I live by the river yet never walk its banks.
Not that they’d miss me particularly—
after all, I would just be another pair of soles
trampling on their peace between the tides.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Tag: solitude
Love poem
I would love
to write love poems
again.
There’s just no point in trying
when in the bittersweet
it’s only me
and aspartame.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Solitude
We are suffering not from the decay of theological beliefs but from the loss of solitude.
Bertrand Russell, ‘On Being Modern-Minded’
‘Life is an abomination, a conscious one more so’
is the mantra that wakes me up every morning,
but once that’s done, it’s time for a yoga session
while the flatbread bakes for a simple breakfast,
and after the body’s needs have been met,
intellectual nourishment is a matter of reflex,
with the occasional break for another meal or excretion
before finally returning to bed at the end of the day.
And while that’s all fine and dandy, sometimes it’s nice to have someone
remind you to breathe.
The last meal
Abandoned in no man’s land
between the living room and the kitchenette,
I read ‘Portrait of a Lady’ aloud
to the mealy-mouthed hum
of the microwave heating fish
and vegetables for my solitary dinner,
only to realise that it no longer mattered much
who I was before breakfast if no one was there
to tell me how to get through the supper.
Sanctum obscuritatis
In this backwater of ours,
where pragmatists work on dating algorithms
while romantics try to figure out how to get rid of space debris,
obscurity is not a bad thing,
especially when you plan on becoming a master
of the single sentence.
Peeping at my neighbours
In the comfort of our solitude,
there are no history books,
only diaries,
with no one to satisfy,
no difference to make,
so perhaps I should contract
some fashionable disease
as an excuse to stay in my room
and spend the remaining time
peeping at the next-door neighbours
from behind the curtain—
a family of magpies
going about their business.
After all, I’m mortal, like them,
and that’s the only hope.
The divide
I’ve only ever talked to myself, even if the words were directed at you,
and you wouldn’t hear my voice anyway, as you aren’t here—you never were,
now that I’ve realised that in order for you to appear before me,
I must first dramatise you, assign you a genre, and only then deconstruct you,
finger by finger and toe by toe, until there is nothing left but a bare midriff
with a navel scar, the only evidence that we were once one.
The bright side
The memory of each mistake, like a complementary mishap
to the countless accidents that all too often fill life, is the lullaby
that accompanies me every night as I rest my head on the pillow
of an empty bed, and yet I still consider myself lucky—at least
I no longer have to smile.
Crying to ‘At Last’
I don’t do Christmas gifts—or Christmas itself, for that matter—but if I did,
an Etta James record and a box of soft tissues would be plenty, I guess,
so I’m not a high-maintenance man, yet neither a good girl nor a bad one
writes my name on the tag attached to the wrapper with the Santa motif,
and not even because my solitary life has grown on me after a few years,
or my last date thought I’m a bore and didn’t hesitate to say it to my face,
but because it’s easier to cry to ‘At Last’ than muster up trust once again.
