The Oldest Profession in the Western World
The life that pulses through every nook
of this two-story red-brick flat,
consumes me with every inch of vine and ivy laying upon these dampened floorboards.
I have been both the pink creature steadily affixed to its plush-filled throne,
firmly rooted in the living room grounds,
and the miniature forests made of reaching hands,
the fingers of the sprawling fungus born within my basement.
My hearing is that of those grey pests, multiplying unchecked within my walls.
The hum they deliver to my lobe is a still from millions of years ago:
pteridophyte forests, and rivers that flow as one.
I live enclosed in this white-green noise,
until the branch of a tree long-extinct croaks ever-so-gently,
and then,
booms with the fury of some primal deity.
My vision turns to red, my hearing is aflame,
as the precious carriers of sound emerge from the crack in my living-room wall,
tangled into one by their reddish tails.
The flurried mono-organism, tearing itself apart with each sharp twitch
of its pinkish limbs and of its grey mane,
turns my lush paradise into the bottom of Inferno;
the trees turn to tendrils,
spasming with some elemental instinct, clawing at the fire-red sky above.
But the real despair is the doorbell that reverberates above the dying screech;
the solution to my problem is here,
behind that brownish gate I so rarely open,
now completely covered in a moss that’s almost mulch.
I can feel his thinner-than-bone fingers, clawing to be let in,
to fix my hell,
but I can barely crawl out of my resting place.
The door is miles away, and the journey wrinkles the muscarias on my face
melting them into a spur of red and white.
By the time i reach for the doorknob,
I am just this body,
just the pinkish creature that laid at rest mere moments ago.
I’d have to pry it open,
but he appears with one swift push,
his translucent skin illuminated by the fire behind his back.
Our conversation is of grunts and bows, until our hands lock;
both of the same colour,
but mine of realflesh,
and his of foreign-make animal hide.
He stomps on my organs with his heavy workboots,
eyes fixed on the grey flurry in front.
His movement is mechanical, almost,
for I’ve let him inside a million and one times before.
And in moments, my hearing is back,
and the wail of forced homogeny fades from my eardrums.
He scrapes off what’s left of the agaric on my face,
my sweat, his payment.
In control now, I rush him out, and we’re whole again.
He’s now but a chimneysweep – nothing for him, but hatred,
for he sells what arises necessary,
and his skin is bland and corpselike.
Tendrils
Laid upon the nibbling,
of my once-connected fingers,
now blue-ish with a cheap glittery finish,
the genioglossus looks,
for what once was a bite-ridden nail tip.
The grubby tendrils of once-life
shuffle awkwardly towards a burnt-out receptor,
whose signal once un-faded,
forever falls silent.
Yet what remains, persists;
motivated by forces not yet understood
– the remnants of a primality I lost trekking through the steppes
of some once-ocean desert.
Rot causes no sluggishness,
only a push to outlive the living,
stop the processes which grayed my hair
and turned irises blank.
The taste of un-living has crossed my lips.
It’s taste overwhelming with sweetness,
like a perfume forced down my throat,
pushing my guts down like industrial-grade detergent.
The tongue is now limp;
it’s last exercise that of success
– recognising the hand that once fed it,
with teeth as enforcers.
of bitterness it will never taste,
of the sweetness of earthly delights,
this now-wilted bouquet:
tastes of wet meat.
Maciej Wojtkowski is a first-year student currently enrolled at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an international student, originally from the capital city of Poland, Warsaw. During his nearly year-long residence in the United States, he has discovered poetry to be an effective means of expressing ideas that are difficult to convey in everyday communication, overcoming the language barrier he has encountered. Prior to this experience, he had only composed works of creative writing in his mother tongue, Polish. Thus, this marks his first attempt at composing English poetry.