Tag: love

oil painting: portrait of a young person with green-blue hair

To be surprised

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I met a girl the other day
at my favourite second-hand film shop, or a boy,
or none of the above. I simply couldn’t tell.
I was baffled, confused, and fascinated.
They look like they’re twenty-ish,
but facial and body features, voice pitch,
unisex clothing style, and hair colour—half blue,
half green—wouldn’t point at any of the two genders
I grew up knowing, although I lean more towards the feminine side.

I know it’s none of my business
and that the world is no longer binary
(it never was; we just swept what we didn’t want
to acknowledge under the rug),
but I can’t stop thinking about them.
It’s like meeting an exotic beauty for the first time
when you can’t take your eyes off her,
even knowing that you look at least idiotic
and maybe even creepy.

If I were half my age, it would probably be a good reason
to ask them out on a date, but in my situation,
I can only marvel at how incredibly beautiful and diverse the world is
and that I am still capable of being surprised by this fact.

oil painting with a young woman in a hat sitting on a chair in the sun

I shall never let a penman in my life

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

And if I meet you on the plain, during the rain,
in blasted Spain—before I spread my wings—uptight
about the fact you danced all night while I was waiting
for the bright morning’s clarity on what’s right,
then you should know that all your charm is gone already,
like the barm in every demijohn of ale, and you will never lift
my veil—at least that’s how I end this tale.

blue watercolour portrait of a young woman with closed eyes

An ink stain beyond courage

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I’m the future stranger you used to love
(remember the declaration? I do).
I’d like to say it’s liberating,
but I still struggle with the time
between closing and opening the curtains.

For a while, I thought I should see
if I was still capable of being surprised,
but now that I’m older, I’m not sure
if I even have the guts to find someone
(it sounds so simple in blue ink on papier vélin)

and forget about you.

watercolour of a man reading a book in a public place

I still have my fountain pen

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Somewhere between a punching bag’s punching bag
and a fully fledged piss-artist, you decided that life is not long enough
to carry on like that, but you also know that it’s nothing
but an act of pure cruelty if you constantly complain about it
and still decide to bring a new one into this wretched realm of yours.
Then you may recall the invisible you barely knew, and only briefly,
as your blooming youth denied him a single breath in your vicinity.
The problem is that he has long disappeared from your sight,
and you have no idea where to start to find him.
I can give you a clue: always look for the one with a book,
mastering the sigla of the Leiden Conventions or chasing the quiet of a meadow
enchanted in the vellum pages of the Voynich manuscript.
Once you find me, never let me go. We may have enough time
for one last vacat page to fill.

watercolour of a shy student during a party

The vaginaless monologues (8)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

Back in college, any time I complained about my lack of success in love, my friend used to say that every monster will find its amateur (this Polish proverb sounds much better in my native language because it rhymes). Truth be told, I always thought she was actually saying it for her own comfort because, with her being severely overweight and having a face that made you think of a hamster after a meal, what chance did she have of finding someone? It turned out that I couldn’t be more wrong. When I got to know her better, I saw that she was the life of the party, always surrounded by guys, swearing like a cobbler, and able to outdrink even the toughest of them. As she once told me, she couldn’t complain about the lack of intimate partners either. It was her fairly pretty yet terribly shy room-mate who was lonely, always in her shadow. I lost contact with both of them after college, but sometimes I wonder how their lives turned out. But I learned one thing from them: appearance may help you a little to make a good first impression, but in the end, what matters is who you are. If only I wasn’t that shy.

watercolour with a man in a kimono walking among cherry blossom petals at night

A cut-off song

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

吾が舞へば、麗し女、酔ひにけり（あがまへば、くはしめ、ゑひにけり）
吾が舞へば、照る月、響むなり（あがまへば、てるつき、とよむなり）
結婚に、神、天下りて（よばひに、かみ、あまくだりて）
夜は明け、鵺鳥、鳴く（よはあけ、ぬへどり、なく）
遠神恵賜（とほ、かみ、ゑみ、ため）

Because I had danced, the beautiful lady was enchanted
Because I had danced, the shining moon echoed
Proposing marriage, the god shall descend
The night clears away and the chimera bird (white’s thrush) will sing
The distant god may give us the precious blessing!
Japanese pre-feudal-era wedding song

When, at midnight, he sings with a longing voice,
“A ga maeba, kuwashime yoinikeri,”
the wind pushes him towards his desire.

When, at midnight, he sings with a longing voice,
“A ga maeba, terutsuki toyomunari,”
cherry blossom petals show him the way.

When, at midnight, he sings with a longing voice,
“Yobai ni, kami amakudarite, yo wa ake, nuedori naku,”
a dropped feather caresses his flushed cheek,
and their hands, at the first touch, yearn for more already.

But then the scorching sun of the day comes
and turns the petals into dust on the road,
taking away his voice, so he can no longer sing
“Toh kami, emi tame.”

watercolour with husband and wife at the table

Survival

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Burying a dead bird, we listened to Gil Shaham’s violin in L’inverno.
Then I kissed your ink-stained hands as if nothing had happened,
and we embraced the routine: uneventful nights, quiet mornings,
and tedious climbing up whatever followed, day after day,
with the help of white lies and unsolicited acts of kindness.

Is it possible to die when life is an obligation and love is a calamity?
Can I at least change my mind on the little things once I tell you a story
about my day—an ordinary day, one of those where it’s possible to pass by unnoticed
like an idea of happiness, when it’s easy to regret since life is selfish
and a hug requires a script?

In a way, the word morbid sounds like a promise
that, with some strong language, the light could manage to get through
the shrouds that cover windows, and you no longer have to choose
between Latin and Greek profanities, knowing that survival is nothing
but performance.

watercolour of a man standing between another man and a woman

The vaginaless monologues (6)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

They say that policemen know the best cop jokes. By that logic, the funniest guy in our bunch had to be gay; only then did we call them fags, and being perceived as one was social suicide at the very least. Why be surprised if even the Catholic Church, which should have taught brotherly love, called them sodomites? So it never occurred to me to identify as one, even though I loved running naked in the fields with my friends in the summer and happened to have a moment of pleasure with one. But these were nothing but monkey business, and we all soon began to fall in love with the more physically developed girls from our school. And personally, I’ve always been a little obsessed with plump breasts, even more so once I saw Pamela Anderson in Baywatch—how stereotypical! But from time to time, I felt like doing it with a friend, especially when we were watching porn on worn-out video tapes. I just never had the guts to do anything about it, and my admiration for women’s breasts has always been much stronger than any of these urges anyway. And now that I have lost the vitality of youth, it’s all just barren musings since neither women nor men fancy me. How ironic.

watercolour painting of a married couple with problems in the bedroom

The vaginaless monologues (3)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

At first, you think she is shy, which is kind of cute, and you two just started dating, so even holding hands counts. Later, you convince yourself that it’s her religious beliefs about virginity, which you respect, or at least try to. Of course, the wedding night is a fictitious event, and everyone is wasted anyway. But then regular life begins, and still nothing happens. Not because of a lack of effort on your part, though. And with every new excuse, your resentment keeps growing until you reach the point where you just can’t do it anymore. You call the fiction what it is and say out loud the unthinkable—divorce. Only then does something crack in the fortress walls, and you finally reach what you have been waiting for all this time. For a while, everything seemed to work out somehow, despite frequent ups and downs. Then the big question pops up, and out of nowhere, your intimate life turns into a precisely scheduled chore. But you don’t complain—it’s still the intimate life after all. Well, in a way, since it makes you feel like a semen injector sometimes. After the little one arrives, you don’t expect anything any time soon, and you both are exhausted after countless sleepless nights with colic and whatever else causes endless crying anyway. But eventually, life settles. Only intimacy is still a minefield. You talk and try to find a way to make it work, sometimes with success, sometimes without. And the resentment starts to build up again, which doesn’t help either. There are days when everything seems great and you dream of a perfect ending in the bedroom. Then the kid goes to bed, and bam, she sparks an argument over some trifle, quick to resolve but enough for her to say she’s not in the mood. Eventually, there is nothing but bitterness and resentment left, and you wonder: What on earth is this love thing all about? But whatever you think, it’s always your fault; you can take that for granted. After all, you are the one who only thinks about sex, aren’t you?