Tag: poem

Growing up

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[…] for first, children and all other animals share in voluntary action but not in Moral Choice;
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle

If it weren’t for the distractions
we used to preoccupy our dishevelled pates,
we all would eventually come to the conclusion
that life is a pointless exercise not worth the hassle
and simply end it. After all, even a horse
in a gown and a mortarboard, pulling a load
of beliefs, conjectures, hypotheses and theories—
as fallible as they come—must one day join
the grownups in a leaden paradise,
inventing yet another version
of the hourglass.

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The blind eat many a fly

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

My name is Peeping Tom—
caught in the little drama
of that insular open-air museum
unwilling to admit it punches above its weight,
I can’t imagine calling myself anything else
after a few weeks of reading The Letters
of Lytton Strachey—and yet even a subaltern
yearns to be fond of something
beyond the mathematics of conduct,
where to simply live would be nothing
but stating the obvious (we try to warm ourselves
by the soul’s residual heat, only such a fireplace is no more—
we once replaced it with a radiator).
But if life has no inherent meaning,
it’s up to me to invent one for myself—
a cup of chilled hemlockshake should suffice.

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Renascence

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I had a wife once;
such an unfortunate slip of judgement,
or perhaps a twist of fate,
since the final years—
not as verbose, but ripe—
have made me a poet
I’ve never been before.
I imagine that’s the feeling
of a butcher on the opening night
of the Delicatessen.

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Quiet revolution

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One’s life, driven by an electricity tariff
and the moody weather that suits one well,
as it provides the perfect excuse to exercise
the principle of energy conservation—
with the exception of an umbrella
that sometimes longs for a shower—
is nothing short of blatant sacrilege
in the world of aggregate demand.
But then what’s the alternative—
scorched earth? We’ve already practised
burning down libraries, remember?

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Men like us

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Cary Grant made men seem like a good idea.
Cary Grant: A Class Apart, Graham McCann

You can live one word at a time,
but it takes a sentence to be convincing,
unless you plan to play South by Southeast
with the miraculously reborn Branjelina.

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The legacy

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qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit
De finibus bonorum et malorum, Marcus Tullius Cicero

How can I not pity
the old beggar Cicero
for his most read text
being Lorem ipsum?

But I guess that suffices
for an indifficile reader
content with the life
of a tourist—myself.

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A whistler

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Mr Honk never understood
the look of bewilderment on people’s faces
when he whistled Christmas carols
in July, as if he were singing commercials
at a funeral. And it wasn’t that he was trying
to convey some profound message—
he simply enjoyed the cheerful tune,
as only an infidel could.

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Bag of wind

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Is it a matter of writing implements that we write more
to say less, or—with the power of large numbers in play—
do we have to face the truth that we have always been
the blabbering sort, only back then largely confined
to a tavern and a church porch?

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