There must be
a hell where
forgotten
words and lines
dwell.
Similes scamper,
lost like beetles.
Bat winged metaphors
fly to that dark
hell of forgotten
poems.
If those wandering
words escape, they are
gone forever.

When I swim in
the ink, and the
writing streak starts,
the prose comes to
me while I try to nap.
Now, I sleep with
pen and paper,
to put the words in
that white paper
prison where they
belong.

Pradip marks the slow disappearance of faces in the market,
unknown yet familiar and thus important to the senses,
for our eyes crave continuity, comfort reassuring that time,
even time that robber par excellent, still provides some comfort
to our souls, in its own way, even the faces of strangers in familiar places are road markers, bookmarks, that even the known unknown offer a measure of solace, as we traverse the old familiar places
of daily life.

it must be remedied. some of you know that I make not idle promises,
that my promises to be there are effected, for I am affected by the
repair of the world in little, measurable manners, so the iCal calendar
modified with a Visit Pradip++, a new addition…

and on the way there
are few more exotic places where poetry grows that
will require some
layover visitations…

only time in its theiving secretive ways stands between me and
you denied grasping arms, taking the measure physical of a
beating heart
and river-wide smile,
maybe even I’ll practice with a trip to
remote foreign places, which they speak
the languages of poetry too,
Snake River, even Iowa!

olp/n.n.

It was back in…hell, must have been seventy-six?

Anyway, I was livin’ up around Bolton Landing

And doing some odd jobs (some very odd, indeed,

But that’s another story for another time)

At the Sagamore—big fancy hotel on Lake George—

When I started hearing people runnin’ their pie-holes

About this crazy-*** pigeon.  

Folks were saying the **** bird

Had somehow got ahold of the idea

That it was a ******* hawk or falcon,

Swooping down like it was after rabbits or field mice

Instead of bits of bread, and some of the old-timers

(Most likely addled by the years, or maybe having lived alone

For just a little too **** long)

Swore on the gravesof their dear sainted mothers

That they had seen it do full-out barrel rolls.



Well, little towns are all about big talk,

So naturally I wasn’t about to put much stock

In this particular rural legend—but one day

I’m walking around downtown,

And I see this chunky blue-gray blur tear-assing

Down around my pantleg for a bit before it leveled off

And started to climb, throwing in a couple of three-quarter turns

Just for ***** and giggles.



I saw that **** thing do its stunt flying

Several times after that:  loop-de-loops, death spirals

And a few more power dives, just to scare the women and children.

That old fool bird was pretty scuffed up and worse for wear

From its acrobatics—after all, it was just a pigeon

And it could daredevil from sunup to sundown,

But that didn’t mean it was likely to turn into no Blue Angel



The third, or maybe the fourth, time

I happened to catch the bird’s act

I caught a glimpse of its head, and I swear to you,

On all I hold true and holy, the bird was…grimacing,

Like it was just plain sick and tired of all the limitations

That nature had foisted off on fat, ungainly creatures like itself.  

Some days I would walk past the old McEachern place,

And I’d see that bird perched on an old, mostly-collapsed barn

Just staring at the cloud cover hiding Mount Marcy

(Where eagles lived in the crags,

Breathing the rarified air that pigeons,

Skimming the rooflines of strip malls, would never know.)



After a few months, folks stopped seeing the bird

And his wild-*** air show.  

Maybe it had been a bit slow

On the uptake while pulling out of a dive,

Or perhaps it finally came around to the notion

That a pigeon was, after all, just a pigeon, no more and no less.

Hell, maybe it set off for the High Peaks after all.

I’ve read that the ancients would read the entrails of birds

In order to tell the future, and maybe they could,

But in my book, ignoring the sweep and swoop of flight

And the mysteries of why-they-do-what

So you can ponder and mull over

The collection of bugs and gravel in its guts

Says about all I need to know about the notion of wisdom.