A/N: Bet you've never seen a disclaimer like this before I ACTUALLY OWN THIS CHARACTER! Juliet is from my other fic, you don't have to read it in order to read this, promise. The poem isn't mine though, neither is Dead Poets Society (damn!)

Ten reviews baby, I'm in the double digits::dances:: Thanks a whole bunch to all of you who took the time, I hope you like this too.

Juliet Sanchez, 17, Aspiring Artist

Juliet wants her interview conducted in her studio, a huge sun kissed room housing a plethora of half finished paintings and drawings, songs and writings. The other peeps call her Juliet-of-all-Trades. She always has at least three projects going and devotes equal time and obsession to each, like a mother with triplets. When I come in her lanky form is standing high on a ladder fixing a mobile to the ceiling.

"Be careful up there," I call.

She looks around for the source of the voice and waves vigorously at me. Without a word, quiet, elegant Juliet sidles down the ladder and lands before me, wrapping me in a quick hug. Whenever we see each other it's as though it's been months.

"You ready for me, amiga?"

"I'm never ready for you, Julietta." I put my hand to my eyes and reel back mockingly. "I cannot see! I am blinded by the beauty!"

She play slaps me, but I'm only half kidding. She's my age but she has the beauty of a woman of twenty five. Flawless marble face housing high cheekbones and a pair of sparkling blue eyes framed by a tide of black wavy hair. Her curvy body is cloaked entirely in a purple sundress tied with a blood red sash. Absolutely perfect, inside and out.

"All right then, let's have some fun. I put a chair out for you."

"What about you?"

"Oh," she says with extra sparkle coming to her eyes. "I won't be sitting for this one."

With that she pirouettes across the room, skirt billowing, and spreads her arms.

"My recitation today will be a selection from my favorite poem, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay's 'The Congo.' This first stanza is called 'Their Basic Savagery.'"

I feel like there should be dimming lights. This is so avant garde. When Juliet looks up it's as though she's addressing a room of thousands. She begins to clap her hands in a slow rhythm, similar to the one Angel played on her drum, and sings an a low, rolling alto like my own.

"FAT black bucks in a wine-barrel room,

Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,

Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,

Hard as they were able,

Boom, boom, BOOM,

With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM."

There's a silent interlude of just claps for half a beat, then she goes on but her voice has changed. She chants the next lines on beat with her hands. I'm struck when I recognize them.

"THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.

I could not turn from their revel in derision.

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK

CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK!

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK

CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK!"

Still clapping, arms over her head, she begins to twirl across the dusty, paint splattered floor. As she moves she returns to the singing vibrato.

"Then along that riverbank

A thousand miles

Tattooed cannibals danced in files;

Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song

And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong."

Suddenly she stops dead and her eyes snaps open as though she's been shocked. I feel myself jump. Before this even has time to register, my eyes take in a streak of violet floating through the air as she executes a perfect leap onto a three legged stool in the corner. I gasp, but she takes no notice, just goes on with the words, spitting them out rapid fire with great urgency.

And 'BLOOD!' screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,

'BLOOD!' screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors;

'Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,

Harry the uplands,

Steal all the cattle,

Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,

Bing!

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM!'

A roaring, epic, rag-time tune."

She pauses, looking thoughtful. She continues in a contemplative tone, looking at folded hands.

"From the mouth of the Congo

To the Mountains of the Moon.

Death is an Elephant."

Again her eyes go wide and fearful as she delves into the hard-edged metaphor in a shrill voice.

"Torch-eyed and horrible,

Foam-flanked and terrible.

BOOM, steal the pygmies,

BOOM, kill the Arabs,

BOOM, kill the white men."

She stomps her foot to accent each BOOM, but on the last stomp with her foot in the air she starts again to slowly twirl around and around. I have long since faded away from her consciousness and, in truth, my own as well. I am held hostage to this brilliant work of art.

"HOO, HOO, HOO." She moans like an owl or a ghost.

"Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost

Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.

Hear how the demons chuckle and yell

Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.

Listen to the creepy proclamation,

Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,

Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay,

Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:—

'Be careful what you do

Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,

And all of the other

Gods of the Congo,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.'"

Her voice and steps and claps all gradually slow together and then fade into absolute silence. Juliet stops and opens her eyes.

"And that's it," she says, shrugging.

For a minute I'm stunned speechless. That's it? That's it? I leap to my feet and applaud.

"Bravo! Bravo! Encore!"

"Ugh God, no encore," she laughs as she flops onto the stool with an exhausted sigh.

"That was incredible! How did you—When did you?"

"When I was eleven my dad enrolled himself in one of these dance yoga class type things. I'd already been taking ballet for three years at that point but I begged him to sign me up too. We did a lot of different cultural dances, especially African."

"Did you learn the poem there too?"

"Actually no," she answers, running her hand through her dark mane. "I learned the poem because of those three lines they use in Dead Poets Society."

"I knew it!" I burst out, giving her a hardy high five. "The scene where they're all chanting it!"

"Best movie ever, girl, you know! Anyway that's where I heard part of it. And I just loved the movie so much, but of all the excerpts of poetry that was used in the movie, for some reason that one just stuck in my head for days. Maybe it was the rhythm of it I don't know. So I went and looked it up. I had no idea but it was this amazing, long intricate piece of work. It amounts to like five pages typed I think and I read the whole thing over and over and over for a long time. It was just incredible to me. It begged to be read out loud; there are even little notes written into the sidelines on how different sections should be read, which I tried to use while practicing for this little performance piece or whatever you want to call it."

She laughs. How can she possibly just shrug off this thing off? I'm still amazed by it.

"So why do you love this poem?"

"I love this poem because of its dramatic elements. It's poetry, but it's auditory, but the language of it makes it visual. It's a poem about bloodlines, about race, about all those centuries of existence each person unknowingly carries. Those can be a huge source of strength at times. I also found it really amazing that it was written by a white man in the time it was written. He has such an understanding of a culture he doesn't belong to, and wrote this in a time period where no one had that understanding. I think it's important for writers to cross over into new places and mind frames so they can push others to do so as well."

☻☻☻