This is Cobb

This post isn’t quite in the vein of my usual stuff, but oh well. At any rate, it’s mostly intended for Jenna and Alec. I at long last rediscovered the poem I wrote for one of SUPs few writing workshops. Our prompt (which was really wonderful) was a children’s book called, I believe, This is Texas. I think this may actually be the only poem I’ve written in the past few years – how sad is that! But here it is.

This is Cobb.

Cobb is that building you have been to.

It’s where your Hum class met before they moved it to Judd.

Cobb is the college’s largest source of English majors and cigarette smoke,
RSO fliers, old Maroons, cheap coffee, long scarves, tweed jackets, Chinese buns, and flooded bathrooms.

At Cobb you might see strange installation art, or obscure Japanese film.
You might eat day-old free bagels.
You might hear lectures on Kant at any time of day.

So many, many things to do at Cobb. So many things to see.

And at night at Cobb, interesting things crawl out from the basement.

UT audition surveys asking if you want to be naked on stage.
Sock puppet fights.
Sorority girls singing.
People who do MUNUC.
And those very odd ones, who study in the same room they have lecture, imagining their professor, still there, still lecturing.

You should be careful at Cobb at night.

But in the day, when there is a long line for stale coffee in styrofoam cups,
when you can say hello to the same people out front all day long,
before every class, after every class,
and when the stairs are too crowded to go down,

then you should go to Cobb and not worry about being careful,
and be happy at Cobb,
the building to which we have all already been.