Slimy footpad

Reading back into this almost 20-yr-old poem, the scriptor is surprised anew by the special shiftiness, the jittery nervous glib patter of this Hen-fellow, trying to put one over on himself or somebody.  Interesting how the perception of place is also a projection of same.  If the poet is a slimeball snail, then of course he will be crawling through the gunk of a "rotten little state".

& now 20 years later, Mr. Photographer slithers around again, like an outsider.  Going in circles.

But then this sketch is another prelim, a lead-in.  The poet solo is not enough, is insufficient, incapable.  He need help.  Where does the "ink-feather pen" come from?  Read on, friend, & find out!!!

from Shakespeare's Head

4

What might be descried from such murky battlements 

of a rotten little state?  From elevated Terrace

the reproduced patriarch looks like pumice.

Air seethes through filed pediments.

The iron rail on the cliff is a kind of grid 

or magic lantern blanket for a snail. All shell, 

no pith. 

One slimy footpad

leftover.  But lights will go up again –

Walter will play the untested understudy –

will sketch the shadiest, draftiest city –

not with a bang, but an ink-feather pen.

Roger Williams Memorial, Prospect Terrace

Downtown w/grid