With every line a liability—
and Ea von Allesch out of reach—
I can’t leave my expectations
at the mercy of the em dash.
And while I can always hang a thousand words
celebrating the forlornly sought-after mortality
of Death itself
on the wall,
there’s no need to be overly dramatic—
everyone deserves a postmortem, after all,
even the slightly hysterical.
Isn’t that what a pied-à-terre is for?
Perhaps.
Unless you make it your living
room.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Tell me, are you a real writer? I mean, does anybody buy what you write or publish it or anything?
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961)
I guess I’m not a real writer
since no one buys my tortuous words
and I haven’t published anything—
at least not in English—
unless you count the bottomless pit
of the world wide web. But let’s start small
and get yourself that box first.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Each and every one of us likes to think that we are unique in our special way, but at the end of the day, there is always a Darwin or a Wallace who will find a pigeonhole for us in the taxonomy. If I had to characterise myself, it might be something like this:
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Romantic love is the desire for copulation,
embellished with the timid glances of a sonnet,
unless you are a eunuch who settles for lyricism
out of barren necessity.
Is that why I would rather have an empty bed
than empty shelves?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
The frail constitution of conscience,
the assumed brevity of spirit,
and the calculated immodesty of mind,
all curtained with a green palette—
courtesy of a linden bathed in sunlight—
is a simple recipe for disaster
or a poem.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
As a discreet couch dweller,
keenly collecting calloused complements,
I have long found this protracted writers’ retreat—
or, as others call it, life—a rather daunting experience,
yet a certain sense of entitlement, albeit an off-putting one,
is to be expected in the heights of the Anthropocene,
with all those inflated egos and hopes
born amongst orphans in the making—
of which I am one.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Poets often write about themselves,
yet sometimes they become the theme
driving their vainglorious stanzas,
but mostly there is nothing in their verse
but them.
As a kid, did you ever dream of creating something
unwittingly complicated, like the theory of everything
or a box of matches to light the stake, or practical—
another Antikythera mechanism, for instance—
only to realise years later that no one expected you to
because apparently, nothing beats the nine-to-five
on the way to the golden age? And they may be right,
but you know what? At least you won’t be crying
over pyrite.
In this backwater of ours,
where pragmatists work on dating algorithms
while romantics try to figure out how to get rid of space debris,
obscurity is not a bad thing,
especially when you plan on becoming a master
of the single sentence.
hidden pilcrow 