covid | Pigeon Heart Ponderings

Bones About It

Posted in beat poetry, corona, covid, mindfulness, ordinary madness, poetry, poetry in motion, prose, Uncategorized on December 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Equate me with foot dragging on carpeted stairs to squat quick & pensive at the outlet-God of cheap-thrill shock-therapy, for my inner-child needs a cold-water start to wake up from the monotonous boredom that’s got us all tangled up; dragging beneath the slowest car, riding on puro rims- over potholes & pits, with a blackout blotch smeared right over arrival time.

2 weeks that bled into 2 months, that bled into 9 months- at present, that bleed still. A vacuous wound unresponsive to tourniquets, & the pressure persists, but no mind, no mind.

I used to take my thinking-saw when I’d grown into my shadows & saw my skull open to let my head-moths fly around & land in unlikely places, & write about what came home, attached to their feet. I’d witness a white crow 2 times in an unmistakable flock of black ones & felt closer to the mystics; and stranger to common concerns like days of the week. I touched magic more often but also got my feet dirtier in the process. You can’t walk through a long field & not step in shit.

I struggle with recognizing my own web of fault. Have I trapped myself in the monotony or am I too close to my own nose to see my victimhood in having little to do for months? Everyday is a grand Groundhog of reminder, edging margins of subtle variation.

And now with cold cold air to wrap reliably around my leggys & weave it’s way through my hair & around my scalp, & penetrate my body top down & bottom up- I trap further into myself in inaction & the dullard’s company of a grey, cloth couch. My guitar will call & I will answer, but where once I had magic beans that rolled around my pockets of song snippets & poetry shreds I had hung without protest- on thin blue lines of spiral bound pages; storing them like orphans hoping to get chosen when I pull up in my petticoat & emerge from my Cadillac Roadster with clicky heels & feather hat. Dahling~ I am ready for you now. Prepackaged sentence pluckery. Those beans- where are they now?

My tea leaves carry-on unread, for my cup filleth & filleth again, I sip on & on all day long, working with my hands, trying & forgetting, repeat repeat repeat- to steady my mind- & search for cheap thrills or expensive thrills or I’m-open-to-suggestion-thrills-please-change-out-my-tea-now-I’m-ready-for-a-new-flavor-of-thrills.

Time is my sweet, yellow dog growing older. It passes without asking or telling, as it takes without the same pleasantries. One day we’ll look back with rosier lenses, while now we must find our way through the darkness of the un-knowing. Generating our own sparks again.

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Pink Crown

Posted in corona, covid, flowers, gratitude, nature, prose on April 27, 2020| 1 Comment »

Life is pretty pink right now. I kick it up with my toes; trail it home- stow aways’ in the crannies of my trainers. Everything in eye shot is blooming and sloughing. The earth: a post Thanksgiving meal eater, undoing its belt and letting it all hang out. All bets off. Ready for a shake. Like being through an earthquake without the tremors. Like a silent letter: the K in knife. Cut off. We’re all left, standing for safety in the door jamb, watching blossoms act so innocent, in part providing reassurance that the beat goes on, and in other part- seeming duplicitous, as if to say, simply- “come”.

But we can’t come now. Most of us can- at liberty- walk the blocks, though ill advised to venture from home far, as fear is the new dominant, dictating monger. We must avoid one another, and swallow fear when foreign objects enter our homes. Clean our hands with vigor and discipline, and learn to trust the cleanliness of others in our proximity.
You know you’re in deep when your nightmares consist of a faceless somebody petting your dog.
Here we are on our couches, absorbing movie after movie; ringing out our creative juices to get even a few amenable drops; cooking test run recipes from our mother’s lineage; spending quality-time, or alone-time, or terrible-too-small-world -time with loved ones, or old friends, or no one, or proximal, newly minted enemies. No matter how you slice it, everything is amplified. The light shines bright on every second, stretching them out like Coney Island taffy in July.
Streets, yards and sidewalks are covered in messy, carefree beauty that only an equinox can get away with. The natural-order and the parasitic-human dance to the same music at different beats, a Junior High-hands-free dance with a nun at the helm, monitoring touch with a stinging ruler. We are in perfectly juxtaposed tandem and its all awkward moves. Our mortal terror bowing to the elegance of the bold bearded Iris, the puffy Cherry blossoms, blushing Dogwoods, the auspicious Wisteria.
I walk past them, air kissing their pigment through my eyes, thankful for the distraction provided, and their involuntary reminder that washes in and out like the ocean waves at the shore, to focus on the passing colors and settle me into the weird, waking dream.