January 24 - Terrors VIII

Pursue me not into my waking hours!
You demon, devil whispers of knowledge unknown
Quick! Plug my ears; Tie me up!
That I might not answer to your sweet nothings.
Sweetness I am yours now.
You are my absence of faith.
You are my everything.
Pulsing, Pulsing, Pulsing: dismembered heartbeat of these primal urges.
Why do you lie in wait for me?
Spilling from my nightmares; dreamweaver,
weave not my reality.
Save this one fabric from your loom.
Let another spin my fantasies of the day.
Grow you not tired?
Thoughts unthought, known by the energies of the day and the heat
Whispers, calling me to your library once again.
Draw me Closer, Closer to God.

January 23 - Terrors VII

Golden morning, shining silver
Filaments of Gaia's hair
Reaching through the breeze to pull me closer
Oh teach me silken strands
teach me the motion, the art, of your beauty
Enthrall me that I might learn
to shine and glow with your life.
Oh reach for me!

Encircle my wrists, bracelets of the finest thread
Cover me, hide me,
tighter! Closer! stick fast
Oh radiant strands
obscure my darkness with your light
Every blemish, every roll,
The stains of the pollution of existence
Every fibre of my body.
Oh make me beautiful!

Metamorphosis cocoon, squeezing me into shape
Waxy haze of purification
Obscuring and opaque...
You once transparent threads! You change!
My eyes cloud over
As tighter and tighter your wrap
No butterfly chrysalis, you spider-silk trap
Tighter about my heart and neck
Squeezing me into the form of your luster.
Oh hug me tighter!

Sick yellow morning, smoky-soot grey,
Filaments of my verdant, velvet Lucifer's mane,
Mummified form of my desired self
Oh you have taught me, gossamer noose,
Your motion, your art, your horrible truth
Enslaved me that I might learn
to be your host, your body for your life
Oh death mask of perfect beauty!

                                                    [So why do you see me now?]

January 22 - Terrors VI

This infinite Library of Babel, it is yours...

Lucifer, the fallen angel,
Almost Human
You are the conductor of this dissonant symphony
Master dream weaver
                                  you make my realities a nightmare too
Verdant velvet Victorian waistcoat
Dressed to the nines of the nineteenth century
Perfectly trimmed.
Icy pools below you sound the screams of the seventh hell damned.
Your music!
                    And you laugh
                                            Spider-Silk hair dancing in your own breeze

A Dr.'s familiar face?
Oh why torment me?
Do I amuse you?  Do I interest you?
Oh why shatter my hall of mirrors?
          Sending my thoughts scattered in the breeze
          Dredging up these monsters and demons
          Torturing my good and nursing my evil
Why present me these tomes?
          All random letters
          The products of every monkey's attempts to write Hamlet
This truly is the Library of Babel
          Ghosts of damned thinkers wandering, mumbling
          Looking for their works
Empiricists and Romantics
          Joining and joined together in their quest for meaning
          A vain search through encyclopedias of randomness
And all you do is watch,
combing your spider-silk hair with your fingers
reveling in the suffering you have created
          for the justly                    damned
                              and unjustly

January 21 - Terrors V

Denizen of the Kensington-Olympia station, Russian pawnshop.
Poor beautiful creature,
Impossibly stunning,
                                In impossible agony
Who built this place?
                                 It is your Prison.
Who brought you here?
                                     You are not of this squalor.
Who tortures you so?
                                  He does not deserve your faithfulness.
Who are you?
                      I am no one.
Gazing through greasy, soot-stained grey windows
Blonde hair glowing in the apocalyptic light
Shackled to some unknown master
Perfect beauty in an ugly world.

Dagger? Dagger? What is this?
Sulieman's blood stained weapon.
Only her blood could be so perfectly incarnadine.
Her hand soaked, the flurries begin
Dazzling, dancing around her
A new skirt of unknown purity
Slopes of the whitest snow fall about her
Covering her wound
                                but not smothering her screams of terror
Her children fall from her
                                        black specks and shadows of what could have been
Her head pitched back in a soundless cry
A new sound of purest agony
building and growing
                                   welcoming her children into the world
                                   as they are born away on the acrid smoke
                                   of the outside town

Oh master hers, spare her this!
Such beauty should not have to suffer.
Oh children of Centralia,
Live you still at this mouth of hell?
Then keep this one angel
                                        safe from the icy lakes and Lucifer's wings
Then keep this one angel
                                        away from the hands of her master

Oh master hand! What new agony is this?
Grand puppeteer, controlling this girl
Folding her, origami paper skin that she has
smaller and smaller he makes her
A soup can her new home
                                         Her tears crystalline in the dying sun, overflow, flood the streets
Wicked laugh! You had a hand in this!
Verdant, velvet, spider-silk Dr.!

January 20 - Terrors IV

Like a giraffe, or Dali's Elephants
It looms.
Snake-necked beast of 1,000 faces
Every nightmare.
Feathered fans each with 100 multifaceted eyes
Glowing, Searching.
Casting its face upon me, the lonely, weary traveler
Opening the Aliens' mouth
Hissing and rearing its ugly head
Scuttling on impossibly skinny legs
Clicking the death of a thousand multiverses.
Oh Dreamweaver!
Burning iridescent emerald, but still
servant to the verdant, velvet waistcoated Dr.
Trapped, I see you now.
Collared and bound.
I see you freed, a more fearsome sight than the one before me now.

January 19 - Terrors III

[Drums in slow, followed by shakers]
Everywhere,
                    in every pore
Mosquitoes, flies, worms, larvae
Spiders, centipedes, ants, beatles
Pregnant all with pestilence
                                           and death
Writhing and screaming,
                                      I scratch and claw
Oh to rid myself of this plague!
A thousand tiny bugs
                                 burrowing
                                                 deeper
                                                           riddle my veins with your disease
Killing me, changing me
I grow weak and green, blue veins bursting out of my rotten flesh
I curl up,
            I die again, into sleep.

January 18 - On Censorship

I have been loosely inspired by the SOPA/PIPA debates to write this piece.  It's not strictly relate to piracy, but it is related to censorship.  For information on the legislation:

https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/One-Page-SOPA_0.pdf

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html

http://dyn.com/sopa-breaking-dns-parasite-stop-online-piracy/

https://www.eff.org/free-speech-weak-link

January is by nature a cold month.  Perhaps, as I am a North-easterner, I am biased in this thinking; January is a winter moth where I come from.  Perhaps my friends in the southern hemisphere meet the warmest people in the first month of the year.  I do not.  Unfailingly, the people of January (which is not to say those born in January, just the ones that inhabit it in my sphere of experience) are cold people.  January marks midterms for some.  It marks the beginning of a new year, the first steps of a new kind of humanity into a new age.  It marks bad roads and bad traffic and bad news.  Understandably, the people of January are a humorless bunch.

It was in one of these cold January months, when I was in sixth grade, that I first experienced censorship. I was, for a time, an editor of my middle school's literary magazine (or the seldom updated website with pretensions of being a literary magazine), and it was there that I first heard the words "Yes, it was good; but we had to edit it for its content."  If memory serves the piece in question was one called Loneliness.  I no longer have the text, but I remember it was a seventh grader's ode to a lonely existence.  I never once questioned the veracity of this piece.  Even at a young age, I had absorbed the fact that rich kids are very good at hiding their problems.  After all, I was very good at looking like a happy kid; why shouldn't she be the same?  But there was something about this piece that the esteemed, somewhat senile, PhD in charge of the magazine deemed "too depressing".  As it turned out, she had taken this seventh grader aside and told her that the piece, while beautifully written, would have to be edited if she wanted it in the magazine.  It was too depressing to be read by the rest of the student body.

Wether this esteemed and somewhat senile PhD genuinely believed that the piece needed censoring for the benefit of the rest of the student body or wether she simply needed it edited for herself (as I suspect was really the case), the fact remains that this is what that seventh grader wanted to present to the student body.  This memory has stayed with me.  The idea that a piece might need editing for content has stayed with me.  The notion that writing should be dumbed down for the audience has stayed with me.  And so too has the conviction that this is wrong stayed with me.  I firmly believe that writing should not be edited for content.  We all have our own voice; and that voice, if we so choose, should be heard as we intend it to. 

January 17 - Terrors II

Now why have you brought me here!
To this room, this place,
          [Oh Dr. save me; you're here too?]
With you.
          That you,
          That you of a thousand dreams and fantasies
High on this lonely plain this is what you recreate for me!
          Oh life me up and smother me,
          Slimy kiss of the boy with two faces
          In this so familiar place
The Book shelves part
                                    I am thrown.
          [Oh Dr., Dr. why can't you help me?]
Why have they brought you here too?
                         Beautiful fantasy, who brought you to this hell
Run Now, Now Run!
Down the corridors of these honored halls,
Into the inscribed door [FUGIT]
Synchronized, they look up at us and look down
Writing, furiously, all at the same pace, all the same text
          And you sit me down
                                            And touch my neck
                                                                           And whisper
          Secrets that no one else should hear
And you were the one that knocked over the cup
          Gold, Latanum, Coins spilled forth
          As all the automata scuttled to seize them,
                    Swarming like beatles
                    Clicking their tongues
All with his face,
                           your face,
                                           you my fantasy of two faces
I look for you
                      greeted by the Pennywise teeth
                      and the wild eyes of a weeping angel
Diamond claws to tear at my heart
Oh you demon! Wake me from this nightmare!
          Oh god,
                       I'm living a nightmare.

January 16 - Terrors I

I do not take well to most anti-malaria drugs (they make me violently ill), which can be a problem when my family travels.  Through trial and error, we found a drug called Mefloquine.  While it did not incapacitate me with abdominal pain and/or vomiting, it did cause me hallucinate a bit.  Ok, maybe a lot.  The following pieces (Terrors I - VIII) are the products of a somewhat jumbled Lauren's night terrors.


Racing,
as sheep run through the corridors of my mind
bastard, mutant terrors that they are.
Leering,
Pandora's nightmares could not now match these terrors, racing

Dissonant symphony of my thoughts
clattering, crashing, shattering,
a thousand shards of perfect impurities
DANCE!
Dance the demons of my thoughts!
This hall of mirrors break and kill.
kill.  The myriad mirrors and portals each a new torture
Oh break them all!
          And leave me be.

Alone.
         With the hippopotamus and the blood red sky.

         Without a storm we shall not go go hence.
And rooted.  Stuck to this very place
As his wide mouth opens now
into the gates of hell.
Oh now let him reach me,
that this all might end.
Swallow me whole into the great black abyss.
My Blood
          Oh Let my blood now rock me to sleep
Tides, ebb and flow
                              And swallow me whole.

January 15 - Oda al Nuevo Documento

Written for my AP Spanish Language Class.  I am by no means a fluent speaker, but it was pretty well received by my teacher; so I thought I might share it

Limpio,

            Ya sucio,

Con potencial ilimitado.

Es difícil elegir entre las posibilidades.

Un blanco inescrutable,

                                       Un océano interminable de nada,

Hay secretos en el blanco;                                                                                            

            Pero no puedo verlos

¿Cuántos cuentos hay?

¿Y cuántos cuentos puedo escribir?

Imagino.

Pero, por ahora,

Me satisfago imaginar,

                                                y no escribir.

January 14 - Crescent Moon in the Morning

A special kind of darkness creeps over a playground in the early morning.

It seems to me particularly special on this particular morning,

as I sit in the first chair (which is not so much a chair as a swing) for which my legs are too long and

               watch the darkness creep,

in retreat,

toward the West.

This is the darkness cast by shadows in moonlight,

This is a cold darkness

(both because it is January and because the moon’s blue light still clings to the ground)

This is a darkness that knows it cannot last.

The blue white crescent seems to bleed in the pink of its setting.

It seems that both sides have given up,

fully aware of their roles, both feeling condemned.

And it leaves me:

how do the sun shadows treat the moon shadows when they dance like this?

            the sun shadows, confident that they will overtake the weak blue umbrage of the night

            and the moon shadows, fully aware of the conflagration that will soon end their reign

Which considers itself reborn, and which – like Prometheus – condemned to die again?

January 13 - Democrazy

I often find I can’t find the words I want to type.  Words become worlds to me at times - not because I find them to be microcosms of keystrokes, encompassing so much intent in so few lines – but because my clumsy, shaking fingers have decided that that would be a better interpretation of my meaning. 

            Perhaps it’s some Freudian slip that makes words into worlds and that has left a sentence unfinished as “Friction acts” after hitting enter instead of space.  Or some desire to speak my own tongue (I think that’s what makes me replace h with j with alarming frequency).

            But it must be some different kind of intent that turns democracy into democrazy.  Nor do I think that it can simply be chalked up to typos.  And it must be more than the proximity of keys.  For I think I’m trying to tell the world something (or perhaps the word).  So that I might make my own language of Freudian slips and linguistic lusts.  Yet I think, sometimes, that this is simply a case of typos.  Or perhaps my own stupidity…

            … that calls out to me through a new patois of pen slips. Telling me that rule by the people only ever occurs with crazy people.

January 12 - I am dancing

I am dancing

 like a mad woman

about poetry.

My feet beat the ground

                        To recall the rhythm of Whitman

                        And of Billy Collins

                        And of Lazarus

digging his own grave

My feet beat the ground

                        As I liberate papers from piles

                        And sort them elsewhere

                                                            Under arbitrary adjectives

                                                            And for an arbitrary assignment

I am dancing

                        like a mad woman

                                                            about poetry

                                                            to recall rhythms

                                                            and to write my own verse

January 11 - GA in 2025

The communications department at my school asked me to write a short piece about what I thought our school would look like in 13 years.  This is the result...

          According to the National Intelligence Council, the world as we constructed it after World War II will have been revolutionized by 2025.  The balance of power in the world will have tipped more to the east as nations like China, India, and Russia rise to the fore of the international stage. Economic and population growth will put pressure on resources raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.  The potential for armed conflict will increase as different world powers divide the international stage more equally and regions like the Middle East grow more turbulent.

            But by 2025 the average GA student will have all this information and more literally at her fingertips.  As the Greenwich Academy of 2012 expands its technological capacities, the Greenwich Academy of 2025 becomes more and more high tech.  The possibility of every student having her own tablet computer is not unreasonable, nor is it unlikely.  Touch screens already grace our hallways in the form of the Library’s iPads and the seemingly ubiquitous iPhones.  Envisioning a day on which the halls are not made minefields by book bags overstuffed with textbooks because those textbooks have been replaced by tablets is not only a likely vision but also a welcome one.

            With this expansion of technology, I would also project a greener Greenwich Academy.  I can clearly and enviously imagine a day when GA’s students no longer have to deal with a printer on the fritz because those printers have been rendered obsolete.  A paperless Greenwich Academy is just one way in which we could become greener by 2025.  Bathrooms could become more high tech as water becomes scarcer.  We could expand our use of solar power to power our tablets, phones, and computers.  Our gardens could also expand – and very likely become more efficient with agricultural innovations of the future – and diversify to provide hyper-local food for the dining hall. 

            As we become more high tech, we will surely become more global as well.  The Upper School’s Global Scholars program is still in its infancy, but in time it could become a way to connect the future leaders of Greenwich Academy with their counterparts in emerging nations.  Chinese classes may begin to connect more and more with students in China, both to foster global thinking and our language skills.   Economics classes at GA may be able to video chat with economics classes in Brazil.  Our student body could become more international as study abroad and exchange programs expand. 

            Yet, in spite of a changing world, there are certain things at Greenwich Academy that I do hope remain as eternal as they seem to me in 2012.  I can clearly imagine returning as an alum in 13 years and seeing many of the same sights: the frenetic freshmen, the sophomore trying to talk a teacher out of giving her a uniform infraction, the junior freaking out over a B+, and the senior apprehensive about college (a phrase I am now sure is accompanied by claps of lightning and horses whinnying).  The girls of the current PC class will become seniors in a world that will be unrecognizable to the Lauren Eames of 2012.  I firmly believe that GA will grow and change to reflect and embrace that changing world and that the girls that graduate from GA will be as competitive and well prepared for that world as they are for this one.  However, those girls, I am sure, will walk the same halls with many of the same concerns and in the same kilt that I do now.

January 10 - Yarn

Something fun...

            Phew.  Finally, a rest from that orange troublemaker.  I can’t understand why he chases after me the way he does!  I mean, sure, I’m soft and green but we have nothing in common.  And those claws…ugh!

            Then, I see him.  Orange, that curious face peering at me quizzically… menacingly!  He bats at me with one claw and I begin to roll.  Out from under the couch, under the table, down a short set of stairs, through the kitchen coming to rest under the phone.  I have a few moments of rest before the feline menace appears again.  He sprints over to me and pounces.  The force of the impact sends me flying across the room and out another door.  I round the bend to see the cat, oh that evil cat, following me. 

            Alas, I stop in a corner, no way of escape!  The cat runs into the room and stops in the middle.  He looks around, how can he not see me?  He leaves and a wave of relief weeps over me.

            Then I see her.  White, graceful, frightening.  She sees me, the cycle begins again.

January 9 - Where Do I Come From?

Another English Class creative non-fiction essay!  This one was finished at 7:30 today, so let's embrace the first piece of new writing that I've posted on this blog...

            “Mama, where do babies come from?”

            “Well shug, when two people love each other very much, they share a special hug - that’s called fucking – and if they do it right (or if they pay enough to an adoption agency or a fertility clinic that does artificial insemination), they have a baby.  A screaming, soulless, pooping machine called a baby.  Does that answer your question?”

            Laughing ensued.

            That is not a conversation I have ever had with my mother.  In fact, the “where do babies come from” talk was dealt with by my dad just about as awkwardly as Amanda Bynes’ father deals with it in Sidney White.  My dad is not a plumber, so I did not have the benefit of a 3D model made of sink fixtures.  Instead, I was given a few books with cartoons of smiling sperm and ended up figuring it out for myself.  No, the conversation above is the short, less profane version of my now famous “Mama Lauren Birds/Bees Talk” that I have jokingly given to my friends, more specifically, the group of my friends that calls me “Mama Lauren”.

¢ ¤ ¢

My childhood was full of fantastical creatures.  My childhood was full of epic battles between good and evil.  And my childhood was primarily spent alone.

My mother is the kind of woman who believed whole-heartedly that she was around for my childhood.  She was not.  Every other week she traveled from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to London’s Heathrow because she was the CEO of a multinational national corporation that placed nurses in the commonwealth countries.  She made sure you knew that.  The weeks she did not spend in London were indeed spent at home; but she was, and is, a woman very susceptible to jetlag, so she was usually asleep by 6 PM.  From the time of my very earliest memories, my dad was the parent who came to my school functions and to parent coffees.  And he was the one who told me stories.  Stories like “The Incredible Shrinking Meatloaf”.  At the time I thought it was just a hilarious recollection of his college years, but now I think there was, in fact, a moral to a story about the time my dad bought really cheap ground beef from the Winn-Dixie to make a meatloaf that ended up shrinking so much that it was left floating in a sea of fat in the pan.  The obvious moral is “don’t buy cheap ground beef”, but I think the real moral lies in the idea that, when everything seems to have gone to heck, there is always a plan B.  In my dad’s case, plan B was to order pizza. 

Aside from telling me stories, both of my parents used to read to me.  My favorite books were always the ones featuring kids and teens in danger using their ingenuity to save the day.  I especially loved the ones with knights and medieval codes of honor.  I liked the fact that the good guys got out ok because they could think their way out.  Even when swords were involved, they had to use their brain to come up with the right strategy.  These were the stories I acted out in my backyard substituting myself for the main character, of course, and retelling them so that my knowledge set would be the one that saved the day.  When my friend or the cute guy was in peril, I had just happened to hear of the lock picking technique that would set him or her free.  When a dragon was threatening my party, I was the one that had taken dragon tongue in school so I was the one that tamed the beast and made him our ally.  And when I fell off one of the rocks in my back yard and scraped my elbow, I was the one that knew which bottles in the medicine cabinet were disinfectants and which boxes were Band-Aids.  In every instance, the minute anything vaguely bad happened, I was on my own.  I had a nanny in the house if something really bad happened, but for the minor cuts and scrapes my answer to her was “I’ve got it!”  I took what my dad taught me and what I taught myself and used that knowledge to take care of things by myself.

I take this transcendentalist sense of Self-Reliance with me everywhere.  I have always been an independent child because of it.  The “Mama Lauren” business started because I started using my limited knowledge for other people.  When I went away to sleep away camp, it somehow became decided that I was the person in my bunk that would cook for the group because I figured out how to toast bagels in a saucepan while we were waiting for it to heat up to make bacon.  As it turned out, I made good bacon too.  If anyone in the bunk suffered a minor injury, they knew that I would not only have Band-Aids and antibiotic ointment but also be willing to fix them up.  If they found funky stains in their clothes, they knew I could get them out; or at the very least get them to fade enough that they would come out in the laundry.  These minor functions earned me the title of “Mama Lauren”.  Knowing how to deal with what I considered minor, everyday occurrences made me seem remarkable and, more importantly, motherly. 

I learned at a young age that I ought to be able to deal with things myself.  I danced through fantasy lands and through my own life with the knowledge to get myself out of little scrapes and fix those same little scrapes after the fact.  I learned from stories, both bound and spoken, and I put that knowledge to good use.  My backyard taught me how to tell a story. This skill I put to good use during the summer of 2010 when a number of my friends, myself included, were very sick.  They asked me to tell them a story, so I did.  Fixing myself up taught me to fix up others.  This skill I put to good use during a number of summers at Camp Wingate*Kirkland, where my friends first started calling me “Mama Lauren”. 

All of these skills seem to have culminated in the story I recounted above.  This past summer, “Mama Lauren” saw new life at a summer academic program at Cambridge.  My friends came to know me as “Mama Lauren” as I brought them soup when they were sick, as I helped them with their relationship problems, and as I hosted massive get-togethers in my room with plenty of everyone’s favorite foods to eat.  In my room some complained about their girlfriends back home, some confessed that they had never kissed a boy, and some joked about their adventures.  But the story above is still one of the ones retold in our on-line reminiscences.  The “Mama Lauren Birds/Bees Talk” is where I come from.  It was conceived of picture books of smiling sperm, it maturated in tandem to my story telling skills, and, finally, it was born in a crowded dorm room full of food and the smiling faces of friends who looked to me for comedy and comfort. 

I have never had the “Birds/Bees Talk” with my mother.  But I have had it with myself.  I taught myself everything I needed to know.  In the words of a dear friend as he sent me off on the bus leaving Cambridge: “I thought I was getting picked up by my mom later, but now I realize she was already here.” 

Crying ensued.

January 8 - A Lost Book of the Iliad

Fair warning, this is long.  As in broke my English Teacher's record for longest paper ever turned in.  It was 14.5 pages.  Please enjoy the lost book 25 of the Iliad: The Death of Achilles!

So the bronze-armored Achaeans massed at the foot of their ships

Awaiting the command of Achilles to send them into battle again,

Shining divine under the rosy halo of the morning sun,

Writhing impatiently like the Hellespont behind them.

And there stood swift-footed Achilles,

Son of Peleus, he called out to every Achaean –

“Comrades come!  Their time is up!

Brothers-in-arms, call up your fury once more,

We must win high glory; glory to be sung of for years to come.

Let no one say they saw a single Achaean fall back from battle,

Fearing to loose their lives.  Come forth and lock together,

Let Troy see their fault in rousing the lion-hearted Achaeans!”

And hearing the command of high-hearted Achilles,

Each man rose up and surged towards the chariots with fire in their hearts.

A mass of bronze and horsehair crests, eager and ready for the assault on Troy itself.

Chariots stood wheel to wheel, positioned as their captains had decreed

Horses tossing their heads, men shouting

Ready to repay the Trojans for the theft of white-armed Helen, Menelaus’ queen.

And Achilles lord of men again took the lead,

Standing on the hill of the encampment he let loose a war cry

Echoed by every shining Achaean sweeping like a flood towards the walls of Troy.

As the chariots drew closer to the walls of Troy,

The embodiment of man-slaughtering Ares

The Trojans massed on the walls, afraid to leave their unconquerable citadel

Men and women alike looking down upon the dazzling Achaeans

Afraid for the fate that awaited them.

The women, running from the walls to hide themselves from some stray Achaean arrow,

Ran into the streets crying out for the children to bring their husband’s and father’s armor,

Hoping that the Trojan bronze would spare them the fate that awaited every Trojan man.

Priests and men rushed to pour out cups to Zeus, father of gods and men,

Noble women gathered the most valuable treasures and brought them to the temple of Pallas Athena.

Every man prayed to the distant deadly Archer to save his beloved Troy from its fate.

Among the clamor the call rang out, the longhaired Achaeans had arrived.

So many men, all thirsty for blood and war,

Eager to send the Trojan men down to the House of Death.

Their war cries rang out against the strong, high walls of Troy,

Taunting the Trojans to fire the first shot from their stronghold

From the well-built walls that had protected them for so long.

Surely they thought, no man would be foolish enough to try to take the walls

Called unconquerable for so long by so many men

Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans, drew his bow and let loose the first shot

Hitting it’s mark, piercing straight though the breastplate of Pedasus, son of Bucolion.

Blood gushed forth from his heart as he fell from the great walls of his city

His head, bashed open inside his crested helmet when he hit the ground

His blood soaking into the dust at the foot of the wall

Running like a river past the feet of the horses, planting their feet in the now muddy earth.

The horses immediately trampled each body that fell at the point of an Achaean arrow,

Blood flowing in rivers through the earth, covering the Achaean chariots and horses

Enticing the vultures circling overhead.

And here was Aesepus, drawing his bow from the top of the walls,

Raining down arrows on the horsehair crests of the Achaeans

One piercing the heel of Aeacides, his comrades watched him fall from his chariot

As that same chariot which had conveyed him into battle for these ten years

Rolled over his head, dashing his brains across the earth.

Achilles, too watched Aeacides fall, aiming an arrow at Aesepus

Sending him falling to his death at the feet of the Achaean horses.

Ajax here, hefted his great spear at Ormenus watching it pierce his bowels as they spilled forth

He fell too, over the walls of troy, raining blood upon the Achaeans

In turn, raining arrows and spears upon the Trojans

As if to be the specter of Ares, sacker of cities, curse of men.

And here was Odysseus, covered head to toe in the blood of the Trojans he had killed

A wild force, god-like, he loosed arrows from his great bow that no other man could draw

First fell Pammon, son of Priam, with a great cry he fell from the city walls like a tree

Recently felled for his brother’s funeral pyre.

Then Epistrophus, his Halizonians crying out for their leader as he fell to meet his fate.

And here was Achilles, son of Peleus, breaker of horses, high commander of the Myrmidons.

Each arrow he shot met its mark, embedded in the chest of a Trojan.

No man was safe from him, his spears too sending men over the edge,

Sending them crashing down to the hooves of the Achaean horses,

Tempting the vultures and the dogs waiting at the edge of the Trojan plain for their feast.

Here fell Epicles, great Lycian second only to the dead Sarpedon.

Here fell Polites, son of Priam, backwards into Troy itself

Saving him the fate of so many of his comrades,

To be mangled and trampled at the hands and wheels of the Achaeans.

And Phoebus Apollo, standing on, watched man-killing Achilles

Slaughtering his beloved Trojans, knowing he could not save them from their fate.

Watching Achilles, the glow of his divine armor dulled by the splatter of blood from below.

Watching the Trojans running from the walls like frightened deer,

Trying to hide themselves from the deadly arrows of the Achaeans

Praying in vain to gods that would not allow themselves to hear.

Watching Ucalegon running through the palace, seeking out the private rooms of Paris,

Running through the halls of Priam’s great palace, past the noble women,

Pouring out cups to Zeus and pleading him to take mercy on their city

Desperate for some divine intervention they pleaded as though mourning the death of their city not yet dead.

And so he found Paris and pleaded supplicant before Paris –

“O Paris!  Dear prince, don’t hide yourself in here!

We all shall meet our doom at once, desecrated at the hands of the Achaeans!

We shall be overcome by swift-footed Achilles, gigantic Ajax, and Odysseus, the great glory of the Achaeans.

If only we were as beloved of the gods as the Achaeans!  Our prayers might not fall on deaf ears!

These men have robbed our women of so many sons and fathers!

Repay their women, safe at home, in kind!

Join our men on the ramparts; send your own arrows down into the Achaean forces!

Avenge your brothers!  They were not afraid to join the men, Polites, Pammon, Hector, and countless others have died for Troy!

And yet you continue to hide in your rooms, here with Helen.

You are a curse upon your city, sending so many men to the House of Death

Rescue the men and women of Troy!

Don’t let all the glory fall into the hands of the great, strong-greaved Achaeans!”

So Paris went to his window and looked out upon his people, a mass of grief and all marked for death,

Seeing women tearing their hair, in grieving for their dead sons and husbands

Watched priests on their knees, the smoke of sacrifice filling the air

As they tried to bring some blessing from the gods and Fate towards Troy.

And Ucalegon burst out genuflected and grief-stricken –

“Paris, pity your father!  Look at him, among the people!

He has lost yet more sons today, and still may lose others!

Go forth!  Avenge the death of your brave brothers!

Merciless, unyielding prince, join the men!

How can you yet stay here in your rooms? 

If you do not join the troops, no one will mourn you on your pyre!

No one will remain to say ‘that was Paris, breaker of horses, prince of Troy’!

We will all have been lost!

O Paris, Go forth and beat back these savage men from our walls!

Be the hope of Troy!  Or forever be known as the man whose cowardice killed Her.”

So Paris seeing the people weep, drew Ucalegon to his feet

And left Helen in their rooms to weep for both her loves.

Running now through the palace he gathered his armor

of shining bronze and readied himself for battle.

And Apollo watched him as he donned the heavy bronze armor,

Wrapping his legs in heavy greaves, strapping on the shining breastplate,

Setting on his head his powerful helmet, the shine of the bronze

A halo around his head in the afternoon sun,

The horsehair crest bristling as he shook his head to ensure it was secure.

He took his bow down from its place holding it in his hands as if to weigh it

A gift from Lycia, made of strong cedar native to that land,

Made to be the strongest, surest bow in Troy.

Paris walked from the palace through the streets of Troy,

The mourners parted to let him pass; looking at the man they had had to convince to fight,

The man who now was supposed to be their great hero.

Women with tears running down their faces looked at him through their hands and hair

Clawing at their faces and scalps, begging of the gods to tell them,

Why had it been their man who died at the hands of the Achaeans?

Men too, covered in dust and sweat looked at Paris,

Knowing that they would now follow him into battle instead of man-killing Hector.

And Paris turned to them, his cry rousing the men once again for battle –

“Trojans!  Brothers-in-arms of Priam’s sons!

Call once more upon your battle fury!

Rise and defend our Scaean gates!

We must once again defend the city of Tros, our home!

We must win high honor for Priam and his royal sons!

Let the Achaeans see how mad they are to attack the great city of Troy!”

He ended his cry and each swift Trojan once again put on his armor,

Their own battle cries adding to the ringing tumult of voices within the Trojan walls.

Apollo, as soon as he saw Paris rallying, took on the character of high-hearted Dius,

Son of Priam and brother of Paris, armed like Paris, Apollo joined him at the front of the lines:

“Paris, beloved of Apollo, hope of the Trojans,

Lay hand to bow.  Beat back the Achaeans from our walls.

You know the truth to be this.  You must kill swift-footed Achilles,

Look at him!  How he lays waste to our people.

Our mother and father have implored you to take aim at the son of Peleus.

It will give heart to our comrades and strike such a blow to the Achaeans

That no man thinks they will return to battle

Lacking he who is called the Best of the Achaeans.”

Paris, turning on his brother, helmet flashing, replied:

“Dius, what you say is true.  Achilles must die.

He has killed brilliant, man-killing Hector,

And we have seen how the Achaean ranks fall when he leaves the field of battle.

But still, he is the greatest fighter of the Achaeans.

His spear has felled many of my brothers and brothers-in-arms.

Each arrow he shoots follows a straight course into the chest of a Trojan,

Sending him instantly to the House of Death.

I cannot kill this man!”

Apollo, beguiling Paris masterfully as he had tricked many men, pled –

“Paris put away your fear!  The distant deadly Archer has

Long shown his preference for Troy.

You yourself poured out a cup to him before you entered battle

Ask him now to guide your arrow swift and true.

Stir your spirit.  Now fight!  Fight and kill for Troy!”

With that Apollo left Paris’ side and ran swift-footed to the halls of Olympus

Where his father, Zeus, sat, enthroned in his great hall

Watching the Trojans once again mounting their defense,

And once again meeting the points of the Achaean arrows head on

Falling in great numbers from the walls, meeting their doom at the foot of the walls

Of Troy, meant to protect them from harm,

Once again mudding the earth of the Trojan plains

Watched as Achilles, once again losing arrows, breaking through men, leaving

In his wake, the sons and husbands of Troy, left to await Hermes the conductor of men.

Each arrow meeting its mark with deadly accuracy,

Spilling the blood from the heart of every man they hit,

Sending them to meet their fate under the horses and chariot wheels of the Achaeans.

And Achilles, taking aim, let loose an arrow,

Speeding towards the breastplate of Dius, son of Priam,

It hit, taking Dius to his knees, clutching the arrow whose sharp point

Pierced his heart, clouding his eyes with the black haze of death,

Sending him pitching downward, head first to meet the blood-muddy earth surrounding the walls of Troy.

Falling, regal, like a bull meant for sacrifice to Apollo himself

Giving out a last bellow as Paris turned to see his brother meet his fate

Crashing to the ground, his blood spilled out from his armor

His head dashed open before Achilles’ chariot, spraying the horses with blood.

And Zeus, the father of men and gods, spoke out –

“Alas!  His fate is sealed now!  Achilles, son of Thetis with the glistening feet,

He shall meet his doom at the hands of Paris.

My heart grieves for her son, he who never failed to pour out a cup to we immortal gods,

Now on the bloody plain of Troy he shall meet his fate,

So far from his home, the halls of Peleus.

Look now, Paris sees the death of his brother and is enraged.

Immortals all, gather, shall I spare him, Achilles son of Thetis?

His mother is dear to me, she who saved me, she who protected Dionysus,

She with the glistening feet, should I save the man for her sake?

Or let him meet his fate?

                                                But Phoebus Apollo,

Protested, eyes wide:  “Father, lord of men and gods,

How can you say such things?  The fates have long decreed that this

Man will die on the plains of Troy, and you think to

Defy them?  You’d let him return to Peleus’ halls?

Not one of the deathless gods would deny what you owe to Thetis,

But not one of us will ever praise you if you choose to save Achilles.”

And wide-seeing Zeus, son of Kronos, replied:

“Fear not, Apollo, divine twin, forever young,

I do not mean to save the man, though his mother is so dear to me.

Believe me, I would never cross the wills of the Fates. 

Now, go.  Urge Paris to fulfill his fate. 

Guide his arrow straight and sure.  Hold back no more.”

And so Apollo, the distant deadly Archer, leapt to his feet,

And rushed down from the hallowed halls of Olympus

To the walls of Priam’s great city.

And Paris ran towards the sight of his brother’s death

The blood already dry in the afternoon sun.

Looking down towards the body, crushed under the hooves of Achilles’ horses.

Lamenting he called out: “O Dius!  Now you

Go down to the House of Death. Like so many of our brothers,

Now you join them in the Halls of Hades!

Tell me, how will our mother and father lament your death!

They have lost so many, the best, of the strongest hearts and god-like characters!

Mestor, Lycaon, Hippodamas, Hipponous,

Hector of the glinting helmet, breaker of horses,

And now you!  All felled by the Achilles, son of Peleus!

How many more must they lose to this man?

Look how he charges across the corpses of our men!

Has he no sense to avoid them?

What glee does he take in killing Trojans, in desecrating their corpses

As he did to my dear brother Hector,

Immortal gods be praised for preserving his body and returning him home.

And now one more falls from our walls!

No, no more!  By this arrow, and with the distant deadly archer’s blessing,

I will put aside my fears.”

And Paris drew back his powerful bow and let lose the single arrow,

Its sharp point piercing the air as it sped on its course,

Indeed guided by Phoebus Apollo, towards Achilles

Its course straight and true, meeting its mark in Achilles’ throat.

As a hunter fells a deer, that animal graceful until its last moments

It falls to the ground eyes cast up as if to ask the gods to spare it –

So now as Achilles fell to the ground before the Scaean Gates,

Pitching his head towards the skies, begging Zeus

Or his mother Thetis to save him once again.

Poor doomed man, doomed by fate to win his glory and to die

Far from the land of his father, to fall on a hostile plain,

His life cut short by his glory and his wrath.

O sing muses!  Sing how this man died, calling out to his comrades:

“Odysseus, Ajax, comrades, brothers-in-arms! 

Hear me now!  I have known well the fate I see before me now.

I was always to die on this field of battle, far from home,

From my mother’s embrace and from my father’s hallowed halls.

Never could I have cheated fate by returning home so many weeks ago.

No my homecoming was denied to me at birth.

A burial in the lands of my forefathers was never to be mine.

And I meet my death freely, it is now my time.

The divine scales have tipped against me at last.

Hector spoke the truth when he said I would fall at the hands of

Paris and Apollo at the feet of the Scaean Gates.

But comrades, know this!  My death is not in vain.  Persist!

Continue to fight, and you shall reap great rewards.

Troy shall fall at the command of greathearted Odysseus, sacker-of-cities.

For all their fight and Apollo’s blessing, nothing, no one

Can save them from the hands of fate!”

And so Achilles fell before the Gates, his comrades powerless to help him.

Flying free of his body,

The great soul of god-like Achilles flew down to the House of Death,

Joining Patroclus and so many more Achaeans who fell round the walls of Troy.

His fate sealed and fulfilled, his earthly body lying,

Sprawled at the feet of his brothers-in-arms.

And the cry went up on all sides.

Tears and lamentations of the Achaeans, mourning their lion-hearted champion.

Celebration on the side of the Trojans,

Hailing Paris as the man who had killed the slaughterer of men,

Long-likened to Ares himself.

Though they had not long left, the Trojans rejoiced in their one hope:

The Death of Achilles and the promise of Paris.

And, from the gods on high, silver-footed Thetis cried out in woe:

“O my son!  Your fate has truly come to pass!

You who were greater than your father, who have spurred the Achaeans on

To bring Troy their fate.  Cursed from birth!

Granted the glory of the ages for the price of your

Proper burial and longed for homecoming!

O why did I bear you?  My beloved son, taken from me too soon!

Achilles, breaker of horses, you are lost to me forever!”

And the Achaeans surged around the body of Achilles, saving it from

the dogs and from the Trojans.  They carried it back to the ships.

This was the body of Achilles the best of the Achaeans. 

One who had led his Myrmidons, nay the Achaeans, into battle

Fearlessly from the dawn of the Trojan War.

Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis, demigod in his own right,

Buried in a land not his own, buried far from the hallowed halls of his father,

On the plains of Troy the Achaean army lighted his funeral pyre

On the same place where Patroclus had been buried only days before.

Their cries rang out as his funeral games were illuminated by the light of his own pyre.

And so buried was Achilles, breaker of horses, lord of men, god-like warrior.