not undo
And the punishments that were undue.

All his life he'd been a whipping-post
For the cause of liberty
His head, it filled with cracking sounds--
The whip of oppression
The snapping of the corners of the flag
The cannons, whose power grew, and
The canons, now obsolete

He had married, merry, once--
A patriot named Egalitte
(And wasn't that fitting?)
But for the love of the tricolor's thick red stripe,
He lost his own.

Never again stood he idly by
All the fighting he internalized
Through the beatless hearts of slain tyrants
Egalitte he immortalized.

He was old, now,
Egalitte still so young
Awaited him in heaven--or hell--
The single picture he had of her
Green leaves tucked in her hair
Mocked his cowardly life
From yellow sunrise to yellow set.

"Allons, enfants de la patrie"
Her lusty voice filled his chest
The weight of the song
Extended the wait 'til the day he'd take
His life
His rest
His breath
His death
His end

The Seine swirled.
The wind whirled.
His heaves hurled over the bridge's edge.
His sobs stabbed the light of day.

Egalitte broke the river's surface first
Green leaves softened
His body followed heavily
One more Revolution's casualty.

Law of Life

The following is an essay I composed for my English class. The prompt was vague an oddly worded, something along the lines of "explain a law by which you live your life".

One of my favorite books is Nicolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. Although it was originally a manual for the art of statecraft, it contains a great many pieces of advice useful for everyday life. One quote from the book has stuck with me ever since the first time I read it. “A ruler cannot rely upon what he sees happen in peaceful times…because then everyone comes running, everyone is ready with promises, and everyone wants to die for him, when the prospect of death is far off.” In laymen’s terms, true friends are those who stick by us when we’re down and out, because it’s easy to be a friend to someone at the pinnacle of success. My life has been one big illustration of the truth in this statement.

In elementary school, I had a very best friend- let’s call her Lisa. Lisa and I spent all our time together, pretending we were grown-ups, dancing around my living room, swinging on the playground. One day, as they often do, the clouds came and obstructed the sun that was our friendship. I said some things that were very unpopular in class. Lisa and I had a little spat over something that doesn’t matter now, and just like that, our friendship was over. I realized then, for the first time, that not everyone who claims to be a friend will be there forever.

I had a very best friend in middle school as well. I knew Sarah and I would be friends forever, and I never doubted it for a moment. But then, once high school began, with its stress and its petty fights, we rapidly grew apart. She wasn’t prepared to stand by me when mean kids poked fun at my eccentricities or when our other friends fought. Boys and schoolwork came between us; she was jealous of my every action and she didn’t have time for my problems. Suddenly, my very best friend was gone, for the second time in my life.

I started blaming myself at that point. I was convinced that it was my responsibility to be the best friend a person could have and never to be whiny or brutally honest or do anything that could make a situation awkward. After all, I didn’t have a best friend any more. It did not cross my mind that the issues might have lain in the instable and superficial natures of my relationships.

I was still crying over my crumbling friendship with Sarah when I looked around and noticed people I’d never seen before. They had been standing by me all along, but I was so wrapped up in silly, immature friendships, that I hadn’t seen them. Suddenly, my life took a wrong turn again. I began to fight with my father constantly, I went through a painful breakup, and I lost my job. I was angry, resentful, and sad all of the time. Lisa or Sarah would have separated themselves from me. I was too much to deal with, too complicated, a buzzkill. Something amazing happened, however. The friends I’d had all along were still there. They handed me Kleenex, listened to my ranting, gave lots of hugs, commiserated, and forced me to do things that would take my mind off of my problems.  Now, those people are my very best friends.

Like Machiavelli said, everyone is willing to die for you when the prospect of death is far off. Little girls will make vows of everlasting friendship and say they’ll love you through thick and thin, but until they’ve been through the thin, their promises have to be taken at face value. A true friend is one that stays with you when you’re sad, angry, immature, or unattractive. The people that belong in your corner are those that have always been there, even when the going got tough.

Two Poems about Schoolchildren

I have been thinking a lot about school lately, in that nostalgic end-of-mandatory-education sort of way. As graduation approaches, my mind grows more and more poetic. Two poems have sprung from these thoughts. I hope you appreciate them, dear readers. Also, I haven't got titles for them, so any suggestions will be very helpful!

Poem #1

The prophetic ringing
Of a dingy old school-bell
Sends long brown braids swinging
As they file down the hall.

Amidst flurried pearls and loafers
And chinos topped with argyle
They coyly reject offers
From the boys who wink and smile.

They glide across the parquet floor
At the ball for debutantes-
Their fathers' lectures are such a bore
And their mothers are nonchalant.

But behind carefully lined lids
Of deep blue sparkling eyes
Something is ill and amiss-
It tells of a coming demise.

One day, cornflower preppies wilt
In the spotlight of the scene
And though their lives are wholly gilt
It's hard to live a dream.

Poem #2

The lengthy scratches of thirty pencils grating
Against white paper with blue lines
Evokes a memory of days spent waiting
For summer, long in coming-

And of students taking up arms in their minds
Against the clock, a foe unsurmountable.
The deaths of snarling dragons on tridents' gleaming tines
Swirl in the imagination as seconds fade away.

The smell of rubber eraser-shavings
Throws a mental switchboard's breaker
Back to times when a few hours of daylight lasting
Repaid a year of dull submission.

Now we have lost the wand'ring spirits
We had when we were children
When joy, a dime could buy it,
Was ever our only aim.

The Happenings of the Day Thus Far

I started my morning by repairing the computers in our house.
My stepfather came upstairs a few minutes ago and heaves this big-ass melodramatic sigh.
Him: "Are you using BOTH of them?!" (Indignance!)
Me: "Yes, I'm defragging the hard drives. They're horribly corrupted."
Him: "But I neeeeeeed that one." (More indignance!)
Me: "Fine. It has less than 250 MB of free space. It's not going to work."
He whisks the computer away and closes out the defragging which I have been working on for 2.5. hours. He is now pissed that the computer is not working and is calling my mother to complain.
So that's my morning.

Also, I have a crapload of homework. And I don't want to do it. Quel supris. Tant pis.


On a positive note, I have a new job that I adore. I am (drumroll please!!!) a magician's assistant. My employer is David the Magician. His website: http://davidmagic.net/ I now have such skills as nonchalance, sparkly eyeliner-application, lifting heavy things, and disappearing. It is a very glamorous, albeit difficult, emploi. More positive news: my dearest boyfriend shall be returning home tomorrow. I await his arrival on the imaginary edge of my imaginary chair.

And that is all, my readers. Good day.

A Crisis

Although I have a great many more important, albeit more mundane, things to be doing right now, I feel a need to write, in order to sort out my thoughts.

I have identified as a utilitarianist since this summer, and I made utilitarian decisions prior to then, just not knowing how to label my system of ethics. Utilitarianism has not failed me; I find its mathematical approach very appealing and logical and its emphasis on happiness well placed.

However.
I do not support the death penalty in any circumstance.
I think developed societies have a responsibility to provided welfare and healthcare for their citizens.
I think some human rights are fundamental.

If you do not yet see the issue with this, I will spell it out. A utilitarianist believes that it is ethical to make the decision that helps the greatest number of people or harms the least, even if it compromises the rights of an individual or a group. I am lately coming to think certain human rights are uncompromisable, though there are very few rights that fit into this category.

So therein lies my dilemma. I still stand behind utilitarianist ethics in most situations, but I am for the first time seeing a gaping hole in my own argument. I do not yet know how to reconcile the idea of certain inalienable rights with a system that consistently compromises them in the interest of the greater good. I will keep you posted, dear readers, as I come to my conclusion.

A Poem Called Trees

The following poem was inspired by a couple of pages out of one of my favorite poetry anthologies, FEG (Ridiculous Poems for Intelligent Children) and from a conversation with my stepfather.

Have you ever had the chance to see
Three-hundred and sixty degrees of pine trees?
Can you describe it?

Alone in the forest
The boughs reaching all around
Above and below and
Right at you.

And in an instant
Those beautiful trees transform into something sinister
And you're expecting the appearance of the
Big
Bad
Wolf

You can't make an escape
Because you still have the sun's reflection off green needles in your eyes
And in that bleary miasma
You melt.

Lost Rings

I realized this morning that everyone has a Lost Ring story.
Ie: Me
     Gollum
     My friend Jay
     My current English teacher
     Jay's grandfather
    A story written by my ex-English teacher Mr. Orr

I find this to be interessant. Rings seem to hold such a deeply personal meaning to the wearer that losing them is a horrible atrocity, one that is remembered forever. My Lost Ring story is about my mother's engagement ring:

The setting- I'm in the third grade. My mother is about to marry, after 3 very long years of making him wait, the man who will become my stepfather. I'm dressed in a green silk dress as the maiden of honor; it's December 16th and the chapel is decorated with holiday-themed gold and silver. My soon-to-be stepfather is already tearing up. He cries at the drop of a hat. I say a little blessing to my parents and step behind my mother. Before the vows between her and my stepfather begin, she takes off her modest engagement ring. She hands it to him. He steps forward and says to the congregation that he knows he's not just marrying my mother but also me, in that he will be from this point onward tied to my life as well. He turns to me and hands me the engagement ring. The vows are said and my mother is given a beautiful new ring with three sparkiling diamonds. Everyone tells her how beautiful it is, and so do I, but I keep catching glances of the round diamond in my new ring, at the shining platinum of its band.
Fast-forward five years- It's my freshman year of high school. I'm being forced to take P.E., which I hate. Our teacher has told us that we must remove all jewelry before we endure our torture. I take my ring off as I do every day for the class and set it on my school clothes, folded up on a bench. When I return to the locker room, I don't notice my ring is missing.
Later, I realize my ring is gone, and I scour the locker room for it. My ring is not there. I put in a request to the school's lost and found, but to no avail. Eventually, I come to grips with the truth- my ring has been lost forever. I cry; big, heaving sobs for a silly object, a shiny material possesion. And yet it was so much more than that to me; I'm in tears because the ring's happy and rich new owner will either sell it for cash or wear it, never knowing how much it meant to someone else.
I've come to grips with the loss of my ring, but I continually miss it in its absence. Four years later, I still run my thumb around the base of my ring finger expecting it to be there and being just a little surprised when it isn't.

This morning, in English class, my friend Jay thought he had lost his Eagle Scout ring. His concern upset our teacher, who, it turns out, once lost a special tiger's-eye ring of his own. Jay mentions his grandfather, who lost his Annapolis class ring. My classmates start throwing out their own stories of lost rings. It seems there is no jewelry or bauble that could be more important to a person than their ring, and hardly anything is easier lost. Makes one think of the fleeting nature of life; how quickly we can lose what means the most to us...