I think I have fallen out of practice;
I’m just not sure what I’ve fallen out of practice at.
It might have something to do with having expectations—
whether high or low is of little importance—or happy endings
for the audience’s sake.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
‘There is something about adjectives
that makes one feel rather peckish’
was an opening line for a casual conversation
whose consequences, like death by misadventure
as a raree-show, lay between two words,
whispered at midnight with Nina Simone,
when you weren’t sure
if you were greeting a new day
or mourning the past one.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
We never mean to pry—
when Mr Honk said that,
he wanted it to sound convincing;
he wanted to sound convincing;
he wanted to sound
convinced.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
When you find yourself vis-à-vis with the routine
horrors-turned-tattle, a walk down St Fittick’s might help,
even if the beheaded watcher’s house no longer guards
the graves from resurrectionists and unsolicited graffiti,
and you face either the leper squint or the rusting corpse
of a tanker abandoned in Nigg Bay. ‘But will it help?’
And how should I know? I’m only the poet.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
I had a stew
made with butternut squash,
sweet potatoes,
and sun-dried tomatoes
for dinner tonight—a humble result
of emptying the fridge into a pot
in the hope that the final product
would be edible—while listening to Joni
when the thought came to me
how utterly ridiculous creatures we are,
stuffing our mouths
only to excrete some hours later,
repeating it over and over again like markers
in an indefinite stretch of time between now and then,
and in the end none of us is any wiser;
everyone is just making it up as they go,
but perhaps some are better
at pretending
that they know clouds.
Does being alive merely by habit still count as living?
I guess it all comes down to the definition of living.
Besides, even being alive is a menacing slippery slope
that can degenerate precipitously into name-calling
and ultimately a factional war of attrition and demise
of the couple you once were.
Between Harry’s pecan pie and Sally’s ham sandwich,
I had a square of dark chocolate, and then it came to me
that if he can hide a disappointment and she can fake an orgasm,
I can consider myself lucky—in the end, no one hated me;
they were just indifferent, and though not quite what I expected,
what fun would it be to always know in advance
that love was what you pretended it to be?
I’ve heard that lovers are like buses—you have to wait for a little while,
and another one comes along; though I can’t help but add: unless the line
is closed for good, while you, unaware of it, are stuck at the bus stop,
tapping your feet and nervously checking a watch, afraid that your ride
will pass you by the moment you’ve given up and started walking.
A random phrase from a poet, like an earworm—and not because I’ve read the poem,
but because I’ve seen the despair—makes me realise that ‘nice’ wasn’t all that good;
in fact, it wasn’t good at all, and yet I still remember you asking if it was enough for me
to read one book, listen to one song, fall for one person, or at least pretend to, and so on,
in order to satisfy what for you hardly constituted seeking to live one’s life. Perhaps
that’s why you took the bus one morning to wherever the driver promised to take you.
hidden pilcrow 