Sunday, July 31, 2005

sorting the cats

I had a call a few minutes ago from my old friend Anastacia, who mentioned that the other day, owing to her friendhip with me, that someone asked her if she was "the Panther"...

okay, for the record, let's sort this all out...one more time...there will be a test.


The Panther (a/k/a the Black Panther) was the prime muse behind The Panther Cycles. A successful writer and artist in her own right, she now lives on the West Coast and I have not had any contact with her in probably six or seven years. She did the layout and cover art for my book "PanthEon" and was NOT involved with the creation of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES.


The Crimson Panther (a/k/a Brigit, the Goddess) was a major muse I had an affair with and have remained friends with. She took the handoff from the Black Panther, is considered one of the "3 panthers" from a dream I had even prior to her entry into my life and I have occasional contact with her, as we are collaborating on projects. And yes, the art looks remarkably like her.


The Golden Panther (a/k/a the Leopard) was my second wife and a major muse. I have not heard from her in some time. "Damascus" is my set of works most associated with her, as at the time we met she was dating only women...then she changed her mind for a few years. Last I heard she was back with women. She was the cover model for two of my books, FROM AN UNEXPECTED QUARTER and LOVE GODS OF A FORGOTTEN RELIGION. For nearly the entirety of the last eight years, she is the only woman I have been involved with, romantically.

La Pantera is Mari Laureano, the extraordinary erotic poet from New York. We are friends and she wrote the rear-jacket blurb for THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. She is married and we've never been involved. Her website is www.furiverse.com

A2Panther, Anastacia, is an old friend of mine who actually was about my only close friend who tried to talk me out of marrying Ann. We are close friends and she, from time to time, tries to fix me up with friends of hers (althought he one I was really, really interested got away while I was married to the Leopard). We went on exactly one blind date, aeons ago, where we both realized from first glance that there was zero chemistry between us. She is nowadays happily married and lives in the DC suburbs.

Some have suggested that the Goldenheart was actually the Golden Panther...she could also be actually the Crimson Panther (she, like Brigit, was also a redhead)...but as that relationship never had a high-water mark to measure, I am disinclined to accept that analysis.

Finally, the model who appears on the cover and in the inside art for THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES is Jillian Ann, a young woman and accomplished alternative-scene model and techno-musician. We have never met face to face and I have never been involved with her. She is merely a representation, not an actual player in the tableau (however, that position is still open and I am taking applications).

Got it straight? don't make me matrix this...

the tenor clears his throat, book pricing, and Dad takes a nap

minor note: at least one of the questions E.J. has come up with is obviously an inside job (a female of my former involvements...EJ's not giving me anything to work from, and I'm not going to ask) ...note to those contributing to his "project" of a no-holds-barred interview...don't ask questions you really don't want to know the answer to. If you rescind your query, I'll ignore it. Otherwise, expect to be vilified. My notion of charity for sins passed extends to only about four people (and may be further narrowed later this week). You aren't on that list.

Now, back to less ugly statements.

If you head over to Lulu.com right now and try to buy THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES, you may run into a little trouble, as I have it in a hold status while we work out some of the pricing issues before it gets rolled out TO THE MAJOR ONLINE RETAILERS. One side effect of this is that it looks like the MSRP for the book through such places as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million may be somewhat higher than the current list price of $29.95 at cityoflegends.com and lulu.com

The "goddess formerly known as Brigit" and I may be hunkering down to work on a novel together (my one former novel was a ghost job, I needs the help staying focused)...tentatively entitled THE PRINCE OF LOVE (no, it isn't about me) it was a diversion from a screenplay she and I had started a few years back and never got around to finishing...now we're working to the page first, then the screen.

I get my first full medical checkup in nearly half a decade in a few days. Place your bets on the bill of health.

It looks like we may be adding Sioux City to the list of towns I hit on tour this spring. Now, if Salt Lake City and Denver would like to bid in...I'm listening.

Tomorrow is Dad's birthday (he'll be 82)...I snapped this picture of him resting up for the festivities just a few minutes ago...


Talk to you all tomorrow...or later tonight, depending on how restless I am.

sleepless in Morgantown or, why marrying is a risky proposition but I'll do it again

When my mind gets onto the more Gordian of issues, especially at bedtime, I am left with two options, usually.

I can divert myself (I know how to do this) or run with it (the danger being I stay awake for a bit).

Last night I chose the latter, as I wanted to see where my mind would take me.

It started with my pondering what I shall get Ann for her birthday. For those of you who do not know her, Ann is my ex-wife #2. We were married for about six years. I initially encountered her while changing planes in Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and we became friends on the flight to LA. At the time...let's just say she had huge issues to overcome in her life..

We corresponded, as friends, and then about a year later, after she had assisted me on the Southern Poet's Readers Tour (at which she explained to everyone who would listen that we were soulmates and lovers on every level but the physical) she asked if she could move in with me in LA, just as friends, while she pursued her modelling dreams (there's a little more to the story, but that's the basic, official story with the least number of toes being tread upon). I was initially uncertain but eventually assented and flew to Mississippi to assist in her move. On the road to LA (or, according to my poetry, the Road to Damascus) she made her move and we were "involved" by the time we made it to LA. Six months later she proposed.

During this time I had been dumping money with psychistrists and treatment counselors to help her overcoming a problem with prescription medications. Three months after we were wed, at my urging, she started a 12-Step Program and has now been clean for over seven years (I presume still clean, for personal political reasons (hers) we have not spoken for nearly six months). She ended up being the cover model for two of my books (enclosed) and, despite our best intentions to keep our parting amicable, there are those around her who believe that unless you hate, you cannot heal (which is perverse on some many levels I do not know where to begin).



There's a lot more to it. But, again, you'll have to wait for the eventual and inevitable release of my book WINGS AS OFT LEATHERY AS FEATHERY, the much dreaded memoir, for more details. No matter what your surface perceptions are, to quote the tagline for "American Beauty", look closer.

So I was up until about 1:30 last night, trying to decide on whether to send her a birthday present and what it should be. I final figured that out (an interesting packet that shall include, I assure you, at least one of the books I have finally been able to finish work on since she made her exit)...now to figure out how to get it to her. It seems that my last few mailings prior to the great silence, sort of vanished into the ether. According to her, five consecutive packages, to two different addresses, never made it to her hands.

That was just the first 10-15 minutes of the 2-1/2 hour internal dialogue that kept me up last night, but I got to look in a lot of emotional and mental corners, visit some strange terrain and have a bright debate between my different aspects on my current vows of celibacy. One o'clock in the morning is a good time for that debate, let me tell you.

Anyway.

Tomorrow is my Dad's birthday!

In two weeks I have a birthday, and the day after that I have my speech at the Arts Week festivities. Haven't even begun working on it.

Saturday, July 30, 2005

long day, oy vey and some words to say

I give him a forum and he immediately starts offering to spill my secrets...great.

Someone shoot me now (Bugs: He does not have to shoot you now. Daffy: Yes! Yes! Shoot me now!)

That makes me think of Luisa, a very attractive co-worker I went out with, once, when I was at GE in Los Angeles. We totally did not hit it off, but she did give me a Daffy Duck mouse pad, as he was and is my favourite Warners Brothers character (close second: Michigan J. Frog) Sigh. A shame we did not connect, but she just seemed leery of me.

I was at a wedding reception this afternoon for the daughter of my cousin Darlene. Remarkable how much Darlene looks like her father, my Mother's only sibling, Robert, who died several years ago. He was a nice guy. A truly nice guy, and he is missed. I know Grandma has never gotten over his death.

I also finished the lawn today, put in 5 hours at work, did some continued work on the next book project, went shopping for mailign envelopes for books, and put up an autographed first-dat edition copy of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES on eBay.

I wil sleep well tonight. I have earned already a peaceful death, but I am many miles from the silence, the worms, the fading memory of so many things. I have many regrets, but so many more contentments. I have done more good than harm and loved and been loved (although, regrettably, more the former than the latter). I have years left on me, years to find new things, to relate old lessons, and to heal wounds only to lay new scars atop old ones.

I have found my path, if only I have the nerve to walk it.

Meanwhile, E.J....here are some answers to some of the questions you sent me earlier today, sans context: Actually, in reflection, that's chicken salad of me...so here are the questions, as well.

What is the most underrated part of a woman's body?
*Shoulders.

What's the most overrated part of a woman's body?
*Breasts.

What's the one thing you wish you never lost?
*The respect of those I love.

What's the last thing you ate that you shouldn't have?
*A chocolate chip cookie.

Where would you most like to be right now?
*Venice Beach

One word to describe your each of your relationships with the major lovers in your life?
*(Psyche)Laughter. (Swallow)Recrimination. (Panther)Seduction. (Brigit)Legend. (Mad Gypsy)Emotion. (Leopard)Crutch.

Would you like to have more children, if everything else was perfect?
*Yes, two more.

What do you miss the most right now in your life?
*Feral lovemaking.

Who is your dream woman, of womaen you've never met?
*Marisa Tomei.

Who is your dream woman, of women you've known?
The answer would hurt too many people and I think I've done enough damage.

Your second choice for an epitaph?
*"He bowed only to God".

Your greatest self-indulgence?
*Self-doubt.

What do you most value?
*Unconditional love.

How do you wish to die?
*For a purpose.

If you could practice a different profession than what you are, what would it be?
*Talk show host

Who was the best kisser of all your lovers?
*Loaded question. Stripping away emotional context...hm...Brigit. There was a hunger there.

What makes you laugh?
*A friend's voice.

What makes you cry?
*Absent friends.

What makes you angry?
*Assumptions.

What do you wish you were better at?
*Saying good-bye.

What one word sums you up?
*Resolute.

E.J. has returned

Hey, troops. I'm back!

After a few months of being cooped up in an editorial hell-hole for complicated sins of commission and omission, I have been granted access and freedom to contribute to the blog.

Let's get evil.

First, a spoiler.

He is, as you know, doing some kind of thing for the Arts Festival in Morgantown (been there, done that, am staying put)...but, a few days before it, to help feed the (in a perfect world) surge of attention to his website (did you know that his hometown newspaper, the Dominion Post, has never profiled him? No once. Not even after he put a photo that was originally in their paper aeons ago by their best photographer on the cover of his book that was about the town. Not even after he was one of only four locals to be named the the Appalachian Education Initiative's list of 50 outstanding creative artists from West Virginia (which puts him in company with people like Morgan Spurlock, Kathy Mattea and a couple of Academy Award Winners (you should be on that list, Morg, you wuz robbed!) WVU's student paper, in the meantime, has profiled him three times, including on the front page, and the newspaper in nearby Fairmont, which has more of an arts flavor to it, anyway, has profiled him) I have been tasked with putting up a couple of new sections on the site. One of which is to be a new interview...

I've asked and gotten permission to "solicit questions"...so here's what I want from you all. You have a question you want to know the answer to about the poet, his works, his muses? Send it to me at trojanhearse@cityoflegends.com or post it here as a comment to this blog entry and I'll include it in my list...I want hard, fast pitches...no grapefruit. here.

Want to know about who really inspired a certain poem? Or what a poem is about, in truth? How about some of the back room legends about the guy? Most of them I already know about...a few, I'll just ask him. (Favorite answers already include: Yes. Yes. No. Boxer briefs. Never. No. Sex. Yes. No, and wouldn't. Chicken livers. Diet Dr. Pepper. Coconut. Gracelessness.)

So, delve deep into your curiosities and send them along.

weekends were made for...work?

erk!

I'm getting ready to go to the job this morning...afterwards, I need to help my Dad get the yard mowed...then off to a wedding (don't know whose, off the top of my head, I was just informed that since my brother, Robert, is on the road, I need to stand in for him in escorting my Mom).

Some new ideas about the next book project, and some other movements in the universe. I have decided that over the next few weeks I am going to "clean out my Rolodex"...meaning anyone who doesn't return calls repeatedly is going to be dropped from my contact list...I am tired of investing massive emotional energy in life-energy sinks. As the Divine Miss M, channeling Sophie Tucker, would say: "F*** em if they can't take a joke".

I eBay'd off one of the reserve copies of "PanthEon" I found the other day...this was a small stack of the books what I had autographed right out of the box, when I got them, for distribution, then mislaid them...since I have taken the book out of direct distribution, I figure I should go ahead and move a few copies of these to feather my rather Spartan nest. I'll eBay off another starting this weekend.

Lots to do, and little time to do it in...too little of time. Going to set up my first physical in half a decade next week (somebody's cigarette habit always came ahead of my need for health insurance during most of that time...) I have a notion of some of what will be found, and am not delighted by that cloud, but it will give me an opportunity to have a few things fixed that I know need fixing, and confirm a few suspicions that I lack the training (and fully-equipped lab) to confirm.

And I will not hesitate to relate many findings...not expecting one like the one about ten years ago when my doctor told me "You'd look better if you lost the weight, but right now I think it would take kryptonite to kill you". It's one thing to suspect you are freakishly durable (both a blessing and a curse) it's another to have a battery of tests and a respected, multi-board-certified professional tell you.

God still has a sense of humour. And I'm working on it.

Friday, July 29, 2005

a*muse*ment

The topic has recently been hashed and rehashed of my "totem muses"...those women who have inspired my works and allowed me to both ascend and descend the roads of life into transcendence and disaster. What makes a woman that sort of woman, to inspire me?

Well, as I am right now in a span of my life where I have backed away from relationships, of my own accord, for a season or six, I have had some time to contemplate this issue (and if you know me you know how much I enjoy the mental exercise of self-evaluation, I am my own best and worst critic...)

I have to look at the women who have been inspirational to me and look for common threads...to do this I am going to do a breakdown of the ten greatest muses in my recollection; The Panther, The Leopard, The Swallow, The Goldenheart, Brigit, The Mad Gypsy, Psyche, The Truth, The Selke and Abstra.

Interesting list. Nine real women, although one of those I have never actually met face to face (Abstra is completely abstract, one of the others has never been more than a disembodied voice.) Only by a slight majority have I ever been intimate with, so while sexual chemistry is important, sexual activity is not essential.

Of the nine real-life totem-muses, at least three were sexually abused when they were young. This is consistent with the statistic that indicates that one in three American women will be sexually assaulted (raped) at some point in their life. It has been said that I am attracted to "damaged" people...but this statsitic seems to indicate otherwise as a pattern.

I can't classify them in detail by their "professions" as that would give away too much of some secret identities...but I can say five have their Bachelor's degrees, two of those have advanced degrees.

Much has been made of my ongoing joke of "leggy blondes with perky breasts" I share with my brother, Mark. Don't focus on that...of the nine, there is one blonde, only two I would classify as "leggy", and as to perky breasts? Of those I have seen their breasts, I would say three qualify...so that is not the yardstick either. Oh, and only one redhead, as well (Brigit).

Most of them are taller than the average woman, if you take out the runts of the litter (The Goldenheart and The Mad Gypsy) you have an average height of around 5'9"...both Brigit and The Swallow were 5'10"...I do have a fondness, physically, for tall women. But that does not seem to be an essential. I was mad for both of the shortest ones.

Personalities and tendencies...most have been creative..6 of the real-world 9 have been writers, some hyphenates, such as writer-artist. Most have been flirtatious, and have let me know they were interested (some outrageously so) before I even had thougth of making a move (yes, it is true, I still tend to be somewhat shy with women...I would say, historically, only two of the nine were women where I sent up the first signal of interest...and even there I had seen some indication of receptiveness.

So what have we got? No profile. Aside from tall and makes the first move, no clear generification of my involvements. I leave it to future historicans to make more of my involvements than I can. Me? I am just right now scanning the horizon for signs of life from tall, creative women...who cause that unexpected but welcome quickening of my pulse.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

ISO a goddess

physically, I am feeling the stress of the long hours of work. emotionally, I have probably never felt better. giddy, almost. despite the desertions of several key players in my life over the past year or so (yeah, I know, I gripe about that a lot...but I am not a fan of betrayal, deceit or ingratitude), my writings are hitting their stride...I am still in awe (yes, in awe) of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES and have to now live up to that bar with my next book...to be announced when I speak at Arts Week on August 17th.

I have never heard back from Peri about her AOL account or my offer to sign over a book's royalties to her...but since she has limited my communication channel to her to just go through her Mom...I am constrained and will just have to err on the side of caution.

Exhaustion is like a venom in my blood, a self-inflicted wound. I feel it trying to draw me to my grave...good luck...I am as resolute and arrogant in the face of my own mortality as I have ever been...if death wants me, he better bring friends and a buffet lunch.

I feel like Rodin as the last strokes are struck into the merble of a statue...weary, but content.

I am more that I thought myself capable of. I've defeated my own doubts, my own fears and my own artificial limitations. Nancy, just so you know, he is not beyond me. He is me, just a me I could only imagine in a forgotten time.

Now, to find someone to share this with. Someone who is not so trapped in their own world of madness that they can never be a partner. Someone who can both give and receive love.

I've already chosen my heirs...I just need a princess who wishes to be a queen.

Gotta go grab a shower and unwind for an hour or so before bed time...long week ahead of me...I am working every day and have after hours tasks to complete as well. The new diet is working magic. I feel great and I am definitely showing progress.

Gina Gershon vs. Carmen Electra

I was so glad to see "Trippin the Rift" back for a new season. All in all, I am still happy, except...

I'm sorry, I recognize the fact that Carmen Electra has been willing to hook up with rock stars and basketball players, and has been willing to pose for the Pimp of the Western World, Hugh Hefner (and no, unlike stupid kids, I do not think of pimp as word of praise...a pimp is a man who exploits women's bodies, sexually, to make himself rich at a detriment to the women...that's a bad person, no matter what his employees say). But, they brought her in to replace Gina Gershon as the voice of Six.

Gina is one of our bravest and more versatile actresses, and is a couple of orders of magnitude hotter and more talented than Carmen.

I don't know why the switch (maybe Gina got busy elsewhere on another film project and Carmen had spare time between drunken Vegas weddings and flashing her tits? dunno)

Otherwise, carry on. Just wanted to vent. The notion that a pin up model (or celebutante or sister of an accomplished sunger/actress/politician) automatically has talent is ludicrous (some do, but I think talent is distributed by some other standards than your willingness to spend a few hours in a hotel room or at a party with some guy you just met who can "help your career").

We are running a risk of devloping an overclass of in-bred celebrities and an underclass split between the sheep who are too benumbed to notice and the masses who become alienated. And in the age of the internet and the Digital Renaissance, a class war could get real ugly.

Count me in.

yawn - stretch - sigh

Been putting in the hours (hey, even living legends need day jobs...most poets of note were either trust fund babies or needed full time jobs, even today our "major poets" tend to be college professors (which always concerns me, as the university presses of our country have turned largely into vanity presses using tax dollars and tuition fees to publish what is often second rate verse by creative writing professors whose claim to fame is that they have published a book...through their university press...such is life)) today, right after noon, I go into overtime for the week what began on Monday...

I am behind putting up the new sections on the City of Legends website...ah well...will get to it as I can...no sneak peeks.

Jan, my ex, called last night and brought me up to date on Peri, my daughter, and her wedding plan status. She's getting married next September and plans are moving along for a wedding in California. This has disappointed many people who are too old or too stubborn or too poor to make the trip...me, despite hard feelings over our estrangement, if I am invited, I will walk through walls and fire and over broken glass (barefoot) to be there. It is her day, not mine, and I have survived worse treatment in my life.

Word of mouth on THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES is starting to take hold, which is very nice. Most common comment: Wow! McTaggart was right in his foreword to call it the most ambitious book of poetry he'd ever heard of. It is and will remain such until my next book.

Mark thinks her can hook me up with a Mac Mini next month, which means I can give me iMac333 to my sons...it works fine for their uses and has all the requisite software. Since Apple has been silent on the topic of granting THE ROMANTIC POET OF THE INTERNET and A LOYAL CUSTOMER FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES any kind of break or freebie or promotional ass-kiss, and I am too nice of a guy to go off and buy a cheap-o Windows (an imitation Mac operating system running on an imitation home computer, why don't I just marry a blow up doll for my third go round, while I am at it, hm?) I guess I'll have to stick with where my heart is (like I moved to Mississippi, even though I didn't want to and knew it would be both a financial dead-end and probably the end of my second marriage, because I was trying to be loving, supportive and loyal).

Sheesh, comparing Apple to the cat farm, there's a strange allegory.

New Muses on the horizon...but no comment beyond that.

Caffeine...need caffeine....later!

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

and the table shook, followed by a soliloquy



I called Tag and told him I wanted to show him something, so he neded to meet me at BAM (Books A Million) last night...when he got there I told him to sit down at the table and close his eyes...then he heard a loud THUD.

I had taken a copy of my new book, THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES, and dropped it on the table. I think I blew his mind. He had not seen how well it came out. I had not seen the size and scale and beauty of the book until my copies arrived in the mail. I mean , this thing is 8-1/2 x 11 x 2 inches thick! I've been in houses where it would be the largest book in the house, bigger than the dictionary they use, thicker than the Holy Bible (which usually has more pages, but is printed on thinner paper)...I'm still kinda/sorta reeling from the size of the thing.

I've been meticulously going through it...I know my edits weren't perfect, and so I am picking through to see if there is anything I need to revise before too many copies get into circulation (and, of course, any sold at lulu.com or through my own store at Cityoflegends.com will be collectors items, worth many times more than the perfected edits (so far I have found one or two small typos in the annotations...not too bad for a novel-length collection of works!))

I am going to send Jillian Ann, the techno musician and model from New York, who was kind enough to agree to be the cover model (yum!) and internal illustration model her copy this week...I think her mind will explode. I do want to give a copy to the local public library, but I want it done with problem pomp and press, so we'll see what we can do for that.

Now all my other books look like minor works to me...you do know what this means...once you go black (cover and massive size) you can never go back...so from now on my books have to be this level. Imagine having done high school plays on shoestring budgets, then suddenly being turned loose to mount a full Broadway production with name stars and a full orchestra and laser effects. Tough to go back to Peoria, hm?

Peri and Brian head back to LA today. I got no acknolwedgement of my existence while they were in, pretty wounding, but perhaps I am supposed to just suck it up and live with it. I understand the psychology of it all, but I am still a father, cut off from his daughter, whom he loves, no matter how incompetent he may have been as a father over the years (I wasn't abusive, this is mostly just the secondary bs fallout of most divorces...but there is other baggage). Devastating loss, you know. Not sure how I will handle the sudden jolt of attending her wedding next year...it might just be too bizarre, too stressful, to be publicly treated that way.

But I believe in unconditional love. If nothing else, my devotion to her, her brothers, even Ann, and this book, all prove this. I am, on the whole, a good person, even if I have my failings and sometimes I to remind myself that I am not the antichrist a handful of broken people (not you, Peri, others...some of whom have fed your apathied rage towards me) would paint me as in order to feel better about themselves.

Ann considered my ability to love against indiference or hate was a weakness. I always marvelld at how many people can sit in a pew on Sunday morning for decades and never listen. If I belonged to a club that baked brownies for its main function and never baked nor ate the treats, I would be a hypocrite. I have met too many Christains in my life who had no concept of uncondtional love, charitable love. And, while I may sometimes rail to the heavens when wounded and struck down, I don't stop loving, not because I am a better person, but because I don't want to be a hypocrite.

It is too easy for people to ignore what truths you may be communicating when they discredit you, even more so when you discredit yourself. I believe in God. I believe in the model that presents of unconditonal love. I will continue, every day, to try and be someone capable of loving without relent, without halt, without making my very core beliefs and their associated actions, a lie.

If this means from time to time I will be taken advantage of, misinterpreted, or stabbed in the back. That's just part of the game, like skinned elbows in football. If you want to be on the field, you have to accept them.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

We Owe Debt to Memory

I was of a mood to post this piece, which was well received when first struck, in 2002, and some have argued its place in the five or ten best single pieces I have wrought.

We Owe Debt to Memory

A lonely tale is bound to wind
around a spindled point,
to make of us a metaphor,
twin avatars, to annoint.

And there are those who will relate
our falls and victories,
and sell our shells in necklaces
declared to cure disease.

For we owe debt to memory.
And those who bear the ark.
The acolytes of ancient nights
we melted in the dark.

We can not burn at this degree
and not outshine, at least,
the dimmer stars, if not the moon,
and sundry suns, released.

If you dare not to be a mold
for dreams of those unborn,
then tip your hat and hand and flee
this pilgrim, bent and worn.

For we owe debt to memory.
And those who bear the ark.
The acolytes of ancient nights
we melted in the dark.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

You know who you are. Peace.

The catacombs of the mind

My Mom used to say "don't do anything you wouldn't do if I was in the room"...a horrific thought to have stuck in one's head after puberty. Fortunately, I have been able to turn that voice off once in a while by sending it to a quiet cell, distant from my moments, or I'd be a raving lunatic of a different stripe by now.

My Mom works in guilt like Rodin worked in stone. Every kid has his point of vulnerability, the idiots who think that one style fits all in disciplining kids is plain, dead wrong. My older brother, the spanking worked on him. My next brother, take something away from him. Me, look me in the eye and play on my guilt.

Anyway, I digress. Heck, I'm digressing before I start the main point...that's pretty whacked.

I spoke with Tag (Dan McTaggart) yesterday and am decided to go ahead and donate a copy of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES to the local library. It's a perfect library book...so massive that sitting on the shelf it will not just disappear next to the other volume...it is a thing of beauty, not only for the contents, but for the layout and the lovely cover model, Jillian Ann, whom I cannot say enough about at this time.

I've been spending time just holding the book...it is so heavy and gratifying to hold. I like the sound when I drop a copy on a table, like a fist slamming down to make a point during a heated argument. It's 8-1/2 x 11, not the 6 x 9, for one thing...and thicker than a stack of all my other books combined...I set it on a bookshelf with copies of PanthEon, From Out of the City (Yes, I have a copy of that rare, fair book, of course), From an Unexpected Quarter, Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion, 101 Great Love Poems, INVOCATO and The Morgantown Suite Poems and it was like Jupiter (the planet) showing up for a cocktail party where Venus, Mars, Mercury, Mars, Uranus and Neptune were hanging out...suddenly none of them looked that imposing.

It is the death star of poetry books. For all the emotional baggage it carries, it is the "me" book...even more so than INVOCATO, which is my "greatest hits".

Maybe Barbara Holmes is right, maybe I am arrogant. But Mark Twain said a bird is not bragging when it says it can fly, and I have flown. There's a tiny spot in my brain that never accepted me as a poet, until now. Now that Doubting Thomas has gone to that same corner where hides my mother's voice when I'm with a beautiful woman who asks me to stay the night.

Thank God for the catacombs of the mind.

Monday, July 25, 2005

the kids came by

Well, Jan and the kids (and Brian) stopped by while I was at work and visited with their grandparents.

I am glad they got the time together and the boys got to explore my world. Dad even got some pictures.

Funny thing, just an hour or so before they arrived, a package came in the mail...it sat upon the table in my room as the boys explored my computer table and bookshelves (Dante even dragged out my copy of the AEI's "Art&Soul")

What was in the box? Two massive books, maybe an inch and a half thick, each...with shiny black covers. Yes, each perhaps the most impossibly hateful thing in the world to my ex wife...THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES.

I opened the box when I got home and enjoyed the irony.

Peri, glad you came by. Brian, always glad to see you around, I think you are good for Peri and you make her happy, so I am happy for you both. Dante, always, always proud of you. Elric, I am always proud of you, as well, and love all of my children.

Kids are coming today

My kids (and ex wife) and my daughter's fiance are swinging by today...I will not be available (caught betwixt a rock and a hard place, but considering the strained relationship with my daughter, maybe it is better do I have to be at work), but this will give my parents (their grandparents) a chance to see them for the first time in a while, and to meet the fiance (Brian, whom I rather like).

I spent a few minutes yesterday cleaning my corner of reality, so as to set a good example for the boys (they're twelve, a certain amount of chaos and ruckus are expected) but I am a bit down that I will not be able to see them, Peri or Brian at this time. Such is life. I am sure there are those who will say I am being a bad parent by not quitting my job to see them, but I am sure if I quit my job I would be even more criticized. I can go see the boys later, and riight now I am waiting for my daughter to give any signal that she even wants me alive on this planet before I presume upon her existence.

I have learned a lot in the last year, if only on a philosophical level. I should have done a better job advocating for Peri against certain other parties, that's my fault and my shame. For a person like me, failing to 24/7 protect someone you love from harm is the greatest sin. Yeah, that's neurotic as hell, but it is who I am and I'd rather that than be the kind of parasite I have so often encountered in this life. I may be often incompetent, but I am at least making the effort to be a good person.

Back to the poetry: I am determined to add Chicago to my tour next spring, if anyone knows a good venue or twelve in that area (in fact, that goes for any city in North America...if you know a good venue, suggest it!) let me or them know. What makes a good venue? A place to speak from and the ability to fit more than one other person in it (places that only one other person can fit in are more suitable to other performances of mine...heh heh heh)

I have in the past done readings in cafes, sports bars, churches, schools, clubs, between acts at rock concerts, bookstores and auditoriums. First priority is usually given to venues that are willing to pay, second priority to those at least willing to let me peddle my books and who might pass the hat (or at least put out a tip jar). I am willing to work with local talent, but would rather not have it part of an open mic night.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

(audio) The Great Cycle of Brigit

An old friend found and returned to me this piece that I wrote nearly nine years ago and had tossed aside when that relationship went south and sour.

Thanks, Shiri, for saving this rather over-the-top but earnest work of passion and affection so that I might remember that I can heal when struck low, for this was writ to a woman who had entered a life only a few weeks before and had saved me fromt he self-immolation of the Panther and the isolation from my beloved children that was caused by that

this is an audio post - click to play


And Brigit, I know you read my blog sometime. Know you this...I meant every word of it.

Cats, Cuts and Amomancers

Yusef Islam, formerly known to the world as Cat Stevens, wrote some remarkable songs, some of which influenced my life profoundly, particularly "But I Might Die Tonight" which was introduced to me by my first lover, Psyche.

But in time I have come to truly be touched by his work "The First Cut is the Deepest"...at this moment I am listening to it for about the hundredth time in various versions (I prefer the a'capella version done by Terence Trent-D'arby a few years back, my second favourite being the author's own, which is right now playing.)

It speaks to me, to my life, to my doubts...

"I would have given you all of my heart,
but there's someone who's torn it apart.
And she's taken almost all that I've got,
but if you want, I'll try to love again.

Baby, I'll try to love again,
but I know
the first cut is the deepest.
Baby, I know
the first cut is the deepest.

Cause when it comes to being lucky she's cursed,
when it comes to loving me she's worst
but when it comes to being loved, she's first
that's how I know
the first cut is the deepest."

Why do I find this so inspiring? Well, it dead on describes most of my romantic relationships.

And, in that, there's a reassurance. Here's a man I've never met, who lives an ocean away from me and he knows the exact situation I've found myself in. I must not be the only fool who erred in loving too well someone whose greatest bond to me was that she loved herself ahead of me, as well.

Wow. Epiphany. I've walked out of these debacles before...and will again, if need be. I know I have that strength, and I promise both my audience, who depends on me to be strong and vulnerable, and whoever it is, waiting for me, out beyond the farthest pillars, that I will love again.

"I still want you by my side
just to help me dry the tears that I've cried
cause I'm sure gonna give you a try
and if you want, I'll try to love again.

Baby, I'll try to love again,
but I know
the first cut is the deepest.
Baby, I know
the first cut is the deepest.

Cause when it comes to being lucky she's cursed
when it comes to loving me she's worst
but when it comes to being loved, she's first
that's how I know
the first cut is the deepest."

You know what? The second cut is pretty deep, too. And the third. The fourth. The fifth hit bone, but I learned how not to scream that time.

The sixth? We'll see, because she's out there tonight. Maybe she's someone I already know. Maybe she's even a former lover who will re-enter my life and I'll accept her back in. Maybe she's someone who, at this very moment, is unknown to me and I to her. She may be a college student who has read all my books, or a divorced mother of three who doesn't have time ro read. She may be black, or white, or any of the other pigments God put in His palette. She may be rich or poor, at the top of her game or still trying to get into the stream of life. But I know she's out there.

I got room for more scars, and a heart willing to heal.

That's why I'm the Amomancer.

And that's why I respect Yusef Islam. As an artist and a man.

Note: Lyrics above are his and I'm not trying to jack them...not even sure they are 1000% accurate, I just listened to the song and wrote what I thought I heard.

Check out my website at CityOfLegends.com (yes, that's a link, use it...now) over the next few days, some new stuff going to be arriving that will blow your mind.

Princes, Space Aliens and Lovers

"I would say something solemn, but we haven't the time." -spoken by Geoffrey Plantagent, from "The Lion In Winter"

I'd make sure more precisely of the quote, but seeing as all copies of that film I've ever owned are now in the libraries of various ex wives around the country, I can't. sigh.

Had a great meeting with Dan "Mountain Poet" McTaggart last night, getting some insight on how he views my upcoming plans, and getting to see some of his works as he preps his books. Always refreshing.

The new diet is working at a manic level...had I known this would have been as effective I would have started long ago...say twenty years (it has been noted I never had a weight problem until I married...my Mom says that's because I quit chasing girls (a theory denied by my first ex-wife, who still insists I slept with half the East Coast, and mostly the homely ones at that...I know who and when I've been with...I can give their times in my life, their middle names, and I am unashamed of them. Not necessarily unashamed of myself, as I believe one should have one mate for life, that I have been unable to find someone sane and suitable yet is aggravation #1 in my multiverse)...the weight problem most likely derives from the amount of time I have spent unhappy over the last quarter century. It is noted that during periods of content, the pounds came off.)

I went over my plans for my next book with Tag last night, I think he approved the notion...but more on that when the time comes.

I am working as many hours as I can (those who have ever accused me of being less than a workaholic are so ignorant is isn't funny...I hate not being busy)...it will be nice to provide some recompense to those friends who have helped me in the past...even though little of the money was for myself, per se.

"We work while the clock, she is a-ticking!" - Lord John Whorfin, from "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension"

Saturday, July 23, 2005

(audio) Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion

One of the more remarkably thickset works in my catalog, this poem became the titular work for my 2002 book that conatined such gems as "We Owe Debt to Memory", "The Patchwork Skirt of My Love" and the prophetic "My Electric Lady".

All in all, a pretty good group to travel with.

this is an audio post - click to play

Summers and Fridays

I keep a pretty good eye on my empire. I track the ebb and flow of visitors to my website, this blog, my site at authorsden.com and my collection of worked hosted by alt-sex-stories-text-repository (yeah, a little out there for me, but the audience is huge, and I haven't posted anything I haven't read for an audience)

What has struck me over the years have been the ebbs...those moment and seasons when my readership drops. Summers and Fridays.

Summers, considering my huge college student demographic, makes sense. They are off carousing, many of them cut off from their usual access to the internet, and many of them not needing to do research for a quick research paper for their lit class.

Fridays have been problematic for me to explain, although I have a notion that it's office workers. People who cruise the web at the office are busy on Fridays trying to get out the door and don't have the downtime to be looking for something to read and thus they opt for weather.com or Fandango or God-knows-what-else instead.

Any thoughts? I'm, as always listening.

By the way, I recently got an email from someone representing themselves as a 13 year old girl from Canada. Nothing against young people or Canadians...but she connected with me through this blog and just about the first question out of her mouth (or keyboard was asking me how old I am. I hope those who actually read this web blog stop for ten seconds to put my words in the context of who and what I am.

Or, as we use to say on the web in chatrooms "M/49"....people cruising for a webdate would come into a chatroom (usoally the Writers Cafe or Writers Den on AOL, where there was a raging discussion between people of the likes of Aldo Alvarez, Harlan Coben, Tom Clancy and myself on the topic of modern literary genre identity, and blithely drop "age/sex" as their opening line.

This invariably would lead to twenty people clicking their ignore buttons at once.

Have a good day and keep you eyes open for some changes to my site at cityoflegends.com in the next few days.

Friday, July 22, 2005

The Tour...and an unearthed relic of love

I have made yet another decision (and for once it is a decision per se, not a reversal of some previous decision). I am going to mount the reading tour in the spring.

By a tour, I mean a full-on promotional tour for my books and my site, complete with sponsors (I have been talking to some). I will confirm dates and cities as I lock them in, but at this time expect it to move East to West, and if you need a clue, buy one from that tip. I am going to try to include Boston, New York, Philadelphia, DC, Pittsburgh, Morgantown, Fairmont, Tampa, Mobile, Birmingham, New Orleans, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Austin, Tucson, San Diego, Monterey and Los Angeles. In short, I am going to revisit every place I've ever done readings before (dare I do Bay St. Louis? we shall see!) and then some.

I will partner with local poets as possible (there are some old friends in some of those places I'd love to work with again...Karla, Larry, Claibie, Mari, Ana, Tomas, Richard, let's work this through...and yes, Mari, I'll even consider the club this time). First preference to those places that will pay even a modest fee, then to those that will let me set up and sell books...if the venue won't pay, pass the hat or work at least the promo angle, don't bother me...I've been burned by venues before that wanted to sit on their butts.

I'll be revealing more info on that on August 17th when I speak at Arts Week in Morgantown, and I'll post the details that night on my website. If you are a reader and want to see me come to your town, let me know...it's early enough to add you to the mix and I love reading for people who want me there.

Forgive me if I have been rather hammering away on personal issues these last few days...I've been wound up a bit, but its all stuff I have no control over, so I have decided to let those who spit the bile wallow in it for a time...but I got some great news today in the mail. One of my more devoted readers from about 8-9 years ago contacted me recently and said she noticed that there were several works I no longer was referencing on my site or elsewhere that she had made copie sof when I had been active with them...so she sent me copies of them all.

I'll be damned. At least fifty pieces that had, for one reason or the other, dropped off my catalog. So, this weekend I am going to conceive and develop a little niche for them on my website (www.cityoflegends.com) to bring these unearthed treasures back to the light.

Included are some of the most excellent works composed in the name of my muse Brigit, who wrote a recent foreword for my book THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. I was thunderstuck. It also include a humour piece I had done for the Writers Club on AOL, the mythical 13th Chapter of THE COMPLEAT AMOMANCER (note my fondness for the archaic spelling). Guess I have to finish that book now.

Still shopping for a good muse...some candidates to suggest themselves. I just have to be careful this time, getting too old to recover as readily from disappointment...although, to perish in the name of love would be a death worthy of me and my legacy. I am content that I have placed in orbit those spheres that will ensure my posterity.

A tidbit, if you would, from the recovered works:

open windows

When you open your mind.
Your heart. Your dreams.
You start something impossibly
perfect and new.
A wind of a distant shore blows
the dried petals
of the grand roses into blossom
again. And light.
No, more than light, the pure
incandescence
of God is revealed in gentle fire.
For when you dare.
When you care to open your heart
and mind to love,
you open the infinite windows
to tomorrow.


William F.. DeVault. all rights reserved.
(written December 10, 1996)

artist welfare and uncommon courtesy

Went to a workshop on state grants to individual artists last night. Still of two minds on the topic (find a topic I'm not on two minds about)...very interesting. The highlight of the evening was being berated by a local writer for not taking a more active interest in getting my book THE MORGANTOWN SUITE POEMS into local bookstores. I'm the hooker, not the pimp...as it is I feel I spend too much time marketing myself and my books. I write, and if reviewers and critics (I mean the ones who have actually read my stuff) are to be believed, pretty damn good at it. I dislike it when people, unsolicited, try to tell me how to order my existence. (No, not tell me how to do my job, as writing is not my job...it's my existence.)

The fact that this same piece of advice comes from the same person who last year, having never read any of my work, tried to draw a distinction between my work and that of a local professor as that I am not an "academic poet" (and tried to make it seem like somehow, we of more publication credits who do not depend on the public dole and a portion of state monies and student fees to pay our way to presentation and publication are an inferior breed) did not help sell her critique. I don't write for the local audience. Indeed, a higher percentage of people in similar sized sampling areas in India, Australia, Los Angeles (that's a foreign country, isn't it?) and Ireland know my works than here, which is a function of a dysfunctional local culture when it comes to arts above and beyond the institutionally sanctioned forms and craftspersons.

Of course, this then leads me to the fundamental question of wtf I am doing here? (Okay, I know the reasons, but why do I remain? Simple. Family. Here I am closer to my sons than I would be on the West Coast (a fact my ex taunts me with every time I talk about finding a better job and heading back to California...she'd rather it not be easy on me, God knows she wants to beat the crap out of me, financially and emotionally, every step of the way...makes for a good role model...she once told me, in front of her lawyer, that she doesn't want me dead because that would elimante her ability to make my life "a living hell". Nice. I am sure every time I draw breath without pain or smile at a piece of music she feels her life's work is undone.))

Also, my parents are here and advanced in years, don't want to be to far from them. I turned down a very cushy job offer in South Africa several years ago for the same reason (mostly I was talked out of it by my second wife, who I have since learned has a rather excessive boat anchor on her own personal movements). C'est la guerre.

Well, I don't know if the package that I and my parents sent to my sons for their birthday ever got there...no one has called to confirm its arrival. For most people that would mean it has not, but since the grandparents, I believe, are waiting for their thank you for last year's gifts, which I know arrived, we'll assume it has and just standard operating procedures are in place. I have hesitated to call because...well, because I shouldn't have to call to find out if my birthday presents to my sons arrived. I'm tired of being the bridger for the social failings of others, someone else step up for once. I have excused malice, gossip, slander, rudeness, neglect and two faced-ness in so many people in an attempt to be the nice guy (and I get vilified anyway...usually by the more guilty of the crew) but I refuse to make the full turn and start treating others as I have been treated.

Some mornings it is tough not to, though.

Sorry, this damn blocked salivary gland is starting to annoy me (yes, keep me from eating for a day and ask yourself how happy I will be...) so I am being less political and polite than usual. Bark. Bark. Growl.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

self-definition and the death of a gentle friend

I found out this evening that a very gentle man, named Rich, who worked at the Morgantown Public Libraray, passed away last night. This sent shock waves through my circle of acquaintances, many who knew him personally.

I considered, and will probably, write a poem in his honor, but someone asked if I was going to try and read it at a funeral or memorial service and I said "No".

I don't do funerals.

There is actually a core group of people who are watching and waiting to see what I do when my parents, my father in particular (whom I am quite devoted to), pass, as this will put me in a fix, pitting my self-definition against my desire to honor him and please my family.

In life we are faced with the issue of self-definition. Who we are often is set at the earliest times of our lives. I know the moment when I dedicated myself to excellence in my field. I know when I decided I would not do drugs or drink. On the other hand, I never recall having, as a young man, made the decision to be monogamous. This left me without the underpinnings to make good decisions in that arena and led to a couple of real disasters.

Had I the base values about infidelity that I have about drinking and drugs, I would be certainly a richer man, although no doubt the world literary scene would be a bit poorer.

I'm working on that. Despite numerous opportunities, I never cheated on Ann, despite her poor showing in that area. Of course, the nearly seven years I was faithful to Ann pales besides the mid-term of my first marriage, when I was faithful to Jan for nearly fifteen years. In the end, I got stupid. She got the kids, the car, the house and my money. Ouch. :0(

One of the things that attracted me to the Friends, the Quakers, was their dedication to speaking only the truth...being one who is glib and clever enough to have sometimes gotten away with blatant lies (usually not malicious lies, like slander or gossip, more self-preservation, or even covering for someone else (when you die, ask God for a list of what I did under other people's names, for their sake...but be sitting down. My published works under my name are the tip of a bizarre iceberg which includes many essays, research papers and even a novel or two. Works I could not seem to generate for myself, but when called upon to produce them for others, out of a sense of helping them, I would blithely dive in).

Of course, this always backfires and I find myself on the outside, perhaps even more abused than had I been the jerk. It has long been a sore spot on my soul that I am treated as second tier in more than one circle to convicted felons, child molestors and drug dealers. Usually what got me to that pass was trying to be charitable, even allowing myself to take the blame for others' mistakes so that they can survive the fallout. Broad shoulders invite many to stand beneath them for shade.

Sigh. But this is part of my self-definition...I can take a punch from Atlas or Achilles. Sometimes it is the only thing I bring to the party. Not a sense of martyrdom, but a desire to protect others. Back to Rich.

Rich, you will be missed and mourned, by myself, and others. Thank you for your kindness, your sincerity and your gentility. I don't know if and when they will hold a service in your honor, but I will probably not be there. It would again be a compromise of myself, a man so long compromised for the sake of others that he has, from time to time, lost his way in this world. Allow me and forgive me this bit of selfishness.

If anyone reading this does attend his funeral or service, please pay my respect, and if you would, you are welcome to read this small tribute I give him now, from my heart.

To a gentle man

Here is life.
There is death.
And they are bridged in ev'ry breath.
Sleep you now.
Sleep past dawn.
We shall deal with braving on.

Peace you sought.
Peace you find.
We are those you leave behind,
to speed pace
in this race
and find you in a better place.

Thank you, friend.
Thank you, true,
for in our hearts your seeds grew.
Now your smile
slides away
to leave us little more to say.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

G'night Rich...catch you on the other side.

bullfrogs, salivary glands and leggy blondes

This morning, after posting my morning entry, I went and got breakfast...

ouch

suddenly the whole left side of my face mushrooms up to about double its normal size

not a good thing, but there is value in everything. Several years ago I saw a friend demonstrate the exact same symptoms one day...her face blew up like a balloon (this is the friend who made up rumours about sleeping with me when she thought it would make her more attractive to a mutual friend she wanted to sleep with...instead he went running with the unsubstantiated (and ludicrous) accusation to my 7-months pregnant wife, but more about that in my memoir)...and it was diagnosed as a "blocked salivary gland".

Now, if one of my glands is going to get blocked, I guess that's one of the least worrisome, especially since I am declining food for the most part until it settles down. Diet by malfunction.

Just found out there is basically unlimited, incentivized overtime on the project I am on...you don't have to tell me twice. Add to this my enhanced teaching schedule at MTec this fall, and I will be able to make a dent in all those lingering debts from the former regime.

Yep, that's me...the frog...I even now have the bullfrog swelling (on one side) to prove it.

The romantic frog of the internet, just waiting for his princess. Legends in waiting, apply now.

Urban renewal on the City of Legends

Last night I uploaded a new face for the City of Legends, my website...I'll wait and see how people react to it, but it is more oriented towards my books, and perhaps a bit less chaotic than the old front end.

Got to talk to my boys yesterday for their birthday...it was, as always, good to hear their voices. Their mother may be bringing them, my daughter and her fiance by for a brief visit with my parents on their way back from visiting her family. This is always a problem in divorce, one side of the family invariably feels like they have been cut off. I don't blame her for the invective and vilification towards me, I earned it (and it has taught me that what others do and say about you says nothing about you, but volumes about them)...but my parents are faultless in all this (don't make me start comparing people and relative worthiness, I could get ugly, and that would be a statement of my character) and deserve to be a part of their grandchildren's lives.

Enough of that personal life stuff...

Went to the farewell reception for Meghan King-Johnson of Arts Monongahela last evening. She will be missed, as she had been my #1 patron in the local arts community. Without her work, I would not have returned to Morgantown last year, and there would have been no Morgantown Suite Poems (those of you who still lurk in the shadows, in dread of the eventual release of my memoir, should get on your knees and thank her...she bought you time...)

I found out I will be teaching 4 nights a week at MTec this fall, which is the maximum number of nights you can teach there, so that is a good thing...funds will be tight for the time being, but by September there should definitely be an uptick or two.

One of my favourite students from last semester dropped by my class yesterday, just to say hello. If she was a decade older, I'd ask her out...but I get enough crap over my last wife (and the problems were not so much a function of our age difference as....nah, that can wait for the memoir as well...)

Much love...drop by the website and check out the new front end...I'll probably also be making some internal changes as time and energy allow.

Ciao.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Happy Birthday to my Sons

Happy birthday, Elric and Dante. (My twin sons are 12 today!)

Hope you have a great day full of fun and the coming years are kind to you.

Welcome back "home" Peri. I hope you and Brian have a great visit and you go back to CA refreshed and delighted with the family's reception for your fiance (you know I adore him...)

That's about it for today, don't want anything else overshadowing the boys' birthday...so I'll save the rest for tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Still in the horse latitudes

Home. Safe. Got the iTunes cranked up on Billy Idol. Ahhh. Peace.

I likes the new weights. Hulk stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

Hmmm...whole new school of poetry, or a re-discovery of my Cro-Magnon roots?

Never did get a call back from the ex and my boys over the weekend...it seems silly that she can never find five minutes to return a call, especially when it means my sons getting to talk to me. Most annoying.

Peri and Brian are due to come East tomorrow...I won't be seeing them on this trip, but that wasn't anything I had any real input into.

I may be moving into a training slot at the new place...there is discussion...although at this point I am so focused on my writing (boy, did it languish under the former regime...something ably documented in my memoir).

Tonight the Pretendent will be nominating his first Supreme Court Justice. I hope it is a good choice, able to be approved by both sides, and he doesn't screw us over just to buy favour with his "base"...like the parents and spouses of all our war dead have been. They served ably and nobly, only to, in the end, be made into fodder for a political argument between two families that hate each other deeply (okay, we killed Saddam's sons and captured him, avenging your father's loss in the 1992 elections, can our sons and daughters come home now? Very Christian of us, right? Blessed are the peacemakers? Not under the current government.

Thank God I never went into politics.

Yet.

See the new profile picture? I'm smiling.

It is the doldrum day I have been dreading. Yesterday was the culmination of the hoopla over the release of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. Tomorrow is my sons' birthday (they will be 12! Booth Tarkington and Mark Twain would both acknowledge the importance of that birthday). So here I am, dangling between peaks.

I changed the photo on my profile to something less forbidding, on a whim. The shot now in use is a crop from a family shot taken last year...my hair has further grown back out and I'm a little sleeker...but it's me. I'll never admit to what emotional moment I conjured to bring the smile, though. I'll leave some mystery.

I've been getting some great feedback on the new book, and the mere accomplishment of putting out the three books in the last 100 days. Yeah, it took a little work...but it is amazing what you can accomplish when left to do your job. Still miss my primnary distraction, but get back channel reports that all seems well in her sphere.

Barring a mid-course correction (gee, do I ever change my mind?) I have decided on my next book...but I won't reveal that until my talk on August 17th at Arts Week. Someone forwarded me a press release about a local professor sponsoring (with the unlimited resources provided to him by WVU) a writers' workshop. I snorted. It's eggs and ham. (The old saw about how contribution versus commitment is like breakfast - the chicken makes a contribution with her eggs, but the pig, with the ham, makes a commitment. Poetry isn't my day job. It is my state of being...) I'm pretty secure about my place in the firmament.

Ran into a person on MySpace purporting to be one of my all time favourite actresses. Don't know if she's real or not, but it was a pleasant enough jolt to the week...I shall be circumspect. My years in LA, meeting some of the elite, have taught me how to avoid being star-struck...but if this is her, at very least we are talking about one of the more attractive women on the planet, and talented besides, so I am more femme-struck (I dodged a pun there) than star-struck.

Caffeine...need caffeine.

Monday, July 18, 2005

Now What?

Okay, I did it...

three books in less than 100 days(!)

the completion and release, on schedule, of the entire Panther Cycles(!)

(and a few other miracles of a more private aspect)

Now what? Not said with any arrogance or irritation, but the impatience of a young man trapped in an adult body, weary of wasting time.

Let me see (by the way, if you have not yet meandered through my last few posts, do so...there's 10 audiobloggings of poems from THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES as well as peeks at all the art from the book)...

Well, my next project will be one of three...either:

a) A collection of all-new romantic poems specifically targeted to weddings or
b) My memoir (still hanging onto the title of WINGS AS OFT LEATHERY AS FEATHERY or
c) Another massive poetry collection, a la TCPC, but of my classic non-Panther romantic works, concurrent with the withdrawal of FROM AN UNEXPECTED QUARTER and LOVE GODS OF A FORGOTTEN RELIGION being withdrawn from the market.

Or, maybe I'll do all three...at once...

Who knows...

Thanks again, and if you have the chance, drop by my new Romantic and Erotic Poetry Group on MySpace.com.

Later, my friends.

acknowledging the pain

In the midst of all the hoo-ha and marketing thunder, I wanted to take a moment and apologize to those who may feel a bit marginalized by the attention this book (THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES) is getting, or its very existence. To Jan, Peri, Dante, Elric, Ann and those friends who may feel that I am somehow celebrating their pain that came through this relationship or these works, I do understand your pain and accept with great sorrow my hand in it.

Infidelity is not to be celebrated. Part of the lesson of The Panther Cycles is that all actions of the human heart carry prices, and that we are not alone in paying those prices. Yes, I have to say that more than anyone I have suffered for my follies, and I resent it when those who have suffered less want to moan about their pain when I am have been struck down (indeed, I have yet to find anyone in this life whose first question is "How are you doing?"...I feel a strange connection to the lead charactr in "American Beauty" when towards the end of that amazing film he is asked how he is doing and he realizes no one has asked him that question in a long time, everyone is too busy with their own concerns).

It has been my good fortune to be able to make art from all that is my life, the good and the bad, and I would be a poor steward of the talents given me by the Almighty if I didn't try my best to use those talents in the most earnest and productive manner. That's not blaming God for my mistakes, but stating why I am making these choices. But these are still my choices.

I am "taking penance given, every mile" to quote the poet.

July 18, 2005: The Release of The Compleat Panther Cycles

There are inherently three miracles of this day.

The first is that I fulfilled an arc to release three books in a 100 day span, starting with April's INVOCATO, then THE MORGANTOWN SUITE POEMS in June, and now THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES today, the 10th anniversary of when I started writing those works.

The second is that, despite all manner of obstacles, I have managed to produce a volume that contains the entirety of The Panther Cycles that satisfies me and brings a sense of closure to the past decade of my life. Those whom I have known along this path who are still in my life have proven, through their persistence and friendship to be of value and purpose and their presence in my sphere pleases me.

The third is the start of a whole new cycle in my life, not a cycle bounded by the words of a single set of works, but by the limitless possibilities of life. Despite what seems to be my own worst mistakes in judgement, the fates have been kind. I do not know if this is part of a grand master plan or just luck on my part, but life has been good to me. Now it is my duty to return the favour. Through both the kindness and perfidy of others, I find myself with a freedom to act validated by life experience.

I sat down a few days ago and looked at the works I have spawned in the last few months and was gratified to see that, despite the artist's constant fear of "losing it" I am writing as well or better than I ever have in this life. Yeah, I still write a lot of junk, but as it was aeons ago, those works are consigned to the garbage heap before I inflict them on the world.

In summation, I just want to say thank you. To God, my parents, my children, those others who have made the tapesty into which I am woven and still weaving myself a richer and more intricately beautiful piece of time and space.

I am grateful.

Now, for those of you who haven't yet...go to the website for
THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES
and, if it pleases you to buy a copy of this remarkable book, invest in the tapestry and become part of my ebb and flow.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

(audio) PC 10: The Penetrating Rose


this is an audio post - click to play
Both this poem and the cycle it comes from are called "the penetrating rose"...and when this Tenth Panther Cycle began circulating, there was much debate as to whether I was describing a real rose, a metaphor for a rose or some other allegory for perhaps even the male genitalia.

Well, might as well give up one secret...all three are correct. This is a blended image and metaphor. But remember, if you can't live without experimenting with this I do have one word of advice...unless you like the idea of potential medical treatment, meticulously remove all thorns.

the penetrating rose

the focus shifts to your hand. your soft hand. the hand
that brushes aside my hair to gaze into my eyes when
that is all we dare do for fear of showing the cards
of our hearts to the riverboat gamblers who charge
and bluff and cheat their ways across this game. with
firm and cautious resolve, you guide the penetrating rose
to its vase. or perhaps, to a new bed, rich and nurturing.
where it will take root. and grow strong as an expression
of passion and love. I stare deeply into your burnt honey
eyes and see the fire in them, as parts the impediments
to the penetrating rose. I see your eyes. I feel your eyes
locked into mine, sending fire and pleasure like some
great spiritual semaphore. a single sound escapes your lips.
and the penetrating rose slides softly into place. and
you brush aside my hair again, with the soft hand that
guided the flower to its new home. where it takes root.
and blossoms as your eyes, hand, heart and flesh desire.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

But I'll leave any further details to your own sick imagination.

This cycle was one of my first attempts at erotic-tinged poetry, and judging from the email responses I got (mostly unprintable) when this set of poems was first distributed, they were...effective. I started receiving all manner of propositions and photographs from women all around the world, it was really quite flattering. But at the time my heart was given and taken. Not like today (hint, hint) where I am just a resolute if disappointed romantic, getting ready to take the world by storm and lacking little but a worthy woman-muse to build my skycastles to.

(hint, hint)

To read the rest of the poems in this cycle and the entirety of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES, I would suggest you hurry and order yourself a copy...the links are all over the place on this blog.

(audio) PC 1: Night Stalker

this is an audio post - click to play

The First Panther Cycle (although just "The Panther Cycle" when it was written, I had no sense that there would be 92 more to follow...) was called "Out of the Night" when I slipped it a subtitle. A little all over the place, it was a knee-jerk reaction of a single photo that the Panther had sent me (although that was not her "name" back then...indeed, her screen name on America Online was so ambiguous I did not even know this online friend's gender before that evening!).

A little sing-songy for my tastes, it came thus and I left it thus...and the rest, as they say, is history...

night stalker

in the night.
in the jungle.
in the depths of sad despair.
there's a presence.
in the branches.
you can't see her. but she's there.
watching closely.
taking measure.
are you predator? are you prey?
and if either.
does she leave you?
does she seek to pounce and play?
and if neither.
does she linger?
and then fall. into your trap?
will the hunter.
be the hunted.
when she hears the steeljaw snap?
will she struggle?
or surrender?
will she know. you mean no harm?
understanding.
like the panther.
that this fire can be warm?
it is quiet.
in this jungle.
if you listen. with your soul.
and this silence.
calls the panther.
to protect it. and patrol.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

For more information on the collection of these works, THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES, being released on July 18th, follow this link

a brief word about the photos


I am illustrating some of my audio blog posts with illustrations from THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. These are actually in the book, and are Photoshop tamperings with pictures of the book's cover model, Jillian Ann, who was kind enough to cooperate and help out with this effort (my former cover model is...er...absent this sphere and is probably kicking herself right now for this...) but Jillian Ann has been remarkable in her assist on this effort on short notice and I would suggest, if you are into photography, modeling or just looking at one beautiful woman (who also happens to be a rather talented techno music artist) please check out her site at www.jillianann.com.

I'd also like to acknowledge to back up crew that stood on standby in case Jillian Ann was unable to assist (we had one picture of hers that was unbelievable, all prepped for the cover, but we couldn't get the rights to it from the lensman)...special thanks to Anastacia, Legs and Camille. I love this business.

Oh, here's the cover of the book, featuring Jillian Ann, one more time, before we get back to the readings. Click on the cover for the full effect.

(audio) PC 90: closure over a cup of Jasmine tea


this is an audio post - click to play

If you know me well, you know my favourite hot drink is Jasmine tea. Many reasons for this that i will not get into right now.
In the Ninetieth Panther Cycle, subtitle "close, away", we get into a lot of thoughts of closure, as the relationship seemed to be once again slipping into the darkness and I had grown weary of playing superhero to this disaster.

On the night in question I stopped by my favourite hangout in Santa Monica, Anastasia's Asylum, which is where I will have to re-haunt when I return to LA next year, presuming they are still open. They did not list Jasmine tea on the menu, and so I asked for it...and they did have it (within a few weeks I drank them dry of it, however). I was struck by how we don't always know our options unless we ask, and so, as I sipped the brew I wrote most of this cycle. This poem, in particular, rang true and beautiful to my mind frame at the time.

closure over a cup of Jasmine tea

I stopped at Anastasia's.
they did not have jasmine tea
on the menu, so I asked rather
than settle for what was offered.
I tasked the fates for their sufferance
and was rewarded with closure
in a cup of memory I bled
tears into. a drink I will never taste again.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

I hope you are enjoying these readings. It is fun to get to pick through the book (my God, it's thick, when did I find the time to think these things, very well to write them down and assemble them?)

(audio) PC 9: influences

this is an audio post - click to play

The Ninth Panther Cycle, written just after the betrayal supressed by my destruction of the Eighth Panther Cycle (confused? Do your research or buy the book, nothing is hidden or held back...) includes this catalyst, entitled "influences"...it was a catalyst because, having read the line about her role being "...undefined..." the Panther asked for a clarification of our relationship and it was then and there she asked me to leave my wife and marry her...prior to that we were too locked in the moment to think the future through. Suddenly I had a choice to make, which history (and my bank account) shows I made. Was it the right choice? Judge for yourself, I am of several minds on it.

Anyway, here is the text of the poem as it appears in THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES (lulu.com, $29.95).

influences

small hands. big heart. sweet smile. your part
in my life is undefined, but monumental.
you have refined and redefined my dreams, central
to the paths I will choose. win or lose, my heart
is yours. feed upon it if the need is great, share
with it if the feeling is upon you, but never doubt
my sincerity and commitment. my soul pours out
in pools of holy water to wash away your cares.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

(audio) PC 43: caresses


this is an audio post - click to play

From THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES I pull a mid-range cycle (number 43 of of 93 Panther Cycles) called "Actions of Love" and this poem strikes me...

caresses

the gentle touch of one so tender
is like lightning in my soul,
illuminating and electrifying
my every nerve with energy pure
and perfect. I return the touch
and lend my love a recharging
of the ecstatic static of pleasure.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Nothing orthographic or "out there". just a simple thought of a man comparing the touch of a lover to an exchange of electricity, the sparks, the tingle, the warmth, the pleasant surprise.

Check back later for some more audio posts.

(audio) PC 12: sonnet: the journey

this is an audio post - click to play
The Twelfth Panther Cycle is "the wedding cycle" and was to be a vision of an engagement and wedding as we foresaw it (still in the early stages of The Panther Cycles, the doubt and despair that often visited later works was nowhere to be found).

This piece is a sonnet, a form I do not often use (but, considering the formidable size of my canon and catalogue, I think at last count I had somthing on the order of 150 to 200 that have passed my culling edits).

sonnet: the journey

I have stood at the edge of eternity and watched the gravel
beneath my toes fall away into the endless void. down
into the abyss. for so long did I wander free and travel,
deemed mad by all who saw the decade's dance turn brown
the greenery of my youth. alone and arrogant, I traced
the line of a shining path of cunning calculations culled
from my perceptions of life and love and god. and faced
with mortality, I laughed a hearty roar. and when called
by fate to answer for my sins, I took my cross with grace
and peace, knowing that truth was a better companion
than anyone I'd ever known. until now. I turn my face
from the lonely wind and hold out my hand to ask you join
this lonely quest. alone no more, for I have found worth
in one who shares so much and I would share my time on Earth.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

This is a continuation of audio posts of works from the July 18th release of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. For more information on this massive volume of poetry, visit my website at www.cityoflegends.com

Saturday, July 16, 2005

(audio) PC 48: heartbeat


this is an audio post - click to play
The Forty-eighth Panther Cycle is "dreams of iron and sapphire"...and you have to read the whole cycle to grasp why (so buy the book THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES and find out...but one of the gentler poems in this cycle, and perhaps in all of the Panther Cycles has to be this prayer of a referenc to an earlier time and scene

heartbeat

one day
I will lay my head again
against your soft back
and listen to the reassurance
of your heart,
beating out a rhythm
clocked by God
to let me live
and love at a level
unimagined before
you moved my hair
with your hands
and made me promise
names to our future children.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

(audio) PC 62: the other blue

this is an audio post - click to play

The Sixty-second Panther Cycle is subtitled "just a man, just a woman", and from this set we cull the following piece:

the other blue

you knew
when you let me
play with the palette
that I was not the artist you were.
but since you are
a remarkable poet
I feel the need to try
to keep up with you.
so I make something
that could almost be a sky.
using the wrong shade of blue
to keep the illusion,
but you just laugh
like you did in the cafe
at two a.m. when you saw
me playing too much the fool
but loved me anyway.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

It's a tasty little offering, reflecting the playfulness and gentle competition between lovers with artistic temperaments. She is an excellent artist (you don't have to look too hard to find her works on the web to prove my point) and an accomplished poet in her own right (write? right?)...I gave up art a long time ago when I realized my abilities were much better focused on just the writing, which had become seond nature to me (indeed, some suggest that it is everyday life that is second nature to me, poetry being first nature).

Oh, side comment, unrelated to the book THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES, coming out on Monday...I went and saw "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and can recommend it easily to anyone. It even has one of my favourite actresses in it, Missi Pyle (from :Big Fish" and "Galaxy Quest"..and yes, I do have a crush on her, thank you very much...if she is reading this, give me a call, Missi ;-) ) and Depp makes an excellent Wonka. I am not in a hurry to dismiss Gene Wilder's turn in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" as he will always be to me one of the most underrated comic actors of all time and that film plays well, but this film stands on its own merits.

Later, all...I am starting to get into the rhythm of this whole audioblogging thing and am enjoying these postings, immensely. Got an email from my childhood friend Donny "Theo" Huffman, who now lives in Hungary...he told me he is really enjoying them as well...

(audio) PC 13: the Panther on the Beach

this is an audio post - click to play

Here's a very popular work from the Thirteenth Panther Cycle: Panther on the Beach, from my new book THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. Yes, it is a villanelle. I love the challnge of the form and have considered putting together, someday, a collection of the hundreds of this form I have composed. But for now, just enjoy this one as part of the tapestry of this extraordinary book.

the Panther on the Beach

A poet's dream and invocation of dark divinity
spun of the ethereal webs of chance and sweet mortality.
A future memory calling of the panther on the beach.
Forbidden and forever. The rose, she grows just out of reach,
representing a resonant sweetness, nectar of a peach,
a poet's dream and invocation of dark divinity.
So innocently the Judas goat, la belle dame sans merci.
My blood, it burns in cascade turns, now in bondage to be free:
a future memory calling of the panther on the beach.
Hardwired, soul to sinew, as if the vengeful prophets preach
a fallen grace of lost face, disremembering what we teach.
A poet's dream and invocation of dark divinity.
I gaze, in rapt amazement, committing all to memory,
raging in a cage called propriety. A false dignity.
A future memory calling of the panther on the beach.
A visit to the edge of the enamored infinity.
Woven in words incarnate and the elegance of my speech.
A poet's dream and invocation of dark divinity.
A future memory calling of the panther on the beach.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

No, in sales it isn't and won't be "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"...but the odds are when HBP is a marketing study, the literary writers of this generation will have just begun their toe-hold on the culture that endures.

(audio) PC 70: Water From the Well



this is an audio post - click to play

The 70th Panther Cycles is called "The City of Legends"...this is one of the nearly six hundred and fifty poems to be found in my latest book THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES.

For information on the book, go to The Compleat Panther Cycles Page. Here's the text of the poem:

water from the well

the water from the well
tastes sweet
and cold.
and old
wives' tales
tell me that there
is magic in every sip.
would that I could
take a drip
and bottle it to sell
to the shaman
in the canyon.
to make a charm
of sand dragon skins,
with which to bring
your love back to life
while I yet endure.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Weekend of the Cat


Over this weekend I will be posting audio of several of the pieces from THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES, in order to get you all whipped up about the collection.

Monday is July 18th, the anniversary (the 10th anniversary, this year) of the day I first midwifed these works...and now, a decade later, I present them as an offering to the universe as a whole, as a whole.

If you don't know the backstory, I'll fill it in along the way, or you can go to the official website at City of Legends Compleat Panther Cycles Webpage...even if just to read the intro.

Special thanks to those who inspired and encouraged me. Additional acknowledgement to Brigit, Barbara Holmes and Dan McTaggart for their forewords to the book and to the people at lulu.com for their assist in bring this to light and life, and to Jillian Ann, whose pictures capture the mood and essence of both the woman and the abstraction.

I considered putting a warning label on the book, as there is a lot of erotic content to it, as well as lighter fare, this is after all a broad spectrum of poetic reflection and impression. Yeah, a big, bright PARENTAL ADVISORY sticker...then I thought that we are used to our written works being more sexual. Consider, for instance, "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo...there are several very detailed sexual encounters in that book, but no one puts warning stickers on it, so I passed on the idea.

More, later.

Friday, July 15, 2005

nunc dimittis

I was randomly picking through my works when I ran across this gem...what is remarkable about it is not the raw sense of world-weariness it carries.

What is remarkable is that it was written eight years ago. In the time since then I have loved many remarkable women, had the pleasure of my daughter living with me for a while, married a beautiful and emotioanlly supportive (for a time) woman and moved from Venice to Chatsworth to Grandada Hills to Manassas to San Mateo to Salinas to Diamondhead to Morgantown, put out eight books, won several awards, rediscovered an old friend from high school whom I thought was dead, made dozens of friends, had my best years (financially) I have yet had in this life and found some remarkable truths along the path, as well as a better sense of my path.

I've written, grown and saved a few lives. I've driven a sportscar down Topanga Canyon at night, as swiftly as I could, daring the fates to take me. I have stood in the high desert and felt the wind draw the very sweat from my pores while speaking to a small lizard. I have carried a woman from her death to her life. I've given up nearly everyone and everything I ever held dear to higher purposes, or their own foolishness. I've said yes when I should have said no, said no when I should have said yes and given of myself in true charity, not wanting anything inr eturn (although an occasional acknowledgement heals the burns).

True, these are eight years I will not get back, no matter how I regret some decisions...but life is made up of lost time, and some times are better lost than lingered over.

Anyway, here's the piece in question:

Nunc Dimittis

I have seen all
I need to see.
Pull the sheet back over my face.
There is nothing
that remains here.
Each tear-stain falls into place
like jigsaw holograms
taking with them a focus
but not the whole picture.
Fictions for truths.
Platitudes exchanged for honest inquiry.
Rawhide hearts riding mythic beasts
into the sunset in the final reel
when all the audience can feel
is what the dark director wants them to.
And even the critics are confounded,
for they are part of the performance art
of lives unravelled in a bolero.
a tango. a tarantella
with only two legs.
dancing to forget.
Those who depart,
not in peace,
but to find it.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

I really like the wordplay of the line "lives unraveled in a bolero" which references Ravel's "Bolero" - a piece of music often associated with sex, not lovemaking, but sex.

It's about letting go, for your own sake and for the sake of others, but mostly for your own sake when you know others are making bad decisions, but you have to let them. It's about the depression of watching people get stupid, and feeling powerless to save, not the world, but even a small corner of it.

And, in the stream of things, I am reassured that I will ascend and transcend this sorrow, as I ascended and transcended the sorrow eight years ago (and hopefully in better company).

He who stands and fights with heart knows then he has played his part.

Copyright © William F. DeVault | All Rights Reserved