Tag: poem

When a foreigner on the street asks you for the whereabouts of the semen centre,
you know that this is not what he meant. But still, as you try your best to conceal
that, admittedly, improper mixture of amusement and astonishment on your face,
you mumble something vague in response and continue on your way. Well, that’s
what I did, at least. It struck me, then, that that very morning I devoted more time
and attention to the information about Mondrian’s unfinished artwork, displayed
upside down for seventy-five years, than to the poor man, I guess, trying to find
the right attitude, or at least directions to the city centre.

When a daily shower becomes synonymous with the lap of luxury, a bath even more so,
living alone, not to mention working remotely, starts to look nothing short of a blessing.
Don’t get me wrong, I take care of my personal hygiene and I believe in its importance,
if only for health reasons. But sometimes I miss my early childhood in the countryside,
where my mother bathed me in a tub once a week and entering the pigsty did not make
my face wince.

Awoken by a heavy rumble on the windowsill, I embraced autumn’s moody morning
with columns on yet another new prime minister, soaring electricity bills, and the war
in Ukraine—the usual, I guess. Then, after this exercise in my meticulously implanted
islander tongue, I took care of my spine—a mere ten minutes of yoga gimmicks seems
to do the job—and made breakfast. I also opened the heavy curtains to let some light in,
but there was no light. It’s the north, after all, a quiet place of little inconvenience.

I wonder what it would be like if my surname were Young, if it would suit me,
especially now, in my late forties, when I feel anything but young. Unfortunately,
none of the twelve shillings’ worth of words occupying my desk brings anything
even remotely close to the answer to such an absurd dilemma of my own making.
And I just can’t quite decide yet whether I have an innate tendency to be absurd
or I’m just really bored.

I missed the morning sunlight trying to decide if I really knew that “here is one hand,”
and now, as raindrops trickle down on my reflection in the window, all I can think about
is the disembodied lady and how much she differed from health faddists and the ones
on a megavitamin craze who were heavily overdosing on pyridoxine in the eighties.
And then a question struck me: was that reflection actually all we were granted?

There are simple pleasures like a late-summer beach walk,
the aroma of freshly baked bread, and waking up after a full
night’s sleep, and there are those not as obvious, like a passage
from Der Tod des Vergil with its seemingly endless sentences,
Kleines Harmonisches Labyrinth that ends in the wrong key,
or Euler’s identity, for which it seems unknown who first
stated it explicitly. But what if they are all just illusions
that I flirt with instead of sharing?

I had my chance for a happy life, or at least for a meaningful one,
and now all that’s left is an artificially prolonged apathetic wait
for a prompter to cue from behind the limelights my final line.
Meanwhile, I watch cheesy romcoms and wonder what I could
have done to keep that clumsy affinity from feeding on my raw
impatience and why there was no ticket for a night train between
our pillows.

Carving a jack-o’-lantern is as alien to me as ending a sentence
with a preposition, and yet I got used to the latter once I learned
the islanders’ tongue. Buying a pumpkin shouldn’t be a big deal
then, especially since, instead of Miss Daisy’s, I have already
chosen Pennywise’s smile … for tonight.