Pigeon Pomp

“Pigeon Pomp”

The park and bus platforms are, at midday, same
as a walk by the seaboard rushed with breeze,
or the cranny grandstands hours after a game.
There, where hunger begets the fever for seed,
you find my head, sullen, with social ease,
chomping, stomping, pigeon pomping through need.

Man asks Pigeon: How does pomping suit your need?
Pigeon tells Man: Suits are pompous, needs are same.
You and we, bound by blood, cloaked with disease,
envy and pride, form graceless chords to the breeze,
mar the tokens of Regality’s seed,
and rake life’s contract with our pompous game.

By our sails, we are greatness in sport, a game
we love and hate. We fly and fie by need.
We take by want. We rape to spread our seed.
Dear murderous man, our pomp suits you the same.
Yet we are innocent when we yield to the breeze,
Juxtaposed, fat bellies of crumb fed ease.

If these pigeon thoughts offend your Gentle ease,
perhaps you ignore the pomp of man’s game,
where pride, envy and other chords hang the breeze:
man wakes to tame the day, anticipates need
and takes without remorse or shame. This same
taking is as common to hand as beak to seed.

We come to the ripe ground to eat the seed
en masse. Tireless at work, but sporting an ease,
in Congress we hoot, peck, hoot. While sesame
slips from our tongues, we’re coy to rethink this game—
“Could life, without competing, unscratch our need?”—
but the words taste dry as cotton-curled breeze.

Will we forever fly in a waking breeze?
Will we yield to the best the ripest seed?
Are we damned to hoot and peck the pomp of need?
An unsettled beak and neck finds no ease
competing in an uncompleting game:
these pompous virtues make man and pigeon, same.

At ease, my sweet, fat, pigeon man, you need
the man-bird to study its game and learn, same
as I, how pompous seed breeds a foul breeze.