The soul’s place is in the narthex,
getting tipsy on the fumes of incense and holy water,
but it sobers up quickly when faced with the dilemma
of whether to watch Det sjunde inseglet
or Freulein Masseuse.
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I am a jerk,
an arsehole,
a chauvinistic pig,
but I’m supposed to be—
I am a man, after all,
just another
testosterone junkie,
and I’m okay with that
as long as no one
calls out my pussy
as inadequate.
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No one reads poetry
on Friday night
or at all—even poets
prefer pub quizzes and a pint
to poring over Shelley.
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I like romcoms
with Hollywood grannies—
when they still fit into the twenties bracket—
not yet afflicted by that ordeal
of the imagination called ‘growing older’,
where there’s no gruesome impudence
but the question: How old are you?
I guess it’s easier with the discreet
Quel âge as-tu?
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Call me a heathen, but since time immemorial,
people of my ilk have always had the feeling
that we would rather hear Cage’s Four Thirty-Three at dawn
than listen to the seagullian chorales and rhetoric classes
in magpieese on the accidental agora of our windowsill.
And when I toss and turn furiously in bed at five in the morning,
I can’t help but wonder what third-rate college produced
this intelligent designer.
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My humble neighbours have recently started exercising
their vocal cords, only I’ve never ordered Wordsworth’s The Daffodils
to be recited in magpieese on my bedroom windowsill
at five in the morning.
However, it did get me thinking: what if the answer really is forty-two—
although I’m still not a cricket fan—but it was ordered by magpies, not mice,
and I’m stuck amongst shadows, alone, in this panopticon
full of sophisticated probability engines?
But why do I feel
like one ancient Greek is mocking another again?
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When the mind needs a change of scenery,
all you need is a camera obscura
and a list of rice cultivars,
or you can always expand your collection
of smooth utterances
like, ‘I recognise that nature is unforgiving,
but I would say that a butcher is a necessity,
while a zoo, a circus and a fishbowl are the harbingers
of the true cruelty’—after all, it requires impeccable table manners to swallow
your every l’esprit de l’escalier
without choking.
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Have you ever seen an elephant
swimming in the ocean, and to Beethoven at that?
Beautiful, isn’t it? Perhaps,
but before you ceremoniously place that coup de foudre
in your Altoids tin, next to all the treasures
you’ve been collecting forever, think
about whether you really saw Rajan smiling
or if it was just the telly acting as a mirror.
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A dumbbell in my ribcage, like a dead weight
on a chopping board, pulverised—
a change of air might do it good—
and yet still carrying on
with its tedious staccato,
as if nothing ever happened.
Would it shock the ladies?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 