Smoke And Mirrors

I.

Woken at nine o'clock by the postman,

who turns out not to be the postman but an itinerant seller of pigeons,

crying,

"Fat pigeons, pure pigeons, dove white, slate grey,

living, breathing pigeons,

none of your reanimated muck here, sir."

I have pigeons and to spare and I tell him so.

He tells me he's new in this business,

used to be part of a moderately successful

financial securities analysis company

but was laid off, replaced by a computer RS232'd to a quartz sphere.

"Still, mustn't grumble, one door opens, another one slams,

got to keep up with the times, sir, got to keep up with the times."

He thrusts me a free pigeon

(To attract new custom, sir,

once you've tried one of our pigeons, you'll never look at another)

and struts down the stairs, singing,

"Pigeons alive-oh, allve alive-oh."

Ten o'clock after I've bathed and shaved

(unguents of eternal youth and of certain sexual attraction applied from plastic vessels)

I take the pigeon into my study;

I refresh the chalk circle around my old Dell 310,

hang wards at each corner of the monitor,

and do what is needful with the pigeon.

Then I turn the computer to on: It chugs and hums,

inside it fans blow like storm winds on old oceans

ready to drown poor merchantmen.

Autoexec complete it bleeps:

I'll do, I'll do, I'll do…