The Photograph of the Pigeons

When I look at the photograph of the pigeons
realized by Sean Soong, what do I think?
I think that I feel things,
and then I feel the things I think.
Did you notice I placed a soapy window
just now between my thoughts
and feelings by saying, "I think that I feel...?
It is a soapy window such as you see
on buildings where something has gone out of business
and doesn't want you to look inside.
That always feels like contemporary art,
that soap. It's usually very Twombly.
There are five pigeons in Soong's blue composition.
The pigeon quintet stands and faces different directions
like art critics or moody artists in a music group
on the cover of one of their albums.
The pigeons feel stoic.
The pigeons feel intransigent.
You feel the great existential schism
even between pigeons.
It makes you feel less lonely.
It ennobles by revealing you to be a shithead
for having dwelled overmuch on your aloneness,
your schism with the world.
The Mighty World.
It does not exist.
The birds feel like compass dials or hands of a clock
which have defected.
There are seven pigeons shadows,
because two pigeons were flying above
at the moment the photograph happened.
Unless those are pigeon impersonators.
How will we ever know?
The photo was shot with a panoramic camera,
so the photograph is a long rectangle,
at geometric odds with most of photography.
We feel the pull of the underdog.
The pigeons are totally seen as the observer wills.
How is your will today?
There is a dark puddle in the composition,
there on the blue street, just to fuck
with your head. To make you think
it might be a pigeon shadow too.
Or it could be a pigeon that melted into darkness
as so many of them are doing
right at this moment.
Pigeons all become nothing.
Nobody will ever believe their differences.
And you don't really care.
You are too much of a will to care.
You are too sad to be sad about.