If someone I know
that they live in my time zone
reads my latest poem at two in the morning
(likes have a timestamp, profiles geolocation),
I can’t help but worry if they are okay.
Maybe they’re suffering from insomnia
or a broken heart, or they’re trying to forget
the pain in a hospital bed,
or they just grabbed their phone
on the way to the bathroom,
but whatever it is, I
am worried.
How selfish of me.
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
While I linger on the dwarf wall
at the corner of Union Street and Back Wynd,
leaning against a column with an Ionic capital,
I can’t help but detest the posthumous fame
of the man who wrote a book of short verses
with ponderous sentences full of yestermorrow
aspirations that I’m about to compose.
Sometimes I yearn for days with a gentle flavour,
like Thriday—marking the upcoming long weekend—
or a late birthday eve when I have to count out
a few dozen candles to decorate the cake.
I guess I’m starting to get tired of the daily toddling
from one lamppost to another, consumed by the desire
to bargain, whether it’s relationships in decay
or evening classes in applied thanatology.
I should live my life to the fullest, or so they say,
and actually living my life did cross my mind for a moment,
but that would require far too much energy,
so I’d rather settle for a cup of peppermint and rooibos brew
and a chapter of ‘Auto da Fé’,
and besides, it would be embarrassing if I failed
to fail.
Every now and then I spy on my neighbours—
a humble family of magpies—and I’ve always been struck
by how busy they are with their lives, but perhaps it’s easier
when you face your end after a measly few years.
With a lifespan like that, who would waste time
on meta-existence?
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.
Abandoned in no man’s land
between the living room and the kitchenette,
I read ‘Portrait of a Lady’ aloud
to the mealy-mouthed hum
of the microwave heating fish
and vegetables for my solitary dinner,
only to realise that it no longer mattered much
who I was before breakfast if no one was there
to tell me how to get through the supper.
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 