He always
He always wanted to explain things,
but no one cared,
So he drew.
Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn’t anything.
He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky.
He would lie out on the grass and look up in the sky
and it would be only the sky
and all the things inside him that needed saying.
And it was after that that he drew the picture,
It was a beautiful picture. He kept it under his pillow and would let no-one see it.
And he would look at it every night and think about it.
And when it was dark and his eyes were closed he could see it still.
And it was all of him and he loved it.
When he started school he brought it with him,
Not to show anyone, but just to have it with him like a friend.
It was funny about school.
He sat in a square brown desk like all the other square desks and he had thought it would be red.
And his room was a square brown room, like all the other rooms.
And it was tight and close. And stiff.
He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, with his arm stiff and his feet
flat on the floor, stiff, with the teacher watching and watching.
The teacher came and spoke to him.
She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys.
He said he didn’t like them and she said it didn’t matter.
After that they drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt
about morning. And it was beautiful.
The teacher came and smiled at him. “What’s this?” she said.
“Why don’t you draw something like Ken’s drawing?” Isn’t it beautiful?”
After that his mother bought him a tie and he always drew airplanes
and rocket ships like everyone else.
And he threw the old picture away
And when he lay out alone looking at the sky, it was big and blue, and
all of everything, but he wasn’t anymore.
He was square and brown inside and his hands were stiff.
And he was like everyone else. All the things inside him that needed
saying didn’t need it anymore. It had stopped pushing. It was crushed.
Stiff.
Like everything else.
This was written very quietly by a teenage boy in class. Afterwards he put it very quietly on his teacher’s desk and went home and quietly, very quietly, took his own life.
I’d love an in depth analysis of this poem.
It is strange how stories like these circulate — each time with a slight variation. The first time I received a copy of this sad narrative was my first year of teaching in 1968. It was in the form of prose rather than poetry, and it had a different title. The superintendent of schools read it during an orientation for new teachers, and said it was by an anonymous college student. There was no mention of suicide. I shared the story with my high school students throughout the years, and the piece generated many interesting discussions.
I encountered the same story again during a writing seminar. The instructor insisted the story was true, but I think he said that the boy had died in an automobile accident. He wasn’t too pleased when I told him where and when I first received a copy of it. What’s perhaps the strangest of all is that – although the format and title of the piece changes over the years and extra lines get added — the original wording remains the same! And, its message, though open to interpretation, remains poignant.
Sometimes I still wonder who the real author is, and why he or she wrote about the little boy who drew that wondrous picture. I retired from teaching a few years ago, but I try to encourage and nurture creativity in my grandchildren, just as I did with my own children and students.