he learned to-day that Baudelairelearned
that Baudelaire sitting at a small table
in a Parisian café intoxicated by hashish and glasses of absinthe did not feel
the wing of madness pass over his head
he loved that proposition thought
it heady deranging
a lightningsliver of Rimbaud etching
Baudelaires shadow on a dirty woodslatted floor
he read a new translation
it argued when Baudelaire wrote that
passage he wrote imbecillite missing
two accent marks
he wrote neither folie or demence
missing one accent mark
therefore translated
his wing of madness read wing of imbecility Baudelaire had been experiencing a series of illnesses he feared
his physical weakness and feebleness he believed
they would finally incapacitate him
eventually aphasia and heart
attacks rendered him led him to lose his speech then robbed him of his ability
to read and write his
ability to write and read a living death for a writer
he had shared that storythat
passage more times than he could say since first reading it
it was the wing of madness that encouraged
him to find drugs and intoxicated sit at
a table with a red Bic pen in hand and scribble down the wordsthey came to him faster
than he could record them scribbleturning
pages overmore pages a flurry of bloodied moths many dying skewered on the end of his
pen until he eclipsed and came down and
pushed back away from the slaughter and
saw before he turned his back on them to shower that he numbered them so when he returned refreshed replenished for
the next round session he didnt have to
complete a jigsaw puzzle he only had to
order the pages or be ordered by them
sometimes the stain wouldnt wash from
his hands and people who saw them
were uncomfortable he didnt have clean hands he would correct them My hands are clean theyre only stained he was proud of their queer patterns and
without memory of how that blob happened or that curlicue happened or that
patch of pointillist passion
You see he told themsticking his
hands in their faces my pen moves faster than my hand an is quite irreverent
of course they pulled awaybacked
off How rude
How rude No How rude to think my hands arent cleanhow
provocative I dont take kindly to
insults
he did not
he did not take kindly to any
entrance into his space and he maintained a
large space that was duly posted
handwritten signs Trespassers
Will Be Violated
he was inviolable
he was truss in sheaves of
paper inky accelerants and willing to touch a match to the mess and go up in a whorling
twister of fire and blackanblue voidsbreathless
panting shrieking happy to take with him the scornerstheir
bleating followers happy to cleanse that
piece of earth for renewal happy to feed
the articulating mouths of insects and lay as fodder for vibrant fresh new growth
fuck the new translation
I have
felt the wind on the wing of madness
0954, Thursday,
21 12. 17
1047, Friday,
22 12. 17
“We stand now in the midst of a
severe mental epidemic; of a sort of black death of degeneration and hysteria,
and it is natural that we should ask anxiously on all sides: ‘What is to come
next?’” Max Nordau, Degeneration
Next? Shaddup
he couldnt stand the shrill of a coward
