I saw a depressed clown haggling
at the flea market for balloons—

Joy marked down to a clearance price;
he holds onto second-hand laughter,
and a fragile piece of air tied to rubber skin.

By each nightfall he flees, on a rusted
scooter cutting through town, and his
balloons trailing like tired moons.

The crowd never cheered him on —
as he carried the silence anyway with him

I am no-one. Yet I feel everything.
I do everything. I am rewarded by no-one.
Tragedy? Nothing. I am owed nothing
but a fitting death.

To fish for dreams on the scales of my life,
weighing all options—faults already exposed,
a past made of glass: reflective. Fragile. And so
unforgiving.

To be credited as a modern writer, despite
my financial pressures. Swiping left on bait
too absurd to bite. My ID card? A license
to exist— plastic proof I belong to a world
that never asked for me.

Fate. Destiny. Whatever it is— tilts the odds.
I tilt back. Desperately balancing: one side,
my bank account. The other, my place. Truly
my full worth. Every moment I must make count.
And if the world won’t remember me, then let
my balance sheet of scars be the proof I existed.

sinking into cushions
i ask myself
is this silence
a wound
or a gift

my friends have vanished
into their own worlds
this is what love does
it swallows people whole

maybe the absence
is my reflection
me and the glowing screen
sharing secrets
until sleep

i whisper lies
humans were made
to be islands
i tell myself
and i try
to believe it

Не дрочил я уже две недели,
Но, зато хорошенько наспал,
Разбудил свою музу Элю
И опять не пошел в спортзал.
Но весна начнётся в апреле,
Впереди серо-грязный март.
Постираю за ней постель я —
И пойду проснусь в банкомат.

Yaroslav Kulikovsky. Paris, 2021 (c).
Part of the cycle: Poems on City Flesh and Power.

👉 tiktok.com/@kulikovskyonthepunchline
👉 youtube.com/@KulikovskyOnThePunchline/shorts

Beating a stigma
 with a stereotypical stick — as they tell me  
“Do stick to your kind” if I ever hope to suite in.
But trying to suite in never really means you’ll fit in —
it just means you’re dressed for the part, and not the room.

Because when the interior world doesn’t match
the exterior’s performance, the walls echo as a stranger.
    Being “mysterious” is still a bit of a mystery to me —
Especially when society’s own boundaries blur like
  breath on glass. So they’ll corner you with regulation
and call it freedom. But the regulars aren’t in order.

Again, boundaries do blur,
  like lines drawn with wet chalk.
Regulations - written by those who keep changing the page.
Still, society will corner you and call it “open space.”
The regulars aren’t in order. They call us too young to be this
    tired, by this idealistic age, that has us exhausted by reality.

Some mornings, I hate being told “Good morning.”
It sounds too bright for the kind of dark I’m carrying around.
My face? Is mundane by necessity. And I’ve surrendered to
the grey — because bright ideas can get you darkened these days.

Memories always haunt us —
   but we never get the gift of being ghosted by our pasts.
We are phantoms in the present, shadows behind the future,
hoping to step into the light without burning.

But let’s make light of the struggles we face, and not
just fight demons in the dark. The dark is their territory —
but the light is where we name things without shame.
Cos in the weekly sense — you wear your weakness
  like cologne, but cover it in the smile of a pretend-bright today.

I wake to pings, the calendar decides
if I have time to breathe or just exist.
Coffee, deadlines, curated feeds of joy—
I scroll through lives that look more real than mine.
Peace is an app now, or a yoga class,
balance sold in bottles, chaos dressed in chic.
We laugh in memes, cry in disappearing texts,
and call it living—this curated mess.
But when the noise breaks, truth hums like a wire:
you’re real, if only when the screen goes dark.

Computer spiders spin electronic webs
Everything depends on the word “grid”
It’s a cyberattack the generals say
And others say it was planned from the start
Neurons flicker and go dark
We become space a black hole a dead planet
Lightning dies on the vine the current falters
In times past a power outage lost time and food
Now it’s your mind you lose
Your network of imaginary friends
Your memes and your mined minds
Nothing left to mimic or mentalize
Step out into the dark the coyotes are laughing
The bats have pinpointed our weakness
How long will we stay in the dark we cry
Why ask--  have we ever lived in the light

the phone - it calls:
my impulse crawls
back to the moment ‘twas
mighty, and strong;

the tv on the drywall -
knows how to stall -
my mind from its prime;
my body from a shawl --

i feel my palms
so cold - and remote:  
the channel shows
a woman in a fur coat;
she looks so sad -
with all she has;
she quits on love,
doesn’t leave a note.

i turn to music;
tune to the rhymes -
my sorrows of the day;
i buy some time:
debt looms over -
menacing, by the day;
volume seeks heed -
i cannot pay.

done for the day,
i put the phone down;  
the screens go dark -
make me look like a clown.
i cannot keep tabs on
on all my regrets, so -
i force the ******* laptop
to shut down.