Blind Boy Grows Feathers

I did not teach today. It helped. I cleared a space for thinking and writing and reading.

I am taking an 8 hour train to Gdansk tomorrow morning. I will need to find bananas before departing.

I read some of Clayton Eshleman's Companion Spider on Google reader. It inspired me to order some books. I can't order books like I used to because of limited funds and distance. But what the hell!!!

I ordered:

1) In the Pines
By Alice Notley

2) Peregrinary (New Polish Writing)
By Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-dycki (Author), Bill Johnston (Translator)

3) Companion Spider
by Clayton Eshleman


Delivery estimate right now is Apirl 30th 2008. The Polish book of poetry is a pre-order so maybe that is why. Hopefully they will change the shipping estimate on the other books.

My new manuscript Prodigal Drift is going well. I am still finding ways to use personal history and memory in my writing. Right now I think Prodigal Drift deals a lot with the complexity of memory. Here is a rough draft of a poem I began a few hours ago. It is far from finished (if such a thing exists):

Blind Bird Grows Feathers

Lucifer rode a star into the centre of the world. Memory is hollowed to channel intoxicating vapours breathed by words. Memory allows direct communication with gods. Precise flesh is subvocal and stars are made to chew.

Demonology began with smell, began with a mad uncle. Beard dripping chinese gravy. Violence in grand gestures. Give me a reason to believe. The mad uncle was not mad: the mad uncle was mad. A tiny spot of land for a lost people. If you have access to the blur then people feel heavy and we can’t afford anything other than the bouncing city and you can explode your bubble bombs in the bathtub or sink.

This is not the sound of a white-washed mouth. This is the sound of decaying flesh beneath the palm trees. Say a shadowrabbit played on the ceiling. Say my children’s fingers lack the bones to do the work. Shed your skin in the desert to do the work. Hurdle headlong beneath the wheel and die beneath the savage words. At length the exhaustion of the mind amid the ocean. The drifter will keep beating the boy.