PL oryginał
EN spoken-word
· notes & references
Zanim wywołam linczu pomyje
Mizoginistycznym nazwiecie mnie ryjem
Zanim ucieknę na własny okręt
Że szkoły w Polsce mam płaski śrubokręt
Za wręcz wybitne własne wyniki
nim ja! Komunę dobiłem na lekcji techniki
Before I trigger the lynching slop
You call me a misogynist snout
Before I bolt for my own ship
Because all Polish schools gave me was a flathead screwdriver
— well, I lifted it —
For my so-called outstanding grades
And I — me — finished off communism
in shop class¹
1. I finished off communism in shop class — "Komunę dobiłem na lekcji techniki". Technika was the Polish primary-school subject combining workshop with home-ec (PL school system). The author was a child during the 1989 transition (Polish People's Republic). The boast is personal and literal: he stole a flathead screwdriver from school property — state property — and considers that small act of theft his own contribution to finishing off the regime.
Melodia życia metronom czasu
jednak dość płaski bez bassów psów pasów
Przed dwiema wieżami i total lockdown
w głowie nuciłem the final countdown
I zanim ktoś kamieniem odważy się rzucić
to właśnie wtedy musiałem uczyć
Life's melody, time's metronome
Just pretty flat
No bass
No cops
No beatings²
Before the two towers and the total lockdown³
In my skull humming the final countdown⁴
And before anyone dares to throw the first stone⁵
That's exactly when I had to learn
2. No bass, no cops, no beatings — "bez bassów, psów, pasów". Psy (dogs) is Polish street slang for cops; pasy (belts/straps) is the metonym for a beating administered with one. A flat life, missing both the music and the brutality.
3. The total lockdown — March 2020 (COVID-19 in Poland). Paired with September 2001 (9/11 attacks).
4. The Final Countdown — Europe, 1986 (song). Every Polish school disco of the era.
5. "…cast the first stone" — John 8:7 (pericope adulterae).
W sekcji bystrzaków mistrzem i asem
mówili będziesz Pitagorasem
„Leksykon pojęć" git push ledger
to dla mnie było: „Kapusniak Ł" INDEX zwrot biblioteka: REWERS
In the gifted-kid bracket, the champ, the ace
They told me: you'll be Pythagoras⁶
"Lexicon of Concepts"⁷ git push ledger
For me it read:
"Kapusniak Ł." — INDEX — library return: REWERS⁸
6. You'll be Pythagoras — direct quote from the title of a popular Polish math problem-book series, "I Ty zostaniesz Pitagorasem" ("You too will become a Pythagoras"), used in Polish primary and secondary schools from the 1990s onward. Adults pointed at the workbook cover and projected onto the gifted-track kid. (Pythagoras.)
7. Lexicon of Concepts — Leksykon pojęć and its siblings: pocket-sized study aids that compressed Polish primary-school math curriculum and high-school literature opracowania into bullet points. Cliff's Notes for the kid who didn't read. "Git push ledger" turns the lexicon into a programmer's commit log — a different kind of cheating.
8. INDEX / REWERS — old Polish library cards. Index = loan record; rewers = return slip (karta biblioteczna). The image: being filed and returned by the system, like a book on a shelf — surname, initial, stamp, dot.
Więc zanim ocenisz to męskim kryzysem
po wiedzę w butach i z długopisem dziadkiem w ostrogach i tatą kat A z wpisem
So before you call this a male midlife crisis
I came for knowledge
In boots
With a pen
Grandfather with cavalry spurs
Father — category A with a note⁹
9. Category A with a note — Polish military draft classification (kategoria zdolności). Kategoria A meant fit for active duty; z wpisem meant a written medical caveat that — without formally disqualifying — allowed the holder to skip the actual service. The line celebrates the dodge.
O piątej rano motyle w brzuchu
bo nowy content jest w kiosku ruchu
Żółć krat obleśnych po lewej: podróba
dalej pożółkła pre alpha pornhuba
Krata Mallboro, brutal - podróba - tyogodnik Zamojski dalej, olej, „Pyszne lody: lodówa"
Five in the morning, butterflies in the gut
Because new content was in at the Ruch¹⁰
Yellow grids of filth on the left — knock-off
Further on a yellowed pre-alpha Pornhub
A Marlboro grid — Brutal — knock-off¹¹
Tygodnik Zamojski¹² further down, motor oil
"Yummy Ice Cream: ICE-CART"¹³
10. Ruch — Poland's near-monopoly newsstand chain, 1918–2020 (Ruch (company)). Cigarettes, magazines, candy bars; the morning ritual of millions. Rhyme in the original: brzuchu / ruchu.
11. Marlboro grid, Brutal — knock-off — Marlboro pack pattern and Brutal, a low-cost Polish cigarette brand often counterfeited.
12. Tygodnik Zamojski — local weekly from Zamość, the author's hometown (Tygodnik Zamojski).
13. "Lodówa" — folk-rural ice-cream signage; the diminutive sits between a cart and a freezer. Rendered as "ICE-CART". Private reference: known to the author and one friend, Miłosz.
Faeria kolorów całość wyników
pokaże Pani „humanizm dla mechaników"
Kompendium wiedzy tensor kultury za żółtą kratą i żółtej rury
A whole faerie¹⁴ of colors as the total picture
"Humanism for mechanics" she'll show you
A tensor¹⁵ of culture
behind a yellow grid and a yellow pipe
14. A faerie of colors — "Faeria kolorów" in the original. For the author, simply "a lot of colors" — the impossibly bright magazine rack at the kiosk; the word evokes a small magical land of color, nothing more. Rhyme in the original: wyników / mechaników.
15. Tensor — mathematical object central to modern machine learning (tensor). The image: culture flattened into model weights.
Patrzeć lornetką
Z dziadów mam szkiełko
Zgubione dawno Dziesięć milimetrów z zestawu moich płaskich kluczy
Przez nie wszystkiego co mogłem się uczyć
W żelaznej skrzynce „otwórz po 2020" płaski otworek
Ale już nie masz tamtego klucza
To look through binoculars
From the elders I have a lens¹⁶
Long gone:
A 10 mm socket from my set of flat keys¹⁷
Because of that
Everything I might have learned
Sits in an iron box marked
"open after 2020"
Flathead keyhole
But you don't have that key anymore
16. The elders' lens — Adam Mickiewicz, Romantyczność (1822, poem): "feeling and faith speak louder to me than the sage's lens and eye." The poem inverts him — the speaker now holds the very lens Mickiewicz dismissed.
17. The 10 mm socket — the universal lost wrench. Every Polish (and global) toolbox is missing it. A workshop joke older than the speaker.
Na zamku sznyty: krzyż, covid, Bucza
Scratches on the lock:
A cross
COVID
Bucha¹⁸
18. The three scratches — three traumas of the last fifteen Polish years, scored into the same lock:
- The cross — not religious, but a specific cross: the wooden crucifix placed in front of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw after the Smolensk air disaster of 10 April 2010, in which the Polish President and 95 others died on their way to the 70th-anniversary commemoration of the Katyn massacre. The fight over whether to move the cross (Krzyż smoleński) — "gdzie jest krzyż?" — split Polish public life for years and became shorthand for the post-Smolensk polarization.
- COVID — March 2020 onward (pandemic in Poland).
- Bucha — town near Kyiv, site of documented war crimes during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (Bucha massacre).
Zdjęcie uśmiechu z małymi cyckami
skrót myśli grypsem
Dlaczego teraz mam robić phillipsem?
A photo of a smile with small breasts
Shorthand of thought: gryps¹⁹
Why are they handing me a Phillips?
19. Gryps — encoded prison-letter slang; broader code of the Polish underclass (gryps). The rhyme gryps / Phillips mirrors the Polish original grypsem / phillipsem.
Szukając czasem w rękawie asów
My pokolenie ciekawych czasów
Sometimes
Aces up my sleeve
My generation of interesting times²⁰
20. Interesting times — apocryphal Chinese curse (may you live in interesting times). The closing line nods to Moje pokolenie by Paktofonika (2000), the hip-hop anthem of the author's cohort. Rhyme in the original: asów / czasów.