My poetry written in English
Mr Honk detested subtitles—
he always felt that the author either needed an excuse
for not coming up with a better title in the first place
or treated the readers like a bunch of halfwits,
which was mostly unrequited, since they had paid the charge,
tax included, and could only complain after having to deal
with his mental excursions—
yet Yethindra Vityala’s caught him
by surprise.
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Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
Little Gil and Frank have always been fastidious boys,
and that’s never changed, even after they got their pee-haitch-dees.
Now doctors Gamesh and Enstein play ‘I spy’ with a man
with soulful, if somewhat dispirited and unsympathetic, eyes,
pretending that someone is thinking about his future,
even though no one has ever told him that when it’s time to age,
a Deus is no less insouciant than a Neanderthal.
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Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.
Seneca, Hercules Furens
Chiefly British, often archaic, like a gobemouche
that found his snollygoster, Mr Honk wandered
the streets of the long-lost home town he no longer recognised
the buildings of—the trees were still the same, though, just mightier—
and muttered under his breath, ‘Signed, Kushim’; finding it ironic
that the first name ever recorded was that of an accountant, not a poet,
but in response he only heard the cries of the peacocks in the palace park—
a sensory room full of adjectified characters, heroes of the complex sentence
or the old man’s indifference, one calls the lost passion for the morass
of mundane concerns—knowing full well that he was nothing
but a talkative ape descendant facing the level three chaos:
per quietem ad terram.
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With his ever-changing
insatiable curiosity for detail,
at one point Mr Honk wished
to explore clefs on the staff
and chord progressions,
but if he had learnt anything
from his last music teacher,
it’s that the most humble
might easily turn out to be
the malevolent one.
No wonder he played
Le Carnaval des animaux
as a ‘largo doloroso’
with a perfect smile.
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My mind got to ramblin’, like a wild geese
From the west
Devil Got My Woman, Skip James
Napping with a book on his lap,
Mr Honk dreamed of the shirorekha
over the Diabelli Variations, played
as if Delta blues had been invented
on the Danube—even pure sour grapes
couldn’t bring anyone past the cognitive
dissonance—only to find upon waking
a suitable name for his only invention:
Kalidīpāsana.
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Although a treasure trove of words,
Mr Honk only ever said a few
on any one occasion, as if preparing
for a quiet life in a discreet garret
or in a but and ben on the cliffs
were as important as avoiding the perceived
embarrassment of mentioning toasts
in Towcester.
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Too late to invent Modigliani
or write the Les Berceaux,
Mr Honk settled for vignettes
on the inherent insettleabilititude
of a whim: Isn’t that what
the intentionally blank pages
are for?
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As a nocturnal breed,
Mr Honk never fully adapted
to his condition, but even he knew
that the parchment nomads,
like hidden pilcrows,
favour serene moonbaths
under the waned crescent
once all the trinkets of the day
finally run their course
and even the turntable
can’t outshout the chorus
of aspiring seagulls.
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Undecided
between the Metamorphoses,
the Pentateuch, and the Puranas,
Mr Honk pondered the reason
for his existence.
But whether it was divine
indifference, human boredom,
or generative model
hallucinations, he knew
he was nothing but
a by-product.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 