Tag: poem

I don’t know French, although it sounds beautiful in songs.
I would definitely like to know German as there is so much
to learn in, say, Über Gewissheit. But I know some English
for practical reasons, whatever that was supposed to mean,
and my mother tongue, Polish, got a little rusty over time,
not to mention all the past failures of my own making:
Russian, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Italian. As it turned out,
devoid of willpower, curiosity ends up in wishful thinking.
But I always had the excuse that one language is enough
to say something profound, leaving the wearisome details
of translation to posterity.

I’m a time traveller. It all began when I was seven,
though it didn’t really start until I reached ten or so.
At first, being cautious, I stuck to the not-so-distant
past of my own neighbourhood. As naïve as it was,
it gave me a safe haven to practise my new ability.
But it wasn’t until I joined the two paid mourners
at Père-Lachaise that I realised its full potential.
And ever since, I have travelled back and forth
with no restrictions and no regrets, perhaps.

If only I had realised then what I had missed
in this cemetery of intentionally blank pages.

Holding myself accountable for things not turning out the way I wanted
always required a tad more honesty than I could muster at any one time,
like an attempt at the mundane touted as an elaborate kintsugi exercise,
except that the pottery was scorched and the gold turned out to be pyrite.
Anyway, I usually felt like I was never doing better than in a hospital bed,
involuntarily eluding the impending life in the medically induced abeyance
of an as yet unaware newborn.

Life insurance covers the event of death, but what insures me
in the event of life? So far, I keep my hands above the table,
even though most of the time I have no idea what to do with them.
But with a little effort, I can contain their primal truth and return
a gentle gesture. Except it’s all for the sake of appearances.
After all, we, the civilised, fill our prescriptions so discreetly
that the only suspicion that something is up comes from holding
the hair back.

You are never on time. “I’ll see you in ten minutes” could mean anything
from half an hour to a lifetime or so. It used to bother me a lot. I perceived
your tardiness as disrespectful and still smiled at you, trying to keep my cool.
On the other hand, how could I be angry with you for longer than the blink
of an eye, seeing you shake like an aspen in the wind even though it’s August?
Besides, what’s so admirable about my clock-driven mentality? Perhaps the effort
put into observing the hands of the clock makes it convenient for me to overlook
the stillness of my own.

For Miles

It never entered my mind that the kind of blue, the blue in green,
could simply squeeze me like a night in Tunisia, where smooch
sometimes follows great expectations, but often settles for alone
together. But as I know that it’s only a paper moon that is chasing
the bird when lights are low and everyone tries to catch that ole devil
called love, I can still choose between the blue moods of the nature
boy, Morpheus, and walkin’ with my old flame, Venus di Milo,
‘round midnight in the green haze of dear Old Stockholm, whispering,
“I waited for you.”

Forgive my verdant embouchure, timidly practised in dark alleys,
and guide my fingers through respite in somewhat hurried pizzicato.
There is no shame in apposition set off by commas, casually,
where every onomatopoeia could lead to spasm, but not staccato.
And when we leave the treble clef, the pilcrow binds all the untold,
giving us little more than what one calls tinnitus, till next time…

I was going to make a proper dinner,
but once again settled for a banana mash
with nuts, Greek tahini and currants.
Cooking for one has become a nuisance,
like intimacy as distant as the memory
of a smile exchanged with a passer-by,
and just as inconsequential.

When did we stop using fountain pens? I used to like the blue scribbles
on the pages of my notebook. And why would someone else’s words,
if one found them not worth the ink, still be kept in the ethereal depths
of circuital shallows?