all the trinkets of the day
I never had chemo or radiation,
and the excision was swift and frigid,
with a wound festering for months,
but now, six years later, there is not much left—
a tiny scar where the heart is and the bills
that will always remind me of the growth:
amatoria neoplasia.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
ἐπειδήπερ ὅταν μὲν ἡμεῖς ὦμεν, ὁ θάνατος οὐ πάρεστιν· ὅταν δ᾽ ὁ θάνατος παρῇ, τόθ᾽ ἡμεῖς οὐκ ἐσμέν.
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
Whether it’s a casual game of chess on the beach
or a night spent waiting at Helen Rivington House,
when they suddenly say ‘I’m afraid of death’,
people may actually mean they are afraid of dying—
a slippage that’s probably not as bizarre as kissing
in a confession booth to Gesang der Jünglinge
or replacing a cheval mirror in the boudoir
with its Conté sketch à la Seurat,
with one caveat:
you have never tried to explain death
to your kid.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
What a committee is
very much depends on where
and whom you ask, since it could be
a flower arranging committee
at a local church in Little Wallop,
or the Hellsing Production Committee,
or the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry,
or the Norwegian Nobel Committee,
or the People’s Committee of Siam,
or the Committee of Secret Correspondence,
and even the Committee of 300—
yet all I hear is
‘Come E.T.’.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Is it weird to be an old man?
A few years ago, it would have been—
but now I no longer mind soggy pasta,
and I stay home so I don’t have to worry
about the ‘meant to be’ and simply smile
when I hear ‘Serait-ce possible alors?’.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
I hate people
walking abreast across the pavement
so that they could yap
as if they were taking part
in Sympósion.
Saying that, I feel somewhat embarrassed—
not so much at the sentiment,
but at the excessive solemnity
of the expression.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
If I were to run away, would it be Paris,
the Boulevard du Montparnasse perhaps?
But why not Trifouillis-les-Oies—
or why France in the first place?
Soho or Greenwich Village would suit me better, after all,
even if I never wake up to an indie rock song,
like protagonists in rom-coms, and think that a French film
opening with a typewriter cannot be bad
when played sul tasto to find out if a score
is the music.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
While learning the full Windsor
and solitude, I wondered why
life couldn’t simply arrive
pre-lived—so that I could skip
straight to the end,
circumventing the daily exercise
in genre attribution, like me—
fastidious, yet incomplete.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Rice flour, potato starch, maize flour,
tapioca starch, gram flour, arrowroot powder,
calcium phosphates, sodium carbonates, xanthan gum,
ground black pepper, eggs, and water—
all that to make a piece of flatbread for my breakfast,
which is as revealing as Boîte ouverte
de Piero Manzoni.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
If I were born with a sixth sense—
not some paranormal hogwash,
but something like a magnetic sense
or the ability to perceive polarisation—
my world would likely be richer,
though the very thought of it makes me feel
like a physicist specialising in photology
yet not knowing what red is,
having been born blind.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
