I like homely actors.
They are so expressive
that they quickly grow on you—
the Brits certainly fill the bill—
the lot populating Mayburys,
Jarmans or Leighs,
still resisting the Tinseltown
sandpaper.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Tag: authenticity
Out of practice
I think I have fallen out of practice;
I’m just not sure what I’ve fallen out of practice at.
It might have something to do with having expectations—
whether high or low is of little importance—or happy endings
for the audience’s sake.
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Homo humanus
With the abundance of days,
a true existence is never far
for an honest person—
only twenty years away
or a page
if you’re lucky.
But as a piano teacher is not a pianist—
let alone a composer,
especially if their instrument,
crammed into the corner of the room,
is reduced to a mere flowerpot stand—
a man is only as humane.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Waiting for M
Never sure he needed a prompter
or a ponce, Mr Honk was desperate
to play the farewells and greetings
as if they were merely exercises
in elocution or, at most, ill-equipped,
restless harbingers of piles—
just another great Scottish tragedy
of arse.
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The infidel
Whether it’s a tourniquet or a poultice,
small talk plays its part only if both parties believe
in the magic of innocuous prattle,
even if sometimes you have to destroy
evidence to the contrary—
no wonder an old heathen remains silent.
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To those of numbered days
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.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Fictility
A French and an American student
meet on a train to Vienna and fall in love
sounds oddly familiar, like a pitch
for a romcom scribbled on a napkin
in one of Tinseltown’s shabby bars
that somehow turned into an epic trilogy,
and your only regret is that you were
neither the scribbler nor the lover,
but at least you’re holding on to something
real.
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Artificially induced
Being alive by proxy—
subject to semantic bleaching—
is the one particular burden that is mine
and mine alone, yet
since I mostly read old men
with long beards and moustaches,
I don’t feel particularly overwhelmed.
That is, until I’m singed by the flare
of tone contagion, which leaves no choice
but to close the book and get out
in the real world.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Only the brand
To sit at your desk in a cheerful disposition
is quite the illegitimate thought
when you pose as a harbinger of sorrow.
You are in the business of authenticity, after all.
And once your words leave the printing press,
you have to be even more careful—
a stain on a page never sells well,
whether it’s a bleeding nose
or heart.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 