these days

[amuse]

perched on my second
story window
sill a pigeon waits.
i hear it flapping its
wings every morning.
don't know why it says hi
it's been doing this since the end
of summer,
flying daily into my pane.

near a vietnamese restaurant
(mirrored across the street - "Saigon 2")
mashed straws and napkins grow
on the sidewalk and
a peckish sparrow alights
near tourists' pretzels
foreign germs
wanders through a particularly large
door in a barbed
wire fence (4 inches tall, imagine that!)
glides over mushrooms and flies into dreams.

i've gotten old
the birds tell me this
i'm afraid of clouds, mushrooms
mushroom clouds growing
on the sidewalk flying dying in my sleep
i wonder where my barbed wire ends
beg for the freedom to find its door

[rocksea]

nice :) lively and descriptive mood setting,,

[Eric, son of Chuck]

I agree, I love the imagery, especially the Vietnamese restaurant aside. One question, and please take it as simple curiousity rather than criticism: Your placement of line breaks seems to me to give a disjointed rhythm and emphasis to the poem. Is that deliberate? Here's what I would think of as a typical arrangement.

perched on my second story
window sill
a pidgeon waits.
i hear it
flapping its wings
every morning.

Just so ya know, I quite like the way you have it set up. I also realize that sort of arranging isn't necessarily meant to influce emphasis or whatnot. I'm just interested in form about as much as content when it comes to poetry. Call me weird, I won't mind. :D

[amuse]

thanks you both for your feedback!

hm...
i don't set it up deliberately, more like i hear it...most of the time the rise and fall, tumble and stacatto (sp?) seem to fit my mind/experiences.
the sill was weird, i kept reading it as "still" but that fit so i kept it as it was.

when i reread these as individual words it's really odd (like right now) but when i read them in the flow i heard, with parts of a line, or a few together, it comes together. but i'm sorry i can't capture what i heard.

[amuse]

no one caught the "flying daily into my pane [pain]" (after all it couldn't fly daily into panes...)?

that's okay. :p fine! not like i usu. ask for feedback, anyway. i just liked that particular line...

[subterranean]

is it about how other creatures and daily surrounding mirrored a human's life ?

[amuse]

that and a little bit more. i mean, when i see birds hop through wire fences, and sit on my window pane two stories high like they've got tons of room then jump off and soar, my petty things seem small, and freedom seems attainable. like i can be free of my "pain" (too politically uptight this year for my own good, and worrying about stuff a lot :rolleyes:) and their simplicity...mostly that. like how nice it would be not to have to walk around fences, just go through them. have space. have opportunity. on bunches of levels.

...once i saw a bird go home. it was the most amazing thing.
just flew literally - like an arrow - into a tree. and i was like WHEN did it put on its brakes??? and how did it know it would fit in the hole? though of course it wasn't thinking, just Going Home. :) ...the tree wasn't that wide. and i'm the sure the hole wasn't either.

at any rate, they give me hope. :) (although i don't think i would have seen the mirroring if you hadn't mentioned.)

[Jay]

Is it just me or it reminds of war to anyone else? *shrugs* I guess 'twas the barbed wires and mushroom clouds. By the end of the poem I saw a street in ruins... now is there something wrong with me? *coughs* ahem

[amuse]

i kind of picked that up too along the way.

[Jay]

Fool would say 'word association football' ;)

[amuse]

wouldn't he though! :D
i think the whole freedom of birds hopping into whatever worlds they want, and flying onto 2-inch window sills just sort of coalesced into this thought that would i ever be able to feel safe is this world, how free are we, wouldn't it be nice to fly, to walk through 4-inch holes and have the world at your clawtips.

[Jay]

Fool is a she if I'm not mistaken ;):p

[amuse]

Oopies!!!!!