Tag: poetry
The Boy With Star Eyes
by The Cowl Editor on October 28, 2021
Portfolio
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.
An Ode to My Dark Circles.
by The Cowl Editor on October 21, 2021
Portfolio
by Mariela Flores ’23
It’s as if someone cut you out of a magazine
and glued you under my eyes.
You are the accessory that I have been given,
even in my well-rested times.
I’ll always know when I’m tired
but I won’t ever need an eyeshadow base,
and even if I don’t like you that morning,
you’ll always be a part of my face.
You’re the star witness of my best nights writing
your brown-ish purple hue lets others know that I am still fighting.
I keep my darkest secrets in the roundness of your bags
the swollen fragile skin stays soft despite the tags.
They remind me of my father whenever I look in the mirror.
Caffeine courses through our blood and it helps us see much clearer.
I don’t know who I’d be if you weren’t there.
Makeup tried to hide you
but I didn’t like the feeling or the purple-lacking stare.
I see now you are my inheritance
a face I cannot escape,
but I’ll always remember to love
my tired face.
replying to text messages at red lights
by The Cowl Editor on October 21, 2021
Portfolio
by AJ Worsley ’22
it’s not that i didn’t have the time,
in fact, it’s precisely the opposite.
i had too much time,
too much time on my hands with nobody to occupy it.
but if you keep with that attitude you’ll only ever have friendships,
never any best friendships.
everyone else in their life, a vacuum for their presence.
your time will come, but you have too much time,
it already should have come by now.
but what good is the poet if they don’t know the power of their ink?
and when do they turn the lights off in this parking lot?
do your hair the same way you’ve been for years.
put on that same hoodie and start the car.
drive somewhere in a pathetic attempt to be busy to mimic the lives you once occupied.
“sorry i can’t right now,” a dead phrase in my life,
i can, and i will every single time.
to cope, i apply pressure to the few people i have left,
and in return it actually pushes them further away.
they tell me i’m too dependent on them,
but i’m just dying to get inside their head because i’ve been stuck in my own for far too long.
and the truth is, the only thing i’m dependent on is this steering wheel.
By the Rivers of Babylon
by The Cowl Editor on October 21, 2021
Portfolio
by Fiona Clarke ’23
The burning sun runs its blazing hands along the wildcat,
The ocean, upsets it, and offers a remedy then.
Take and dissolve beneath your tongue—How often?—
As often as you need—For how long?—
Until you, yourself, dissolve.
How can there still be water?
For crying out loud there is a cure,
But for silent mortal flesh, there is only a pillar of cloud before me
And a pillar of salt behind me,
And a gryphon in the bed beside me.
Oh, no doubt, one of the damnable Irish men behind me,
Who saved up all his laughter for his last day,
And his tears for its either-night—
No doubt he can explain this well.
And listen, for in answer to my shoddy prayers,
A knock-off Solomon speaks, and
Out of the mouths of the depraved, beloved,
Ramshackle sense shall come forth.
I will ask you, then
“Were you in the swim last night?”
I could have sworn I saw you balanced on one hand
On the banks of the river, and on the ties of the railroad—
But then, love and a hole in the earth
Sometimes run all together.
Today I stand transfixed where the orange trees grew,
For when I went outside to look at the stars,
I saw a cleft in the chin of the earth
That I had not seen before,
And I saw the rain pouring out its heart
Where I used to pour out mine like water,
And now the sea is full.
Today I stand transfixed where the orange trees grew,
And look and see: every surface is
One face shifting into another.
me, eric, layla, & a brick wall
by The Cowl Editor on October 7, 2021
Portfolio
by Marelle Hipolito ’22
Music seeps through the brick wall
“It’s too loud!” I bang in response.
Music grows louder and louder
My patience shrinks smaller and thinner
and it’s back and forth for a while.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday,
bang bang bang
I’m drowned out by the music!
I have no choice,
I learn to live with the noise.
I numb it out, until one specific day
when in the music through the brick wall
I hear Eric’s voice:
“What’ll you do when you’re lonely?”
I drop my pen, my work put to the side
It’s been years since I heard that song
it brought back memories and turned back time.
I listen to Eric beg, as he drops down to his knees
he sounds as desperate as when I asked you not to leave.
“Like a fool, I fell in love with you”
since you played Layla on the piano & turned my whole life upside down
the chords sting, it’s rooting me in place
my tears are in vain, and they make me sing along and cry out.
bang bang bang
“you’re too loud!” they yell in response
as the music gets quieter and quieter
the absence of you gets stronger and louder,
but we have no choice
like Layla like Eric
we have to live with the noise.
When Were; You and I: A Hedge Stone among the Graveyard of Artistic Demise
by The Cowl Editor on October 7, 2021
Portfolio
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.
stranger on a plane
by The Cowl Editor on September 30, 2021
Portfolio
by Marelle Hipolito ’22
flight delayed, NYC heavy rains
“sit tight,” the pilot said.
I sit tight and look out the window
It’s a cloudy night
I sit tight and look at the people in the seats around me
Business suit, foot tapping anxiously
Khaki shorts, humming a song softly
And just like me, you wore ripped jeans.
one hour of sitting tight under the heavy rain
the pilot says: “never mind…we gotta deplane!
come back to the gate in another hour
hopefully by then it’s just light showers”
We all stand up, and I see your face
In the center of dark straight hair
Eyes dark from sitting tight
We all exit the gate and go our separate ways.
Yet somehow you and I go to the same restaurant, tables 7 & 8
Ten minutes later, after you order and then I do
We hear over the microphone: “everyone, the weather cleared up! Come back to gate 2!”
You and I look at each other, down our drinks and take our food to go
And we both go sprinting to the gate, to board & go to different homes
Once we are seated, between the business suit and the khaki shorts
We look at each other, laugh and smile, and then we fly.
Once we land, before I noticed, I lose you at baggage claim
Oh stranger wearing ripped jeans on the plane
I can’t wait to tell this story, I wish I got your name
Scarlet Paint/The Red Sand
by The Cowl Editor on September 30, 2021
Portfolio
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.
Divorce
by The Cowl Editor on September 30, 2021
Portfolio
by Anna Pomeroy ’23
I never liked hearing the truth.
It always scared me because
I would fear the worst
As the words slipped out of their mouths
With no point of return.
At age four, it was a struggle
For my parents to tell me they were getting
a divorce.
Sitting me down, their voices were hushed
By my shouts—
“No talking!”
I’d state demandingly
Thinking that if I were to not
Hear those words—
Those words that would eventually carry on with me through life—
It wouldn’t have to happen.
Llenita
by The Cowl Editor on September 23, 2021
Portfolio
by Mariela Flores ’23
Content Warning: this piece contains content that could be triggering regarding eating disorders and body image.
She called me llenita.
Those words poked at my round belly,
her eyes threw daggers into the soft flesh of my cheeks,
her hands pinched my sides,
as if she were trying to rip off the excess fat.
At eight-years-old I was forced to notice my body,
every tamale, pupusa, tortilla, weighed
me down.
I began to sink within myself.
I had no strength at eight-years-old to carry
the weight of being llenita.
I noticed every curve––
the bluntness or the angles that protruded,
the soft skin not yet tainted
by the sharpness of my very own words.
I listened as the women around me talked.
Their voices held a dissonant tune
notes and cadences crashing into one another.
It reached my ears,
the words dieta and gordita, joined the chorus leaving no room for a bridge.
I had been called out and accused.
They were the judge and juror sending me to a life sentence
of questioning if I was too llenita, gordita, feita.
They handed me rope that I would tie around my waist
measuring my worth every single day.
Llenita was tattooed onto my forehead.
A reminder that being too full was the worst thing I could be.
If I was llenita,
no one would ever think I could be bonita.