Poetic Screams

Algea, daughter of Eris, once fell in love with Hermes. Unfortunately she was not beautiful. Nor was Algea well loved among mortals for she was the personification of grief and sorrow, often sent by the Gods to those who failed to follow their will. Her simple presence could bog down a heart, her touch bring such emotional anguish it became physical pain. It was she alone who stood in their midst as mortals suffered, she alone who was there in the darkest hours. Her own empathetic heart breaking, for unlike her mother she took no delight in the fate she’d been handed.

Algea was a constant companion to Hera. As such she was often in the company of Hermes, messenger to the Gods and guide of the dead, and inn time, despite her hallow eyes and ever present worried frown, Hermes grew to love the soft-spoken Algea. Of this love a child of unquestionable beauty was born. A daughter, called Imogen with hair dark as the midnight sky and eyes that outshone the moon. Her beauty was a gift from the Gods, bestowed upon two loyal companions. While both Algea and Hermes loved their daughter equally, from the moment she was born, Algea knew that she could never hold her only daughter; for to touch the child would be to bring her young mind anguish and pain. It was then decided the best place for Imogen was the Isle of the Muses, away from her mother, watched over by Apollo and his Nymphs. Algea mourned her daughter greatly but knew there was no other way, for it would surely kill her to cause the beautiful child any pain. Now it was Hera turn to offer the grieving mother comfort as Hermes took away her one and only source of joy.

As Imogen grew, both in beauty and intelligence, taught by the muses she bonding quickly to both Melpomene and Urania. Over the years she came to know and love them as mothers. Gifted with an uncanny knack for mapping the night sky, it was as though the constellations were drawn from her own imagination and though she loved the night sky, she was equally fond of listening as Apollo accompanied Melpomene while she recited her tragic hymns. As Algea watched her daughter from afar, her heart hollowed. With each passing year she grew more despondent as she watched someone else raise and nurture her beautiful child.

Before long Imogen was praised as the most beautiful of the Gods, though she was really little more then a muse to the poets that worshiped the night sky. This undeserved worship of course infuriated Aphrodite, who until this point had been the undisputed beauty of Olympus. Filled with rage Aphrodite conspired with Eris to send Eros to the Isle of the Muses to make the child fall in love with Apollo. The act itself would have done little damage, but Aphrodite and Eris both well knew that Apollo was in love with Melpomene. When Eros arrived he found the young girl sunning on a rock near a crystal pool as she idly skimmed her long delicately boned fingers over the waters surface, one of Melpomene’s mournful songs slipping from her lips.

So moved by the image before him, and the sweet sound of Imogen’s voice, Eros forgot himself and stumbled from the bushes where he was hiding. Imogen looked up, sad smile on her lips as she took in the stranger’s appearance. As the two talked, Eros found that Imogen had already fallen in love with the far shooting Apollo, and was already heartbroken to see her one true love in love with the woman who had raised her. As she spoke, tears sprang from her eyes, falling into the crystal pool, her heart so full of sadness that Algea descended upon her, standing in the shadows as she watched her beloved Imogen suffer.

So moved was Algea, she stepped forward, wrapping the young girl in a loving embrace that only served to further the girl’s pain, stricken Algea let her go. Fleeing back to Hera’s side, the distraught mother kneeled before Zeus, begging her King and Queen to protect their Granddaughter from Eris and Aphrodite, to offer the child protection and a safe haven among her beloved stars. Her mournful pleas fell upon Zeus’ ears, and in her eyes he saw a wealth of suffering he had not known existed. Placing a kiss upon his niece’s head he sent her back to Hermes with the promise he would take care of everything.

That night he appeared to his grandchild like a dream, leading her toward the heavens in his chariot, placing her among the stars, to watch over them, and guide them through the sky. And there she is to this day, slowly moving the night sky in a never-ending cycle.

Things are rarely as they seem. No one knew this better then Josie Parks. Though soft spoken, painfully shy, overweight, and alone, she still seemed to have everything a girl could want. Coming from a loving family, with friends and acquaintances all believing they knew the angelic Miss. P. An ideal student, who bent over backwards for friend and foe alike, asked little of those around her. She simply goes through life, drifting from day to day, smiling for those she loves.

What the world didn’t see was the ugly side of Josie. You see, she caught the liars disease and the slowly the poisonous infection took over her “perfect” life. In time she became a shell of her former self. And when the day finally came, the day the world caved in, those closest to her stood aghast, mouths hanging open, appalled their perfect Miss. P had fallen so far from grace. Some said there were no signs, some wept, others scorned. But none, no matter the reaction, were ever the same again.

You see, young Josie had a terrible secret. Brought on by years of smiling pretty, fat jokes, and an inner voice slowly seeping poison into her innocent mind and tender heart, an empathetic soul she was one to take on others problems though she never lacked for her own. A little over a year ago Josie became a statistic. One of the millions of girls every year who resort to binges to free themselves. One of the lemmings who naively bought into a male driven media’s view of what beauty should be. One more misguided youth, weeping as she purges to cleans her soul. One more angst ridden angel, broken and forgotten.

It started simply enough, a real weight loss plan, a well meaning mother and the fuel of showing everyone she was more then the “smart one”, the “sweet one”, the A-typical fat best friend. The life she was forced to lead her catalyst into this darkness.
The darkness of Mia.
Mia, her new best friend. Mia of the stars, her looking glass twin, her inner voice, her warped sense of self and reality. Her only true ally in her battle. The only soul who understood. The only one who would always stand by her, Mia.

In another eight months Josie will die. Those she loved will find her diary and know the dark secret. They won’t understand it wasn’t about being thin anymore, they won’t understand every heartbroken rejection is what pushed her on. To the world she’ll be one more lost chance victim of teenage angst repression. They won’t ever understand why their perfect Miss P was coved in cuts, full of laxatives, and clutching a bottle of sleeping pills as she fell comatose into tub of running water.

They won’t ever really know, but now you do.

How wasn't I good enough this time
How didn't I messure up?
Tell me what do to
Tell me who to be
And if I can't
Just please set me free

What do you do with a loser
When they've run out of games to play?
And what do you do with a Princess
When she's had her heart broke again?

Tell me what to change
To make you want to stay
Tell me what to think
Tell me what to feel
Take away my spark
Take away everything
That once was real

Because thats what you do with a loser
when they've run out of games to play
And thats what you tell a Princess
Whos nursing a broken heart again.

Its a little after midnight
And Im dreaming of you again
Thinking of the nights we shared

It seems so long ago
I was a different person then

Tears keep on falling
And a bottle of whiskey
Is calling my name again

It was so long ago
But I remember being whole

Glass shatters along the wall
Ive cried a river tears
That you never heard at all

It was so long ago
Why can't I feel whole

Another night and Im alone
With the shadows on the wall
And the demons in the hall

It was so long ago
But I remember being whole

Id bite you
Just to see you bleed
And I'd burn you
Just to hear the scream

Can you feel the rage inside?
Can you see the scars I hide?
Can you sense the ugly side?
How can you still believe all the lies?

Id hurt you
Just to ease my pain
And Id break you
Just to make the voices still again

Can you feel the rage inside?
Can you see the scars I hide?
Can you sense the ugly side?
How can you still believe all the lies?

You watch her tears of crimson fall
And suddenly you know
You never really-
Knew her at all

Locked inside her head
The a demon in her bed
Savagedly raped
Purity's soul

She was-
just a little girl
With hopes as high
As the starlit sky

Now battered and broken
Natures misguided token
Little Purity's lost her spark
Forever nursing a broken heart.

I grew up in a traditional nontraditional home. My parents divorced when I was very young, just a little over a year, and my mother moved back home to live with my Grandmother. Dad stuck around till I was about three, I don’t really remember much about those years, only the following 16 when he was in and out and up and down. From an early age I knew I was “different” from most children, and now its a bit of a running joke in the family that I gave new meaning to the phrase “Sara has two Mommies”.

I was, for all intents and purposes raised by my grandmother the fist five years of my life. My mother had gone back to school and Gran naturally took over. She was my best friend probably till I was six or seven. My whole world existed in that little house on East Fifth, with the side yard and all of Grandma’s roses.

The females on my Mother’s side are extremely close, even now, I can’t think of a normal week where I don’t talk to my Aunt Carol everyday or my Aunt Sue every other weekend. Just a few weeks ago my cousin Harmony brought her three daughters down to visit, and my other cousin Charity lived with us her last two years of College and will be back this summer to stay while she teaches Summer School.

We all share a strong, though strange bond. I think it steams from the belief Grandmother instilled in us that blood is thicker then water. We grew up believing family was the most important thing in the whole world, and the only thing you could ever count on to love you unconditionally (though at times that’s not always true). I didn’t grow up with my three half sisters, and spent very little time with my Dad’s family, but Mom’s more then made up for it.

In general I think I'm better of for not having been with my father. When I look at my oldest and youngest sisters, who were heavily influenced by my fathers (for lack of a better term) white trash roots, I'm glad that he didn’t seem to want me. The moral that the Kinney’s seem to pass down to their daughters is you can’t survive without a man, and don’t hope of being more then a teenage mother. The woman’s place is in the home after all.

For that reason alone I don’t fit in with my fathers family. Somehow, despite my conservative Catholic up brining, I’ve become a bleeding heart liberal, someone who fights for gay rights and equality. And though my mother and Aunt’s worry, they’ve never tried to stifle that part of me, or asked me to change who I am, Aunt Sue simply says one more Hail Mary, and Aunt Carol cracks completely politically incorrect jokes. Maybe in reality, Sara has four Mommies.

T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi” is a deeply spiritual piece, written from the perspective of one of the Three Wise Men, as they travel through bitter cold and blistering head, en route to see the newly born Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Comparing the birth of “The Savior” to a death is one of Eliot’s best uses of symbolism. Its impact catches your attention, as Eliot meant to convey it was an end to all their culture had ever known. It was the death of polytheism, and a rebirth for those who wished to be saved. Though the Magi witnessed this miraculous birth, they too new it meant the end of their world as they had known it.

Some argue he would be glad of his own death, and this is what Eliot meant by “I should be glad of another death”(47). Thought I’m more inclined to believe that they felt, that their journey had shown them toward a death of their religion and lifestyle, and found no choice but to embrace what they sought in this miraculous child. Moreover they found it impossible to ignore the image before them, and couldn’t return to their people and prior lives because they’d seen the light, “No longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,/ With an Alien people clutching their gods” (45-46).

The long journey, full of hardship, bad weather, and finally the promised land, is mirrored to that of what Jesus went through. A difficult beginning, met with scoffing indifference, moving to outright blinding hate, filled with heathens, and low-lifes, and unkindness and prejudice. All of this will end in a miracle, the rebirth and chance for redemption of all mankind, or in the poem’s case, a sort of promised land for the weary travelers:

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, and below the snowline smelling of vegitation,
With a running stream and all water-mill beating the
darkness.(22-25)

Work Cited Eliot, T.S. “Journey of the Magi.” The Primer Book of Major Poets: An Anthology.
ED. Anita Dore. New York: Balllantine, 1996. 183-184

In Washington Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle”, the author uses subtle and not so subtle symbolism to describe his views of the relations between Colonial America and the British Crown. Ranging from the nagging Dame Van Winkle, to Rip’s rusty rifle and the flagon of ale that is eventually his downfall, Irving paints a colorful and cast of characters, all representative of his views on the Crown and Colonies. A prime example would be the deterioration of his marriage to Dame Van Winkle. As the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that any love felt between the two had dissipated over the years, much like the love and loyalties felt for the Royals by the Americas. Or perhaps a more metaphorical symbol would be the flagon of ale Rip consumed that sent him into a twenty year stupor, representative of the Colonies first taste of freedom.

Dame Van Winkle represents the Crown on several levels; she’s nagging, prim, and controlling. Irving states after all, “A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.”(34). Never satisfied with Rip’s ambition, or rather lack there of, she finds him heathen, a burden, and is prone to nagging much like the Crown viewed America. As the years wore on, the Van Winkle’s marriage grew worse and worse as their bickering increased “A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue the only tool that grows keener with constant use.”(37). Dame Van Winkle’s nagging is eventually the driving force that sends “poor Rip” into the woods seeking escape, much the way Colonist fled to the wilds of America seeking freedom for persecution. Once there he meets giants engaging in a game of nine pins, and drinking ale. When Rip is called upon to serve them, he complied post haste and “He even ventured, when no eye was upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of the excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often, that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, and his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.”(41) Much like Rip, at their first taste of freedom, the Colonies, felt the need to reiterate their power, to gain in strength and number, and eventually were so addicted if you will, that they fought to the death to defend it. One taste simply wasn’t enough for either. Even Rip’s rifle serves as a symbol of the Brit’s rule over the colonies, where “once a clean, well oiled flowing piece had lain”(42), now rested a rusted antiquated rifle, symbolic of the Royal rule over the Colonies.

Irving’s symbolism serves to underscore an original and interesting tale. He outlines the basic futility of living a henpecked life, both as a husband and a nation, in such a way that his audience is raptly engaged. Dame Van Winkle serves as a large part of the obvious symbolism but Irving manages to also weave intricate details such as the flagon and rifle through the tale to subtly make his point.

Works Cited
Irving, Washington “Rip Van Winkle”, Great American Short Stories, ED. Wallace and Mary Stegner, New York, 1985, 33-51