Tag: existential reflection

Candour

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

When I was a boy, we often played
war—a bunch of kids in shorts
with Kalashnikov sticks. It was fun
until I read ‘Ravens and Crows
Will Peck Us to Pieces’.

When I was a boy, we often tracked
squirrels in the school yard
like the would-be Winnetou and Old Shatterhand,
still free of the consequences
of Indianertümelei.

When I was a boy, we never imagined
someone could say with a straight face,
‘I have never given up on life
because I’ve never embarked on it
in the first place’—yet I just did.

More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

Varnish

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

To walk about naked
after fifty years of tête-à-tête
with a pillow
felt like effete complacency
that went beyond certain obligations,
yet Mr Honk perceived it as no more
than monotonous staccato
measured by an hourglass
rather than a metronome,
suspecting that life’s last curiosity
might actually turn out to be an endnote
page that contains nothing
but a bunch of ibids from an unknown source,
a mild inconvenience,
one could say,
after doing one’s utmost
and still failing to figure out the function
one was supposed to perform.

More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

Corpullation

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

While rummaging through the cupboards
full of semitransparent containers and ancestral dust,
Mr Honk, though immaterial, was reflecting
on the layer of flesh over his bones
and whether it wasn’t an inch too thick,
like the hollow walls without insulation
that separated him from the clamour
of his alleged sins, interspersed with inductions
on emotional economy, and all the books read
and reread over and over again, through generations,
to battle the excruciating boredom of the days
of conscience, only to be more agreeable
about the difference between a roman à clef
and a secret journal.

More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com