Fallen or otherwise, I don’t believe in angels
raised on tinned sardines in spicy tomato sauce,
which you served up like sturgeon—a sight
grotesquely incongruous with that poky flat
in a shabby neighbourhood—so that one day
I might remember it all began with a snooty
‘I won’t like you.’
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
You too believed in the heavens’ embroidered cloths
and that a bouquet of dandelions stains just your hands,
even if it’s already past midnight and your posh vocabulary
feels like a string quartet playing to the chomping down on a steak,
and the rough fabric is chafing your neck in order for you to amount
to more than the omission apostrophe in a shy ‘scuse me, please,
you will remember for the next four decades as the redhead with freckles
you’ve never had the chance to meet; just saw her once from a distance,
still too young to matter—a half-crown and a day off worth a stanza
or at least an enjambment.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Is life unisex, like an indie band
you vaguely remember from a film
watched with the girl next door—
the quiet one, painting swimming pools
full of sea wasps and talking
about second choices, whom you admired
for her freckles and occasional mischief,
and who was mostly indifferent,
though casually cruel—your only
intended girlfriend?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Captured on Polaroid shots,
we’re reselling green-screened déjà vus,
just to keep an old promise, ever afraid
that in the end we would have nothing
to say.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
How can I remember my future
when my past has been gravely misspelt—
with all the hasty gerunds
and coarse-grained adjectives
serving no purpose
other than ornament—
and even rain has lost its subsumption
in such an unconceivable milieu,
so that when I entertain the idea
of using the vested Pooterish umbrella,
I always have to consider the wistfulness
of the draught?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
‘There is something about adjectives
that makes one feel rather peckish’
was an opening line for a casual conversation
whose consequences, like death by misadventure
as a raree-show, lay between two words,
whispered at midnight with Nina Simone,
when you weren’t sure
if you were greeting a new day
or mourning the past one.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Whether it’s young, in dire need of leniency,
or old enough to be forgiven or forgotten,
it’s not life that is alluring; it’s the photographs
that we take of it.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
What was the last thing you remember
before you died? I was signing my book,
but I can’t recall if it was as MacCallus
or Modzelewski. It doesn’t matter—
they’re both equally ridiculous—
just like signing a book
I never published.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
