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by trogers5 on March 27, 2022

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Poetry

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Max Gilman ’25

 

“We use our math to create cattle. Shape this way and that, but eventually your lines will be nothing more than a man with a rifle and you, the fawn child.”

 

Wonder if this windowed world holds something more, 

Peer through the dying streetlight, a window through old construction cranes, 

Slowly does the sky fall to dust, rain ashy illness, the foreshadow of what I like to call, 

The city of FALLEN livelihood, population deceased. 

The people here are mad. 

They hate fiction and all those vibrant colors, 

So took a knife to the unicorn, they did, spilling its blood like a broken faucet, 

The streets bore only blood, 

Only blood, 

And the unicorn’s corpse,  

Continues to be plowed by the onlookers, 

 

I swear I know some of these people—                                                                                                   The

Folks who eat raw from                                                                                                                          Raining 

Blood. Leaving the                                                                                                                                      Only 

Innocence left to decay, as livelihood—                                                                                           

Ceases 

To collate an obelisk—                                                                                                                                  For, nay, dedicated to the sanctum of wastelands,                                                                                    An 

Unfailing effort roused by an—                                                                                               UNRIGHTEOUS   

Humanity following an illusive ghost, a—                                                                                                    “god” 

 

I have this odd tingling in my chest,

I feel like a windy grassy plain, 

Cratered by something magnificent 

indented, like the unicorn… 

I feel the tires of the citizens crush the corpse of the lovely unicorn, 

because they hate fiction so… 

The horse’s deformed body lays indented from our continuous wheels…

 

It’s tiring to drown daily with no swimming route, 

So I plunge into the street puddles, hiding below the walking men, 

And I notice this symmetry, these unholy monuments to perceived honor, 

They cannot see me snarling in these puddles, the water muffles my voice, 

But I will never forget this sight, these “righteous” squabblers, stepping over me, 

—but I know the truth. They walk to work in their enclosure 

They run home in their enclosure. 

They eat from the ones inside the enclosure. 

Maybe they’ll leave for a week, but I will see them again soon… 

In this hell—

In this “Box.” 

 

A box without lines, A box with lines, A box of lies

A box without lines, A box with lines, A box full of lies

A box with lines, A box with lines, A box of lies

A box with lines, A box with lines, A box of opened and disregarded FIBS. 

 

There has to be something more,

There must be something more, 

 

God Created Hell. 

            For people, Like you and I. 

         and he called it GOOD.

 

We were given shape, lines, 

We were given dead fields and grim city structures, 

We took our lines, 

and spit on fiction

and ran knives through flesh 

and we TOOK our lines,  

We created a city (#)

We called it a # (a city) 

 

It’s all hopeless, you see? 

You haven’t even noticed yet,  

have you? 

 

Our “city” is a box.