I am sweeping the stairs leading up to the
Palace of Arts. This is no metaphor:
it's the real thing. Extra cash.
Poetry needs to make its living somehow. Poetry has to eat.
It's spring. The winter has left behind its dirt --
this white stuff so easily transubstantiated into wet,
dark and sticky ooze. A mass
of cigarette ends, papers, bird droppings, dog turds and that
one is probably excrementally human.
That is no metaphor either: it's the real thing.
My use of words has brought me
to this place. It's clouding over.
Rain won't wash off everything.
Kraków's Palace of Arts is a 1901 Art
Nouveau building housing one of the city's most prestigious galleries. Swietlicki must have
enjoyed very much the metaphor he claims was "no metaphor:" the aspiring poet's
close and ironic relationship with Kraków famous fin-de-siecle decadents.
McDonald's was once treated with reverence in Poland as one of the
unattainable goodies of the West. When it finally did make it there at the end of the
1980's, it soon acquired the same love/hate reputation it enjoys throughout the rest of
Europe. Only one shop (see above) was allowed to open in Kraków's historic Old City.
I find traces of your teeth in
another city
I find traces of your teeth on my arm
I find traces of your teeth in the mirror
At times I'm a hamburger
At times I'm a hamburger
With lettuce sticking out of me
And dripping mustard
At times I'm lethally alike
All other hamburgers
First layer, skin
Second layer, blood
Third layer, bones
Fourth layer, soul
And underneath all that, traces of your teeth.
