March 24: Dragon's Teeth, Revising a Poem, Glaringly Obvious

Billy found the afternoon stingingly exciting.  There was so much to see--dragon's teeth, killing machines, corpses with bare feet that were blue and ivory.  So it goes.

Bobbing up-and-down, up-and-down, Billy beamed lovingly at a bright lavender farmhouse that had been spattered with machine-gun bullets.  Standing in its cockeyed doorway was a German colonel.  With him was his unpainted whore.

Billy crashed into Weary's shoulder, and Weary cried out sobbingly.  "Walk right!  Walk right!"

They were climbing a gentle rise now.  When they reached the top, they weren't in Luxembourg any more.  They were in Germany.

Billy still on his way to Dresden.  All around him, reminders of war.  Corpses.  Tanks.  Guns.  Building riddled with bullet holes.  German officers.  And, of course, the other P.O.W.s, marching along, terrified and in pain.  Sounds like the typical day of a contingent college professor to me.

It has been a long week, and I'm glad it has come to an end.  I don't have much planned for the next couple of days, except grading.  Lots of grading.  If I'm lucky, I'll work on revising a poem from my new manuscript.  Well, actually, the manuscript is a few years old.  I just took it out the other day, reread it.  The experience was, at turns, painful and wonderful.  It's glaringly obvious which poems need work.

My goal, by the end of the weekend, is to have at least two of the poems revised.  That will leave 44 to go.  I am determined, by the beginning of June, to have a book to send out to publishers.  It will be a difficult process, sort of like marching to Germany in clogs.  But, really, writing is rewriting, and that's my task.

So, tonight, Saint Marty is grateful for a red pen.