music makers

By Maya Olivo

This poem is about society’s shared desire for escape and comfort in a mundane yet chaotic world.

close your eyes
forget about time
forget about school and waiting in line
forget about dreams and conversation
take a trip out the gen z station

walk down the stairs
glue into pairs
glide a scissor through all your clothes to wear
forget about sleep till your eyes are wood
now your body can go wherever it should

think about sledding on a summer’s day
think about cities, somersaults in may
think about glitter glasses and fun
read an article on how to love someone

the music makers
the dreamers of dreams
we’re among the fairies who dance in our sleep
the music makers
the dreamers of dreams
we’re among the fairies who dance in our sleep

they play and slide and hide
they want to get out, they bang on the door
so their hands shatter, but if not together, they’ll fly no more

down they drop heavy lead to your shoes
you feel it when you walk to bed
you feel it when you open your eyes
you feel it when you remember time
remember school and waiting in line
remember dreams and conversation
forget why you’re stuck in the same situation

think about trees poking holes in your kite
think about grueling expensive delight
think about fairies dying behind the sea
our starving satisfaction is what makes us all free

Process

I wrote this poem in the middle of the night sometime in fall 2020. Things were still uncertain about whether our lives would return to how they once were, and this is almost a love poem, in a way, to all of the simple parts of our lives that we took for granted. Deeper into the poem, we see more glitches in our memory, in a way that is meant to show how the present has caused us to view our past differently, and how we have changed in comparison to the versions of ourselves in those memories. Sometimes thinking about better days can upset us, and the constant theme of forgetting represents how we try to repress our longing for a different life.

The “music makers” element wasn’t added until a bit later when I performed this in my school’s poetry slam this year. I tinkered with the Gene Wilder quote, “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams,” in which he says as Willy Wonka. I think this quote connects to all of us right now, because now, when we are as isolated as ever, is when we really start to dream. Our past lives have become possibilities we can only imagine existing again, and in a way, that’s sad. But it is this shared dream that unifies us, so it really has sort of a bittersweet feel to it. The fairies are a metaphor I added for the ceaseless hope that stays inside us, even when we don’t realize it’s there. The hope is waiting to come out of us, but it will never come out if we don’t let our guards down and allow us to mourn the past, for this emphasizes the possibilities of the future.