Translated by Grzegorz Wróblewski & Marcus Slease
Nine Slogans
1. I didn’t want to do it.
2. That’s not what I meant.
3. I wasn’t myself when I did this.
4. I didn’t mean to hurt you.
5. Something tempted me.
6. I am extremely sorry that this happened.
7. It will never happen again.
8. They put something in my glass.
9. We’ll be happy together again.
***
Artifical Intelligence
Because of her,
they lengthen people’s feet.
But there is a big benefit!
It will be easier for us to tread
across flat earth.
***
Writing Poems
Writing poems is the same
as creating paintings. You paint words
and note the inner landscapes.
And then people spit on both.
***
Children
Children are people,
not rubber rabbits.
***
Lottery
You have to be a real idiot to win the lottery.
What do you need to do? Just dial the numbers:
1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Then lie down in the coffin and wait.
Oh, put $500 into my account
for giving you this great advice.
***
Truth
Everyone is looking for the truth.
The only truth is the rumbling
of our stomachs.
***
About the Poet: Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdańsk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths,
2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let’s Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Červená Barva Press, 2014), Zero Visibility (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Phoneme Media, 2017), Dear Beloved Humans (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Lavender/Dialogos Books, 2023) Asemic writing book Shanty Town (Post-Asemic Press, 2022).
About the Translator: Marcus Slease is a (mostly) surreal-absurd writer from Portadown, N. Ireland. He is the author of Puppy (Beir Bua Press), Never Mind the Beasts (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), The Green Monk (Boiler House Press), and Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), among others. His poetry has been translated into Polish and Danish and has appeared or is forthcoming in various magazines and anthologies, including: Tin House, Poetry, The Lincoln Review, Bath Magg, New World Writing, Tupelo Quarterly, and in the Best British Poetry series. He lives in Sitges, Spain. Find out more at: Never Mind the Beasts (www.nevermindthebeasts.com)
