Daedalus and Icarus

Icarus awakes

I: Has another day ended?

D: The sun has only just risen

I: Wake me up when this dreary existence is over.

D: Son, if imprisonment and hibernation were synonymous, I would have no concern about your sad survival as a lump under a bedsheet. Get up.

Icarus lights candle

I: You know what, old man, you’re absolutely right. What with all the activities and opportunities in this merry cell, why on earth do I waste my time in bed when I could be doing....(pause) nothing.

D: There is plenty to do and say.

I: Well then perhaps I am as blind as a prophet. Revere me. Goodnight.

(goes to blow out candle)

D: Stop!

I: I can’t hear you. Goodnight.

(motions to blow candle again)

D: I taught you to wear education like a threat. Answer me this, prophet.

I: Give me your best

D: Of what manner is the candle at the lick of the flame?

I: It is like nectar

D: Touching the nectar, what do you find?

I: It is like honey, thicker than before.

D: Yes, and furthermore…

I: Dense like the honeycomb, binding one and one together.

D: Right. Nothing more?

I: None to be said. Were those challenges or folly? Father, you too should rest.

D: Understand, Icarus, I want you to sleep with your feet on the pillow and your head in the clouds but you have only been burrowing yourself into the insipid. There is a spark in you, young boy.

I: You too must understand that I have been tickling my mind with human fingers since birth. I can find my way. You always seem to think I am destined to trip on the doorstep to my downfall but I can dust my backside and cure my affliction. You worry too much.

D: I do worry. You have the raw power of a tongue left untied in you. As sharp as it is you make me proud.

I: Thank you father but leave me to my own.

D: I invest my future in my child’s past and my past in their ever-present so that I may face eternity. We will escape, Icarus.

I: In a thousand suns

D: In one.

I: How so?

D: Was it not your idea? Through the most fluid of nectar, the thickness of honey and the sturdiest of honeycomb.

Ariadne and Theseus

T: I dream of you. I dreamt of you last night. I woke up in the cusp of dawn happy, so very, very happy, and then suddenly my cell, like your city, fell into pieces. I miss you terribly…have you been sleeping?

A: Sleep is fictional. I laid lengthwise in the helpless pockets of my room waiting for the night to swallow me whole. I was empty.

T: And terrified.

A: …The moon is full…

T: Of heartache. I saw you in a dream

A: It was only a dream. Are you rested?

T: I slept so deeply I could not wake up alone. I need you more than ever. I have a story the world needs to hear!

A: We are but two lonely nomads, speak.

T: In the hollow of the night, I heard Saturn whisper “I love you”, looking at your worn-in shoes, felt the birth of a comet traveling up your legs. Centered in the universe, your arms were Mars’s axis. But you were never angry.

A: You are cold!

T: I know, it’s this tragedy of speech.

A: You break every bone in my body with your shivers. You burn my throat with moonshine and tattoo my tongue so I can only talk about you. Release me from this nightmare and hurry back! (Theseus walks to window) What do you see?

T: A jungle of Cypress trees, each leaf as sharp as glass. Maps drawing themselves on my palms wearing complex patterns that colour me vulnerable. Camouflage abandoned on the island of our birth.

A: You will be safe (Hands Theseus the yarn). Love rests in every crevice—hiding in ash trays, across the dashboard, under plush velvet mats, aflame in my hands.

T: I am too focused on the romantic. Maybe you’ll sleep alone tonight.

A: Why would you say such a thing?

T: Because of this specific form of broken heart. We are torn apart by this outside factor, this storm, and it will not pass. God will it to pass, but it won’t.

A: You’re reducing me

T: No

A: You’re reducing me! I stand before you, my soul uncovered. If I dig my hand into your pocket I search for your wrist to grasp. If I dig into your lips I will clamp. If I dig into your heart, let me stay there…I am by your side. I’m not just a lover.

T: To call you my lover is not a euphemism, it is the strictest word I could call you. It is the perfect poem.

A: You will return.

T: I will try.

A: You must return. You must let me wonder at your beauty, the full human being which you are.

T: Perhaps. A love reincarnated, again brought into flesh. Where is a grave not a rosebed?

A: What are you saying?

T: Where is a coffin not a vessel?

A: You’re coming back!

T: Where is he who has not changed and where are they who have not transformed? I want you to be prepared for whatever may come

A: You will be back.

T: So be it.

A: And when you do.

T: And when I do I will kiss the face of rejuvenation (embrace)

A: Your words curl like smoke into the night. Hurry back.

End Scene

Daedulus and Icarus, imprisoned

Had I known the violence resting between his robes
I would have clicked my heels and ran.
Had I known he was blind to the tips of my fingers
I would have asked him to pinch my cheeks
To restore colour to this desolate dream

We awake washed in a blame cultured by my memory
Wrapped in dirty wools willing to keep a kings hands clean!
And here we end
An atlas mapped with crossing paths
Cutting like glass into my veins

I think some days I am an excuse for a human being
Scrambling to find equal footing with men who will never understand what it is to make, to create
Never exhaling the lower case letters that have made home in my chest.

There is a science to belief,
Icarus…
I will open the quieted hollows of my lungs
To carry you
I will unbutton the seam of horizon from this window
To flow into flight
Waved by mortals
Embraced by Gods
Tonight, Icarus,
We will be Gods.
Floating above the mountain peaks of darkness,
drenching our days with the impossible


Ariadne: prayer for Theseus
I told him to love me harder.
Swallow the words that came out too loud, tangling around my ankles like tree roots.
planted between the then and now.
Then, I could taste loneliness
Entwining myself in this string, afraid that fear would one day lodge itself in my throat.
Then, I let Thursday slip to Friday, and I just couldn't forgive myself for being human.
I remember when
His love suddenly
Clanked against my bones like ice on liquor.
It was the moment I first lost the smell of my mothers hairs
A distant memory crashing on the shores of some soft eastern beach.
I wait for my lover to be carried home on the naked spines of each star,
My tongue bleeding with forgotten reasons as to why
I could time my tears like clockwork.
Then, I found I couldn't sleep
Without the protection of moonlight across my back.
The darkness swelled like ripened fruit.
I found myself
Fighting for future memories of love,
Because I am imperfect, but I will stand perfectly before you.