The Pigeon of Please
Pigeon introduces herself through this poem by exploring and finding peace with the dichotomies that exist within and surround her: longing and fulfilment, disbelief and hope, fragility and resilience; having faith in nonsense to reveal clarity; existing simultaneously as an organic mechanism of her environment and as a separate and silent observer of it; the city as breath, a pulse, a study of humanity, of nature. "Pigeon of Please" (after Scafidi) is a snapshot of Pigeon's journey from barren to fecund; of feeling part of a machine, to being a product of it, and finally creating herself.
The painter in the moon and the city in the head
and the new in the you, you impossible Soon
drown the noise we can’t understand and drown
hopes to dreams and the sad eyes of the torn
drip the mights and the maybes of the world
that veil the veiled sun from short bright chances
that say, “Never, never, no way never,”
this nope-nope of desire being is the empty of,
and if you have the luck you can cross the street,
and if you trust a god, or if you trust a man,
or chant the name of my Preacher John’s father
you can see the dizzying trees of the forest of Pavement
from the towers and bars and traffic lights
to the beggars begging and the empty park
darkening towards midnight and the sad sighs of please
you are the singer of, and why whisper women pointing
at the stars and we leave when we want to—desperate
dirty pigeon of the never and the always, the never
always promising some still terrified lie and threat that,
while the backbone crumbles and the children of dreamers
stumble at night, begin to die a little, long lost now
to losing and pinprick touch of another way, shouting
“I remember belief, and the one word believing said
was deceive” and I remember when faith was an English teacher
and words and I remembered you every poem prayer after
you gave yourself away and deserted and I remember
my blue inkpen and my red inkpen and the delirium
of the pity and the fulfillment of the emptiness of
the please and the new and the moon and the knees
here in the midnight of the still of the city.