THE 1ST TIME I WROTE ‘RIMBAUD’ I WROTE ‘RIMABUD’ OOPS WHICH I THINK SAYS A LOT ABOUT ME, ABOUT THE TIMES THAT WE LIVE IN, ABOUT RIMBAUD & RIMABUD

Ron Padgett occasionally mentions a Drunken Boat or two and there is a magazine called THE DRUNKEN BOAT and probably one or two rock bands called A DRUNKEN BOAT and Patti Smith is always "Drunken Boat" this and "Drunken Boat" that but none of any of this would have ever happened if it weren’t for Rimbaud in the first place who wrote his Drunken Boat alexandrian quatrains a work of delirious visions revolutionary in his use of imagery and symbolism.

Today is Sunday. Everybody else goes to church but usually it’s a day that I I always seem to spend being jealous. Can’t seem to get around it usually. I mean, you can’t think about being jealous very well when you are working at your job, Monday through Friday. And after work there always seems to be chores during the week. And after chores it’s easy to be deucedly tired. But it’s Sunday now, the chores are done, morning has broken *, and the first thing that popped into my head is The Drunken Boat that Rimbaud wrote at 17 and in rhyme and delirious vision and revolutionary in his use of imagery and symbolism. God I am jealous. Really jealous. Of Rimbaud, of course–who else? **

I can’t do anything about that of course because Rimbaud already wrote THE DRUNKEN BOAT drank a lot had a leg amputated didn't accept Jesus as his savior and died so I thought Well, I could translate it if I wanted to into English from its Le Bateau Ivre and I could call it The Happy Little Drunken Boat so that it would be a little smaller and friendlier and I could add one more line at the end like: “But in the end, everything worked out for the little boat and although it was still little and drunk, it was a very happy little drunken boat, gaily laughing and spinning along in the pretty blue ocean as the sun began to set.” This way I will have contributed in my own small way to the drunken boat episode. Now everyone would finally feel good about the little drunken boat. I mean, sure, THE DRUNKEN BOAT was a good poem, but most folks didn’t feel good about the drunken boat when it was just Rimbaud with all the groans of Behemoth's rutting, the horrible eyes of the hulks, bathing in langours, the dense Maelstroms and whatnot. And to top it off, the boat is drunk because it is filling with water. Filling with water, filling with water, when will it end? And there is no relief, only delicious visions, revolutionary in its use of imagery and symbolism, like hulks and maelstroms, which offers no material relief, so it worries people, they wonder how it will end, and it's terrible, and so I felt that I had to do what I could do about that, and so I did, and I wrote it. “Although it was still little and drunk, it was a very happy little drunken boat ..."

* 7:30 AM. The blackbird has also spoken, and in addition, sweet the rain's new fall

* * Sam Shepherd, Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe