by The Cowl Editor on November 4, 2021

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Poetry

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by Max Gilman ’25

 

I cease to dry my body,

As my towel falls to the wet floor,

Soaking the towel,

In puddles of shower water,

I stand there for a brief moment,

While listening to a melancholy song,

And I think about it,

The song I am playing,

And I think about them,

The people outside the shower,

Hearing my music,

I think about how the song might make 

them feel.

Small droplets of water begin to fall from my skin,

I then think of how the song makes me feel.

The song makes me feel pleasant

But thoughts of them

Crowd my mind,

Like a hoarder’s house,

Filled with the same item,

The dripping of water begins to stop,

They,

The ones who listen to my music,

Beyond the shower’s curtain,

Do they really care about my music?

My music,

But I don’t own any music.

How can one

Own art?

I notice that the sound of water hitting the tiled ground has stopped,

And now my towel is drenched,

In the water below me.

Before I reach for my towel

I begin to reconcile,

To myself,

About the music,

But before I can conquer a cohesive thought,

The song ends.

I never took a moment to enjoy it.

It’s quite ironic,

To stand here alone,

So naked as to only hone my bare skin,

But shielded by an inch-wide shower curtain,

Unseen by those observing my music.

My music,

My mind in thought.

by The Cowl Editor on October 28, 2021

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Halloween

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by Max Gilman ’25

 

What came first,

The rope,

Or the knot,

The knife,

Or the cut,

The murder,

Or the disdain?

Nonetheless,

One leads to the other,

In an endless cycle of circling disparity.

Before all these, though,

Came the child,

With a free mind,

To fill with ideas.

 

There he was,

Laying on a bed he honed for years,

Since his old life,

When he was but a child,

Tears grew into puddles,

On the indents of his face, 

Whilst he stared with starry eyes,

At a white ceiling panel,

Accompanied by other panels,

That ran along the whole upper surface.

Above them lay things his mother had no knowledge of,

Empty bottles of liquor,

Downed in silence days before,

His eyes slowly lost stars,

As his tears began to subside,

He thought about his mother,

And her disdain for who he had become.

He thought of the past days,

When he and his mother would play,

When he was child,

In his old life.

Now he has a good time,

Through a bottle of liquor.

 

When will the young boy’s eyes dry of tears?

When will the boy return to his mother?

When he becomes a child again?

When will the boy get help?

When he needs it?

 

Years have passed,

Since the boy cried there,

The bed he knew was now gone,

The ceiling tiles were empty and clean,

The boy had now grown to a young man,

And his eyes cried for those things less pitiful.

 

His eyes then,

Had cried away the stars.

 

A fire burned long ago,

As the ashes of the young boy’s belongings slowly turned,

To winding smoke,

Rising,

High into the night’s black atmosphere,

Stretching to the stars above.

 

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. 

 

by The Cowl Editor on September 30, 2021

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Poetry

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by Max Gilman ’25

 

Heat grew over the paint-stroked sky,

He looked up, his gaze meeting light blue heavens,

His leg could be heard dragging from miles away,

Hours passed as he made his way, slowly, through the sea of ruptured stone,

How many of these stones must have been broken down to create the liquid ground,

Having been maltreated, his time was slowly dissipating by the second,

His trail, manifested from the blood spilt out the wound,

Hills stretched as if to mock the trifling size of man,

Hammering thoughts pounded the forefront of his mind,

Heroic steps continued, leisurely, yet antagonizing,

Hard hands strike the desert’s shifting sand, ceding control, he keels over with disdain,

He looks up, his gaze meeting light blue heavens, 

Hark, a sound exerts itself throughout the barren sands cape,

Then, came the seductress, void of life, then came the cease of suffering, then, the final breath,

With red, the man painted, through death, an artist of blood,

A young boy enters the shattering wind’s domain, 

Noticing the painted ground, the red sand.