Rice flour, potato starch, maize flour,
tapioca starch, gram flour, arrowroot powder,
calcium phosphates, sodium carbonates, xanthan gum,
ground black pepper, eggs, and water—
all that to make a piece of flatbread for my breakfast,
which is as revealing as Boîte ouverte
de Piero Manzoni.
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Sometimes I question the old bloke in the mirror,
‘For how long do you plan to remain a mere victim
of adolescence?’ but he never responds,
so I’d like to ask my readers—all three of them,
but one is biased (myself), another stays silent
(an American poet with a good education),
and the last has been retrained into a daft office drone
(are the shareholders happy now, Mr Amodei?).
In the end, it all boils down to nothing much—
a sentiment, perhaps.
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I have seen Adam and Eve in a book
depository—he was a keeper; she, a dust jacket
fitter, who once learnt
at a lovers’ lane that, whether it’s fellatio
or a blowjob, it is supposed to be time well spent,
until they give you the look and then you know—
after all those years you are merely acquainted—
you and that shadow of yours.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
I have a plan
with unlimited calls and texts
(which is the standard nowadays),
and yet, faced with a profusion of means,
everyone’s will seems to lag behind,
as the only call I answered
over the last few months was a reminder
about my dentist appointment.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
I wept when reading Father Goriot
and The Idiot, but I was fifteen—
a fair excuse, I guess—
whereas now I simply try to believe
in my every word that I still remember,
as the days insist on living
without revealing which gullible soul is destined to pay
for accepting ‘visiting hours’—
or, as I call it, the life of a film-trailer connoisseur
who grasped a simple truth about colours:
they do not exist
(why wouldn’t I trust Keller and Lusseyran on the matter then?),
so I could spend my final day complaining
that, in recycling culture, even planting cabbages
has become yet another lifestyle hashtag
splashed on a t-shirt.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
I masturbate before going to sleep—
such a perfectly unremarkable statement,
and yet it would evoke a look of bewilderment,
embarrassment even, were I to say it outright,
unlike mentioning that I brush my teeth after every meal
or leisurely read The Diary of Samuel Pepys
at lunchtime.
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I filled the cabinet above the toilet
with rows of loo rolls—three-ply,
enriched with lotion and fragrance;
it is the perfect elegant paper,
or at least that’s what the description
on the back of the packaging says.
Quite the frippery for a derrière—
even one as fine as a poet’s.
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I believe in words;
I’m just not a fan.
And I sleep too few hours—
just enough to realise ‘I don’t exist’
is a self-refuting idea that I’ve deserved
after half a century of procrastination
and warm saline gargling—still convinced
that time has tricked me,
leaving me uncomfortable behind
the greatest invention of all:
lined curtains.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Sometimes I don’t remember
to breathe, waking up
in the middle of dreaming about Thriday
to answer the call
of a voiding anaphora—
Lady Nocturia—a girl with a big nose
trying on my latest peekaboo trochees
and fortune-cookie wisdom,
where the magical word ‘suppose’
might put on high alert the unassuming,
unaccustomed to word scavenging.
At least she never offers the fiat currency
sung by the god of others’ idolatry
and all the proponents,
where a Spider-Man kiss lands
as an awfully lively practical joke
in a reluctantly diagnosed deepity
after years of accumulated damage—
how very humane of her—
once a sudden rain washes the easel
with dark pastels and a splash of ink.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
