Five Papers Flung From Me,
sung in me from the muse of my room, the rooftop, and St. A's in the past eight days. So glad they're gone. This semester saw fourteen forced from me, born in pain to a hard life of revisions and indecisions over each syllable or sprung half-whole from my head, autistic Athenas appearing in flashes of dawn and dawning lucidity. You'd think I was an English major or something, but even Directed Suicide students only rear a brood of twelve. And no more turn aside and brood. Brooding over Ethics of Love, title of final paper, ended this evening. Turned in my last duchess at five and I'm freeeeee. Free falling into four finals. I like exams at the moment.
Wearing the rags of time, wearing out hours and high heels, reading week's been run around, surround sound, dance to drop days with partners in pages, tuxedos, and shorts. Between waltzes with Hume, Eliot, Jesus, we danced from flippant finery into a moshpit. Monday was Spiderball, the JE formal. Jonathan Edward's the richest college, they hoard money like Mr. Burns. Wonderwall, for Spiderball, they flaunt it all. Another swing band played Moon River as I dipped a strawberry on a stick under a cascading fountain of molten white chocolate. Fruit punch spouted from terraces of silver. Stiles seemed far away. Then changing scene, from dress to jeans, Monday slid into Tuesday Spring Fling. My Spring Fling, sling hair against sky, sing along to the Shins. The Shins came, The Shins! Knees above heads, hands hitting air, sitting on Ivan's shoulders, eyes and ears ecstatic. The crowd was erratic. Spring Fling brings out not the best of Yale. It draws the lugs from the frat houses into Old Campus. They wear tee-shirts of ink on their skin and funnel extra idiocy down. Merry with music was excellent but the excrement of a picnic, half eaten hamburgers, plates people don't throw away and the green ground soaked with beer, ugly. In the staggering crowd, I wonder if we are any better than other nineteen year olds and what right we have to all this if we piss it away. But then I am carried away on rhythms of O.A.R. Carving space out of the stumbling mass, I am surrounded by chanting friends alternately jumping and swaying. And I've figured out the delight of dancing, the enjoyment of fully inhabiting my body, fun being inside of it, playing with what it can do, what motions of the music it can mimic. I look up and Harkness rises into the warm splendor of afternoon light. I look up again and it's inky blue. Above blossoms and the familiar roofs of Old Campus, the big dipper pours out evening on us. Wet with music, drenched in delight, we go for Ashley's and eat bittersweet chocolate ice cream and write papers and more papers.
Now and forever, the Yankee game as I study. Through the radio, between and behind voices, come the strains of Teenage Wasteland. They play Paul's theme song when Tino gets up to bat. Its opening chords sound like loyalty. I'm a loyalist to literary theory for the night. Now that papers are all buried in drop boxes and offices, I don't want the reign of the year to be overthrown.
Wearing the rags of time, wearing out hours and high heels, reading week's been run around, surround sound, dance to drop days with partners in pages, tuxedos, and shorts. Between waltzes with Hume, Eliot, Jesus, we danced from flippant finery into a moshpit. Monday was Spiderball, the JE formal. Jonathan Edward's the richest college, they hoard money like Mr. Burns. Wonderwall, for Spiderball, they flaunt it all. Another swing band played Moon River as I dipped a strawberry on a stick under a cascading fountain of molten white chocolate. Fruit punch spouted from terraces of silver. Stiles seemed far away. Then changing scene, from dress to jeans, Monday slid into Tuesday Spring Fling. My Spring Fling, sling hair against sky, sing along to the Shins. The Shins came, The Shins! Knees above heads, hands hitting air, sitting on Ivan's shoulders, eyes and ears ecstatic. The crowd was erratic. Spring Fling brings out not the best of Yale. It draws the lugs from the frat houses into Old Campus. They wear tee-shirts of ink on their skin and funnel extra idiocy down. Merry with music was excellent but the excrement of a picnic, half eaten hamburgers, plates people don't throw away and the green ground soaked with beer, ugly. In the staggering crowd, I wonder if we are any better than other nineteen year olds and what right we have to all this if we piss it away. But then I am carried away on rhythms of O.A.R. Carving space out of the stumbling mass, I am surrounded by chanting friends alternately jumping and swaying. And I've figured out the delight of dancing, the enjoyment of fully inhabiting my body, fun being inside of it, playing with what it can do, what motions of the music it can mimic. I look up and Harkness rises into the warm splendor of afternoon light. I look up again and it's inky blue. Above blossoms and the familiar roofs of Old Campus, the big dipper pours out evening on us. Wet with music, drenched in delight, we go for Ashley's and eat bittersweet chocolate ice cream and write papers and more papers.
Now and forever, the Yankee game as I study. Through the radio, between and behind voices, come the strains of Teenage Wasteland. They play Paul's theme song when Tino gets up to bat. Its opening chords sound like loyalty. I'm a loyalist to literary theory for the night. Now that papers are all buried in drop boxes and offices, I don't want the reign of the year to be overthrown.
