THE CRAFT OF FOREIGN FEATHERSTONES
I thought that I had injured
That with which I thought
Only then to understand
The fault that I had wrought,
My imagination
Turning as it slept
Found itself abandoned
While to other lands I crept,
The hills of high philosophy
The mountains of the moon
The blood of war, the boatman’s fee
(That endless shore, an anchored lee – variant line)
Upon these I was hewn,
The craft of foreign featherstones
A science, or an art?
What matter to that one dethroned
Whose will will soon depart?
Clever in the market stalls
Cunning in the wares
What happens when intent appalled
Is taken unawares?
Creation is a fakir’s cheat
The muses whores of fate
Yet man is just an instrument
Come often, or come late,
If he would be a better thing
He must to something else
Bend himself in constant chase
And sometimes so with stealth,
For he commands that lofty globe
Granted him by God,
Yet even so, he must still show
He knows of the façade,
For art is nothing but the world
Dressed up as if were true,
Therefore man has no real art
Without what he first grew,
Within his mind, upon his heart
He wrote, he sketched, he drew
Then he found that thing profound
When nothing yet is due
Thus (and therefore),
Art can nothing to this world
It did not first possess,
Yet turning so with twisted charms
Man does acquiesce
That in himself creation roams
Seeking whom (and what) to eat, but
First that man must eat this world
For him to be complete…
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Usually I post my verse on Mondays. For First Verse.
But I have been very busy lately and have had scant time for composition. Today though a friend of mine mentioned something about “creation” and since he is an artist I went ahead and wrote a poem I’ve been meaning to write awhile on the subject of art and creation anyway.
I have my own definition for the term “featherstone” in relation to creation and art. Or indeed in relation to anything at all.
I use it in this way: it refers to a magical or mythological Xoanon (that falls from the heavens and is taken as a god or carven into an idol and worshiped), to a thing that cannot in reality exist (because it is entirely self-contradictory), to polish away all of the weight of a thing and leave behind only the most opposite (and usually useless) thing, and even to Potmos, and the Residuum.
By foreign featherstone I mean that featherstone not native to one’s self, or that featherstone one must seek out elsewhere or that lures one elsewhere.
Wyrdwend 