Here are my poems in English and Polish.
I missed the morning sunlight trying to decide if I really knew that “here is one hand,”
and now, as raindrops trickle down on my reflection in the window, all I can think about
is the disembodied lady and how much she differed from health faddists and the ones
on a megavitamin craze who were heavily overdosing on pyridoxine in the eighties.
And then a question struck me: was that reflection actually all we were granted?
There are simple pleasures like a late-summer beach walk,
the aroma of freshly baked bread, and waking up after a full
night’s sleep, and there are those not as obvious, like a passage
from Der Tod des Vergil with its seemingly endless sentences,
Kleines Harmonisches Labyrinth that ends in the wrong key,
or Euler’s identity, for which it seems unknown who first
stated it explicitly. But what if they are all just illusions
that I flirt with instead of sharing?
I had my chance for a happy life, or at least for a meaningful one,
and now all that’s left is an artificially prolonged apathetic wait
for a prompter to cue from behind the limelights my final line.
Meanwhile, I watch cheesy romcoms and wonder what I could
have done to keep that clumsy affinity from feeding on my raw
impatience and why there was no ticket for a night train between
our pillows.
Carving a jack-o’-lantern is as alien to me as ending a sentence
with a preposition, and yet I got used to the latter once I learned
the islanders’ tongue. Buying a pumpkin shouldn’t be a big deal
then, especially since, instead of Miss Daisy’s, I have already
chosen Pennywise’s smile … for tonight.
A saddle-goose once saw death’s head upon a mop-stick weeping.
“What is the matter, my gaunt bud?” he asked, since tears were dripping,
but what could be said at the sound of a bell beyond the timeless
“Bollocks!”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I think of La Divina, who, all of a sudden, comes
to mind like a gift-wrapped bedtime prayer begging: pietà, pietà! Too late to play
the record leaves me with a distant memory of that great ugly voice of hers, once
and again jaywalking through a night already immortalised in polaroid pictures.
But when I lie down with my eyes closed, I touch the air saturated with the scent
of Eau de Verveine, which is puzzling because I never actually wear cologne,
and I assure myself that I could fall asleep if only I knew why the lighthouse
was no longer lit. And I swear I could hear the hoarse lament of a foghorn…
Only there was no fog.
I guess it is easier to just say, “I see you are happy now.” But one doesn’t smile
too widely, doesn’t laugh too loudly, and wanders around with their fist clenched
tight on the bottle neck. Happiness, I mean. You know, that almond-milk-bathed
chatelaine we all covet from afar. Only you haven’t heard the last one on the way
to the next eagerly anticipated Friday night out already.
I was never really fond of yellow, not until I met Miss Georgia Lass.
Two seasons later, only a hint of metaphysical indiscretion remained
unpraught in the canary shade. And just like that, the realisation came
that living that witty script would be a lot simpler. I could just occupy
the peripheries of a post-it note.
Sometimes I wonder who you are—you who read my words.
I’d like to think I have affected, perhaps even changed, your life,
but I guess it’s just something people like myself fantasise about,
trying to convince themselves of their relevance in a cruel world
of petty miscellanies.
hidden pilcrow 