by The Cowl Editor on October 7, 2021

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Poetry

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By Max Gilman ’25

 

Tell them tales, 

Entwine them with snaring literary truths, 

Yet they slip through, 

They, 

Slip through the spiked thorns amongst them, 

And, 

Carry on, 

And so begins the cycle again, 

Yet the outcome is the same, 

But now, 

They, 

Are experienced in slipping through the thorns, 

What is it man truly yearns? 

Truth? 

No, 

Denial of truth, 

Until, 

Substance is needed, 

What does it mean, 

To run alongside the sun? 

 

Tap, tap, tap, 

Strokes from my hand hit the sides of the metallic desk, 

With a pencil, 

Barely sharpened, 

They listen with thoughts, 

Tap, tap, tap, 

Wandering elsewhere, 

They, the blue people, 

Living blue lives, 

Under blue rays, 

Who never leave the box they exist in, 

Tap, tap, tap, tap, 

I decide to join them, 

In my mind’s blue disillusion, 

Distracted by purposeless truths, 

Those of inconsequential value, 

And there I observe moments of elation, 

Tap, tap, tap, tap, 

 

Blank your mind, 

Make a fool of art, 

For realism’s sake, 

What they say is of no importance, 

They seek truth published by man, 

Constructed in a factory, 

Of partisan labor for the victimized workers, 

Sealed with the blood of the author’s eye, 

And cleansed with the tears of a marginalized citizenship, 

That is the truth they seek, 

And so they live their blue lives now, 

As it has come in accordance, 

Down the line of succession, 

So they take their seat, 

Upon a throne engulfed in blue light, 

Hypnotized by the denial of art, 

 

Tap, tap, tap, 

Oh, 

Quickly I lost control of the pencil, 

As it fell to the ground, 

And embedded itself inside a crack, 

That ran through a spiderweb of cracks, 

And I became entranced, 

Hypnotized by the art, 

 

But what did they see, 

Not art, no, 

Instead they noticed the ground, 

And its need for repair, 

 

Years have passed since, 

The air has grown stale, 

But not a bad stale, 

More like a stale you smell in an old closet, 

With jackets from your older family, 

I stand up from the library steps and walk, 

Strolling down the street I call to you, 

With both hands shuddered away in pockets, 

And ask you to meet me, 

By the entrance to the graveyard, 

 

You thank me for the offer but leave me, 

And so I come to the graveyard alone, 

With a notebook, 

Full of drawings, 

Mostly incomplete,  

But they express how I feel, 

 

I sit by a fallen tree, 

In the moist morning air, 

As the fog rises just above my line of sight, 

As my hand accidentally touches a patch of moss, 

I dust off the palm and open the notebook, 

To see pictures of me running with the sun, 

Sketches I made during class a long time ago, 

 

I look to the sun, 

And wonder how long I must wait, 

Before our cosmic dance together, 

I must wait here as always, 

And reside among the blue people, 

But I too will not prove to be blue, 

No, 

I seek a truth I do not understand, 

For it is not made by man, 

But by truth alone, 

An artistic truth, 

A belief in love, 

 

So accordingly, 

I proceed to flip a new page open, 

And begin to draw, 

What it is I want to see, 

 

Oh, 

But I have forgotten a pen, 

And so I lay down in the graveyard, 

Accompanied by the dead, 

Those who have escaped the blue light, 

And weep, 

For art’s demise, 

And its people, 

Who appreciate it not, 

 

Blue can only go so far, 

And so I pursue life, 

Through a ballad of different colors, 

All wonderful in their own regard.