A year before "The Unicorns".
A decade before "Horizon".
A score and three years away from "The Panther Cycles"...
Eight books, three children, two wives and a few amazing tales in the past.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
William Francis DeVault,
Morgantown High School Class of 1973
(cue the trumpets)
I still have the same hairline!
Thanks to my brother, Robert, for providing the scan and crop.
dogs in the word pound
There are lap dogs and there are dingoes.
dilletantes and Johnny Ringos.
in the spectrum between carnival and war.
poets made and those from breeding.
stubb'd toes and mortal bleeding.
static sparks and those that burn - forevermore.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
frankincense
skin that beggars whim and fantasy
a place to lay plans for conquest
a test of the acrobat, a rope to walk
a hope to chalk to good fortune
in pale skin and raven hair,
fair to my observation
awaiting invocation
by an holy knight
to slide inside and seize her night.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
old friends
you never let me get away with switching teams
it seems
your sense of virtue was well-hammered
in the foundry of competition...
chasing victory as a metaphor
for
life itself, a place to show honor
even when stealing second base.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
the next ten people I hear from, by email or comments here, I'll write a poem about (each) and post it here.
I feel like exercising.
of course, the last time I did this, I was accused by a bar owner of hitting on his "young girls"...what a walking rectum. Just like Mark Twain said - A bid isn't bragging when it flies. I write poetry, that makes me no better or worse than the next shambling bag of bones.
So, bring it on...
blurbablurbablurb
waking up is so very hard to do...
some mornings.
Restless last night...truly restless. Today will be a day from hell, but I'm pretty resilient. I'm paying my Doogie-at-McDonald's dues by working beneath my level of experience for people who would have, at one time, maybe, been hired by me for second tier jobs...because that's the job market around here...and if I want to improve myself financially I either have to move back to where the market is for people with my resume or pucker harder. (Thanks, Ann.)
And I don't pucker that well.
My former divisional president at CACI once told me that my weakness as a manager was I do not choose my battles, that I fight all of them. Tactically, dead on. I don't apply as a criteria whether or not I can win, but whether there is motive to fight. I've championed more lost causes than I can count (look at my marital history!) But, I am sure you find this boring, I do.
Never heard further from the dancer I wrote the poem for last night. Don't even know if she read it, may never know. That's normal. I've found in this town poetry is often misinterpreted based on the worldview of the reader and onlookers. Since most people have to sit for a few hours with a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary, people perceive you as having worked long hours and for a purpose. For me it is largely effortless and only in the moment. My motives are often complex and invisible (and sometimes, like a bird flying, just because "I can"). Mozart was often seen as diabolical. Moi aussi.
Got word yesterday that the Appalachian Education Initiative (AEI) will be getting my donation of their "Art&Soul" book to Morgantown High School today Not sure what channels they are using, but it will be intersting to see how it goes. Me, I am up to my edgy limits working on the podcasts. I'm decline spec work for now, too busy and can feel the threads unravelling that tell me when I am stretched to my limit.
I was about to terminate my profile on MySpace.com today...I get tired of the spam notes and my interests aren't really in high gear on there...
then I got a message this evening from a young lady named Amber. She's a dancer who is going to be appearing in a local club this week, and she was inviting me to attend her show.
Not my cup of tea. Besides, I figured it was just another generic spam approach...
But, my Momma raised me right, so I sent her a respectful decline.
And she wrote back, thanking me for the respect and expressing her regret we wouldn't meet.
So, I wrote her back and thanked her for reaffirming my confidence that there are some real people out there (yes, dancers are as real as other people, trust me, I ran with a colourful crowd in Los Angeles...musicians, writers, pornstars, actors and even a few Republicans...)
and I wrote her this poem:
for Amber, in the lights
I saw you in my mind's eye tonight
swaying to rhythms not normally thought of
as rhythms to sway to.
but you had a feline grace
and a smile on your face
of gentle detachment
that men always misread
as a need for their attention.
and you are beautiful
and many will go home tonight
and see your face when they close their eyes
in a dark room
with the woman whom
they wouldn't admit to where they were
or what they were thinking
just a few hours ago.
and you know
that a hot shower
and a pair of oversized socks
will make the day fade
until you are just another girl
stepping from stone to stone
in the rapid rivers of time.
even in the lights.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
Thanks for the inspiration, Amber.
Got an email today from one of the kids Ann and I had worked with in Salinas. Okay, got it today, but it was actually sent about a week ago, but I so rarely check the email at AOL anymore, I sometimes find out about things weeks after the fact.
This girl was just checking to see how we were all doing, so I filled her in. No BS, just the straight dope...it will be interesting to see if she takes it well. The kids back there sort of saw us as a package deal and Ann&Bill may not be digestible as Ann or Bill.
We were the Alcohol and Drug Resource Specialists assigned to a couple of schools in Salinas, California, by Sunrise House. Our jobs were multi-faceted. We were not only on-site counselors and educators, we were also the sponsors of the ADAPT (Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Team) clubs at our sites, Ann was the Friday Night Live Mentoring Coordinator for Monterey County, I was the Friday Night Live Coordinator, but because we were married, we sorta shared jobs...well, I did all the paper work, she played with the kids. I taught classes at my school...and I taught the classes at her school (she suffered from social anxiety) but she was dynamite as a one-on-one counselor, a role I wasn't always good at, as sometimes people find me a touch intimidating.
I miss the community and the work, there was something meaningful to be done (besides, I was making twice what I make today)...I could see real results in some lives (and anguished over my failings).
In addition to that workload we also both served as sporadic in-house counselors at Sunrise House (someone had to be there when the administrator was off coaching basketball at a local school) and I also ran and taught the YATV (Youth Alternatives to Violence) classes at both the Silver Star Youth Center and at Soledad High School, both of which were under the auspices of the Monterey County Probation Department. Kids who had been arrested for acts ofviolence had to do sixteen classes with me to get off probation.
I have, on the wall of my room the Harden Middle School sweatshirt that they gave me when I left (why did I leave the job? don't ask...) which was autographed (sometimes in uncouth terms) by dozens of my kids from that school.
I tried to find similar work around here, but the few such jobs are highly competitive...and despite my multi-year experience in the field, I can't compete with someone's cousin. Maybe if and when I go back to California...
My brother, Robert, dug out an old photo of me...actually of me with my original muse, Psyche, but he cropped me and sent it to me as a button I could use on the site...it's not an awful picture, that of a young man who had a decent job, a fiance he adored and such works as "The Unicorns, "Monument" and "Inside the Outside of Time, Space and Left-Handed Amoebas" (I didn't make that just up, there is an ancient work in my catalog by that very name.
Anyway, here it is, next to my current "official" shot, so you can see I have changed a bit...
You want chaos? Live my life!
Revised the front page of my website today...started working on the upcoming podcast programs, dialogued with some friends on the phone and by email, grabbed a nice hot bath and...
er, let me see...finally listened to reason and will attend my daughter's wedding next Fall (just trying to do the right thing, and having no information as to what that might be), was coerced into planning to actually travel on Christmas Day by my son Elric, wrote several more poems, edited down some poetry, confirmed my plans to pull two of my books next Spring as I release THEOCRICIDE...
ah...hmmm...er...worked on theme music for the weekly OUT OF THE CITY podcasts, worked with my brother Robert on some business plans, swung by Teletech to finish filling out my insurance forms online, only to find the system was down, went to church, ate, napped, and studied "The Dummy's Guide to Flash 5" while taking the aforementioned soak.
Responded to a request to enter a poetry contest: My usual answer - Hell, No! They don't ask McCartney to go on American Idol, I don't enter freaking poetry contests, morons.
No wonder I named my firstborn son Elric, King of the Elves. (Actually, that was because he was born with pointed ears)...and no, that does not mean I love him any more or am any more proud of him than Peri or Dante. It's a name, peoples.
My Mom today came home from church and mentioned they saw a video about "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe"...I love that Evangelicals are rediscovering C.S.Lewis, the man whose books have been burned for having a witch in the title as well as the accusations that he was in league with the devil for his seminal "The Screwtape Letters"...
An interviewer the other day, smelling blood in the water, tried to get me to engage in the sport of ex-spouse bashing. I almost took the bait, as the question was well-formed and seemingly innocent, but when you peeled away the layers you could see that to give the journalist what he'd be gappy with, I'd have to get out a rusty old warhammer and thrash the ex's good name.
I'm human. I screw up. I have a tendency to say too much too soon and stick my foot in my mouth, but I'm learning. My intentions are not to make people look bad, but to grapple with information in an unfiltered manner, it's part of who I am to be looking for the truth. My curiosity, both intellectual and moral, has led me more than once off high precipices.
Let me set the record straight, while I am well-rested and well-caffeinated.
I do not regret my involvement with anyone. I played my part for a season in many lives where I can see a real gain for them, and as my primary motivator is to do well by others, even to the point of setting myself up as the fall guy if needs be, I can say I have tried. (Or, to quote the poem: "fallen. and have risen. and taken penance given, every mile.")
No, I do not always see a set-up coming. Those parts of me which are most cunning are also the most amoral, so I try to not give them great counsel in my thoughts. The result is, when someone wishes to do me harm, it is pretty easy. But harm, not fatality. I have found myself extremely resilient and perhaps, as one friend has pointed out, that is the very thing that makes me so fearless, emotionally. I do not perceive myself as fearless, but others do, and that is a curious conundrum to me. Anyone privy to my emotional state when Hurricane Katrina wiped Diamondhead, Mississippi, off the map knows well how full of anxiety and pain I can be.
And anyone who has seem the works that have blossomed of the pain brought by my estrangement from my daughter knows how troubled I can be. I say this not for sympathy, or empathy, as I desire neither from my readers. I am merely explaining the underpinnings of my recent moods and works, to frame them as they come to light and discussion.
I messed up my first major relationship, that with Nancy (Psyche). I did it because she had gone over to "the other side" and had asked me to give up my writing. I never asked her to cut out her eyes or submit to a lobotomy. So it seemed a bit one-sided. That I over-reacted in sinking into a blue funk brought on by the Moebius loop of "her versus who I am" by breaking off the enagagement and hopping into bed with the next thing to come along was stupid? Massively. But this is reality, flinty and hard.
My first wife, the Valkyrie, was not so much a mistake as a penance. I needed someone who needed me, and I did what I could to fix what I found broken. That trying to do so in the constraints I was placed was almost totally impossible ripped me further apart only made me more determined to win the day. The mistakes of our early marriage I paid for in a decade and a half of suspicions and recriminations. And, as C.S. Lewis so ably pointed out in "Screwtape Proposes a Toast", a man who is tarred with a label eventually decides to at least embrace the evil that is presumed upon him.
My second marriage was, again, a combination of penance and lust. An attempt to help someone so badly in need of a champion. That, in the end, I ended up doing so much damage to my relationships with my friends, my family and my finances to rescue her is not a statement of what was wrong with her, but what was wrong with me.
And to some degree, remains wrong with me. I am, for what I am, adequate in the extreme. But even as a butter-knife makes a terrible spoon and a wristwatch is poor substitute for a boat anchor, they all have their place and purpose. I have found myself driven by my desire to heal others to the point I have little or nothing left for myself. I expect not your pity, or any reward for doing what I have chosen to do. Self-actualization is its own reward.
My sins are many, my virtues few, but whie I may not be the hero of my own memoir, I am also not the villain that some may choose to believe me in order to justify their own sins. I have been the victim of emotional extortion, which I have given into on more than one occasion, then found myself trapped by my own desire to be honorable and just.
Denied the right to speak the truth, I lied. Placed in so many situations where others asked me to do their lying for them, or to make promises that would imprison me for their mistakes, I became what I was expected to be: a front for others' whims and wishes and sins.
I am not a Messiah. Not a prophet. I'm just a poet, a man, a father, a lover, a friend. Not always in that order.
But, I will keep trying to untangle the Gordian knot of my life and relationships until my run is over.
I was just re-watching the wonderful film "High Fidelity" with John Cusack. I reflected on his character's tendency to make "Top Five" lists...
and decided to make a couple of myself:
Top Five Favourite Albums All Time:
1. Tom Cochrane: Mad, Mad World
2. Emerson Lake & Palmer: Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends...
3. David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
4. The Beatles: Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
5. Prince: Purple Rain
Top Five Favourite Films All Time:
1. All That Jazz
2. Fight Club
3. The Usual Suspects
4. The Lion in Winter
5. What Dreams May Come (I just can't watch it anymore...)
Top Five Things I've Done Right
1. My Kids
2. The Compleat Panther Cycles (the book)
3. Moving to Los Angeles (1996)
4. Never walking away from a person in need
5. Listening to God (once in a while)
Top Five Favourite Flavours
1. Peppermint patties
2. Jasmine tea
3. Rose petal ice cream
4. Chicken livers
5. The back of a woman's neck
Top Five Poems I've Written
1. The Patchwork Skirt of My Love
2. Cithara Song, Stummed Lightly as the Sun Leaps the Horizon
3. The Unicorns
4. Damascus, Movement Three
5. Jasmine and Plumeria
There, I should get some hate mail over that. I was going to do the Top Five Regrets I have, but I realized three of them would have truly, deeply and unnecessarily offended and hurt others, so I better keep that one to myself.
Feeling good this morning. Going to try to keep a positive mental outlook all day.
Did not hear back from my ex and kids on Thanksgiving. I must presume they either left town for the holidays (ragingly stupid, considering the weather forecasts, and Jan has never been someone you could accuse of tactical stupidity) or there was just no interest in talking to me...always nice to know I'm unwelcome.
And they wonder why I miss LA?
Had a nice exchange with Larry Jaffe over the last few days. Larry is an old friend, whose strength helped me get through some dark days (and for whom, when I wasn't listening to reason, I wrote the poem "Words for a well meaning friend full of shit". He recognized early on that the Panther and I were a disaster in the making, even after meeting her (actually, even more so))
Now he is one of the organizers of Poets for Human Rights. As a devotee of the cause of human rights, I have asked him to put me to work for his organization...expect to hear more from me in the coming days. In the interim, you can check them out at www.PoetsForHumanRights.org. Join, per heard.
Later, all...need my caffeine...
Where the horizon meets the skyline
and the mundane merges with the divine,
I will lay me down like memories,
lay me down like a habit past it's prime.
Melting words in the steam rising off the roadway
just begging for a kiss from my feet, away
from the baggage and the cold cage
made up of the faded sup we sip along the way.
Dance me to the edge of town
I'll pick me up where you lay me down
The road, it calls, in crimson voice,
and I, my love, am left no choice.
Where we once met is where we will part
a fitting end to an ill-fit start
I will mention you in my prayers tonight
that will leap to tongue from sorrowed heart.
The wings are plucked, the colours struck,
and fate, it seems, has squandered luck
to roll a card upon a wheel to finally seal
a wager waged in coward's pluck.
Dance me to the edge of town
I'll pick up me where you lay me down
The road, it calls, in crimson voice,
and I, my love, am left no choice.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
Nice to know I haven't lost it. And never will.
This one just now came to me. I would've recorded it, but my voice cracked. Too true, too fresh, too necessary.
I've gotten a few comments from people who've noticed that I'm packing an EXPLICIT label on my iTunes podcasts. They want to know why.
Yeah, for a guy whose raciest works might be on a plane with a book in the Holy Bible (Song of Solomon) it's tough accepting the notion that there are people who consider my stuff unfit for the kiddies. I recall a few years back when an invitation to speak to a Christian Writers group was withdrawn because I was hosting the Romantic and Erotic Poetry Group on AOL. It seems Christians don't ever have sex or make love. Ever. Yeah, and they don't go to war, execute prisoners or cheat on their tax forms (let's not even start on that whole "Should a Christian own a radar detector" issue, shall we?)
Truth us, within the bond of marriage, Chrstians are completely free to express themselves sexually, and that means that compared to the other topics I just mentioned, it's the only clean zone.
Yeah, I'm a Christian...there are those around me, even friends and family, who do not approve of or accept my decision to join the Society of Friends (Quakers)...but that's because the level of awareness in modern society of what this group stands for is roughly akin to those 1st Century groups who thought that Christians were a sect of cannibalistic Jews (because they ate the flesh and drank the blood of their Messiah as part of their rituals...) I'm with the Quakers because I believe that Jesus did teach about non-violence and telling the truth, more succinctly than abortion, adultery, or whether or not to place the Ten Commandments on public property.
So, I placed the EXPLICIT label to make sure that anyone who wants to indulge their whim for outraged hypocrisy has a moving target in me.
Now, go play in traffic. I'm busy.
Just got through getting the updates from iTunes...now up to 2 hours of material in the iTunes music store of my podcast programs (look for "The Romantic Poet of the Internet"...or just search on "DeVault")...this includes my discussions of the story behind "The Compleat Panther Cycles" and the backstory on a couple of my muses...
this weekend, I plan to boost it to three hours of material on my books and poetry, and an hour of material featuring works of other poets, guesting on my podcasts...so, subscribe now, kiddies...
WVU just shellacked Pitt, 45-13. I predicted 34-13, so I guess I wasn't too far off.
I'm going to proactively change the front end of the site in the next few days, with the assistance of my brother, Robert...some whims have struck me.
Bwahahahahahaha!
'Night all...oh, and God? Thanks. Just thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving. Note to all: Quit asking for things from God and just, for one day, be thankful for the infinite bounty already granted. No one likes a greedy child, who asks for more while ignoring all they have already been granted...believe me.
Just moved the new podcast to the iTunes bin...it should be available to subscribers tonight about 9:45 pm Eastern Time...but...if you want to hear it now:
Sixfold Eloquences
I like the way this one came out, plus the spectrum of the works is good; showing my philosphical gain from the experiences of relationships, my anger at a retreating lover, my sexual playfulness. All in all, a nice mini-sampler of my poetry.
So, head over tot he iTunes Music Store, subscribing to and listening to/downloading my works is free, so go for it, wattle-face.
E.J. nudged me yesterday and told me that, according to his calculations, my average poem would take a bit over a minute to record as a reading. Multiplying that by nearly 12,000 works...without commentary we're looking at over 252 hours of soundfiles if I recorded them all.
Yikes. Better lay in a stock of Diet Coke (I prefer the taste of Diet Dr. Pepper, but as they haven't yet switched to Splenda, and aspartame rips the hell out of my vocal cords (and everything else it comes in contact with...how it ever got past the FDA remains a mystery)).
Tonight's the big Backyard Brawl here in Morgantown. Pitt is coming to town to play football against the WVU Mountaineers ...the Mounties are favoured and are right now 12th in the BCS rankings...if they win tonight and their last game they will be going to a major bowk ranked in the top ten.
I'm going to record a long program sometime in the next day or two. Dan McTaggart and I have discussed doing a half-hour give-and-take session about our works, It might be fun.
Later, all.
Tomorrow night there will be a new program in my iTunes podcast - The Romantic Poet of the Internet...
the new short program is called "Sixfold Eloquences"...and contains readings of
*The Trellis of Human Experience
*Agent Invocateur
*I should have been immortal
*Copper
*Sex Cookies
-and-
*Will You Be With Me Tonight?
The first two were written during my tenure with Ann...the first towards the start when I considered the bumps just a part of the ride, the latter when I realized just how dysfunctional the relationship was.
ISHBI (I should have been immortal) dates back to a long time ago, when I was with Nancy (Psyche) and realizing, wistfully, that in one lifetime there "just isn't enough time for the roses" that you have to choose which life experiences to embrace, which to pass on.
Copper was written after my break with Karla, the Mad Gypsy...I started to believe that my purpose in life was to be the short-term transitional guy whose purpose was to help troubled, bruised women get back to life so that they could find someone to spend the rest of their lives with. Part of me still believes that. But I keep him locked up most of the time.
The next one, Sex Cookies, was written live, online, during a BS session in the Writers Den on AOL...my friend, Anastacia, suggested a title for a poem, and I wrote it live. Thanks O Fuzzy One!
and Will You Be With Me Tonight? was created at a time when I was first living in LA, heartsick over all I had surrendered to be with the Panther, realizing that I was the one trapped by my choces, that she could (and did) walk away from her requests...sort of like the question posed by Obi Wan Kenobi to Han Solo..."Who is the bigger fool..."
I used to enjoy the movie "What Dreams May Come"...but since my estrangement from my daughter, I can't...too painful. That's a first for me. Just mentioning it in passing.. I have only one more promise to keep. I'm not making any new ones...as people like to trip you up on them, then blame you for the failure of your intentions over their actions.
"Horatius died a suicide, in some philosophies".
That line, from my "gee, did I write that?" work "TRIUMPH" has found its way into more than one "famous quotes" collection. It's a good line...and even out of context, it has message, which is really nice.
For those of you unfamiliar with who Horatius was, he was a Roman soldier who, dependng on which ancient writer you believe, either single-handedly or with two companions defended a narrow bridge against oncoming armies while ordering it be cut and burned down beneath him. One account has him surviving this act of heroism and being rewarded with "all the land he could plow in a day" but most end the story with his plunge to his death (many later historians believe his exploits were exaggerated and his survival and reward added later to the story to serve as spur to future heroes, just as the one minister(!) made up the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, in order to inspire people to be truthful).
The line in the poem is making the point that actions are always placed in the context of other people's views and values. At that point in the poem, the narrator has revealed his plans to stand upon or return to the battlefield where all his comrades have fallen and unleash all he has in his arsenel to the point of winning the battle, although he knows he will be amoung "the fallen" at the end of the day. It is left to the reader to discern or interpret whether the fall is his death or having lost his moral compass in the name of victory or a cause.
All in all, it is a grim work with a strange genesis to it.
I was in Los Angeles. Well, Century City to be more accurate, sitting at my desk. I was seized by what I would have described at a cataleptic fit (one of three I suffered, by my count, during this time). I was tired and worn down, having been months away from my children, deserted by my lover, financially ruined by my own hand in signing over my fortune in the divorce, and in failing mental health (this was during the period of time between the Panther and Brigit, and I had not yet discovered how important intimacy was to my mental and physical well-being.)
In my mind's eye I saw the wall across from me flicker, and an emerald-hued, lozenge-shaped object, burst throught he wall like an artillery shell, coming at me. I snapped out of the paralysis and began to write...as always, one take...one draft. That poem I wrote, in about ten minutes, was "TRIUMPH". I still have the original manuscript around here, someplace.
I believe now it was the stress overwhelming the meridian in my mind and the "Goblins in My Attic" smashing down the walls to allow me to, through creative catharsis, vent some of the pain and sorrow I was feeling. In any case, I have always held it to be one of my best works.
I pulled it from two different books previously, when it would not fit in page width and publishers wanted to "wrap" it. I finally manipulated fonts and it went into INVOCATO this past Spring. I read it at most of my public readings, and a reading of it is available on my iTunes podcast "The Romantic Poet of the Internet" - it's there, right after "from out of the city"...
Note the starting lines in each stanza...and the final line of the poem is reference to Langston Hughes' great short poem "Dreams". Yes, I say "barren with snow" rather than "frozen with snow", but that is my twist...frozen is not a bad word to me, my take on the universe, but barren? Barren is irreparably negative.
Oh, and this poem a good basis for an essay, term paper or read for class, kids...think of it as a it of homework help for English or Lit class. You can always grab the text of the poem...below...sorry for any linewrap, I have adjusted the font to try to compensate for page width...
TRIUMPH
Carry back the fallen, they are now no more than obstacles and eyesores on the battlefields,
worthy hearts that met their fates as fodder to a purpose yet obscure and oblique, seeking no
validation for their immolation in the fireflower field that sealed their epitaphs in eclectic blue and red,
steady hands on the rudder of the boat that sails the River Styx and picks its way through carrion
feeding the lampreys of lethargy and the lachrymal leeches that bloat on their own poisons flowed
like rows of roses mowed down in a mad gardener's harvest of slash and burn horticulture.
Carry back the fallen, for they deserve proper burial away from the emotions of this carnage,
this new age of children playing make-believe around the grieving truths that emasculate dreams
in the sad, seamless shroud of a religion of the damned. We are the vanguard and the residual force,
the dessert course for the ghouls that pick their way through the bazaar banquet tables of the dead.
Heroes have fled to lick their wounds and toast their victories, leaving us to save what we can
of the sanity we possessed before Odin chose to wrest from us the wisdom traded for a single eye.
Carry back the fallen, for in this season we possess not the reason to understand their sacrifice,
pain raining down like the tears of hungry children we'd rather buy a book of lies than feed for our need
is so selfish, our pain so intimate, our terror so consummate, our dreams so delicate they will shatter
with the first touch of a gloved hand, standing without legs in a room without a floor in a world without God,
getting even with the odds we set when we wet our whetstones and honed our sharp tongues to lance
like a poignard into the heart of the matter that will shatter and scatter us like the debris of freedom.
Carry back the fallen, for they need not see what next I do. For the victory is of more import than my life.
Where blades have bent, I have sent them back to the fire to be reforged as steel, not pig-iron, tempered
by the winds I call in necromancies dark and deadly, I said we would triumph, and so we shall. Hide
your face from the light I call, for I will not take responsibility for your soul, crusaders come and go and
slowly we have earned every inch of our position in this game of rogues and wizards, but only one song
will be sung when the histories are recited tonight around a bright bonfire of sacred woods and thistles.
Carry back the fallen. For then will I be alone, without the staring eyes of the dreamers locked forever
in a hidden instant. Incant me the words I swore to take to war if love and fear would ever go sour, the power
is not a madman's riddle, but the middle of the sphere where nearly all of us hide our chitinous mantras,
enchanted with our own venoms and vindications, paying reparations for a trail of abominations we would
tell lies to hide from the child inside us, growing on our virtues and our sins to be stillborn as we have torn
our own amniotic sacs to force our way into a world where few get out alive, striding in baby steps.
Carry back the fallen. And I will be amoung them. And there will be no songs tonight, no dances to mark
this victory. For in triumph, we are all victims of our own basest natures, fated to mate with the incubi
and succubi of our own vanity. The only war worth fighting is in our own hearts and souls. Horatius died
a suicide, in some philosophies. Think what you please, dream what you will, say what you must, but dust
still dries a poet's tongue to the point that the words are only words and the word I heard a lifetime ago
must now ultimately sleep or perish, beneath a metaphor'd field I once heard of...barren with snow.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
This also formed the tentpole for the other "big 'T'" poems...TRANSCENDENCE, TEMPEST and, of course, TESTAMENT.
Massive sub-referencing in this work (Dennis Miller would be proud of me)...I count no less than eleven references to other of my works, and half a dozen references to other writers...and let's not forget the mythological allusions to the River Styx, Odin (and his one eye traded for wisdom), incubi and succubi (the plutal forms of incubus and succubus)...you get the picture. You can watch a whole season of "Walker, Texas Ranger" and not get as much quotable material.
All my writings are my children. And in this one, I am, to steal a line "well pleased".
It's alive! Alive, I tell you!
Yes, the update worked and the latest episode of "The Romantic Poet of the Internet" podcast successfully came up on the iTunes Music Store...
I am the great god of anapest hexameter. I am the cheese.
Of course, as I write this, I am sitting in a cold room in West Virginia. Alone.
Go figure.
But like I told my old friend Larry Jaffe earlier today...preparations are underway...
The announcement this morning that my podcasts were now available through iTunes sent a shock wave...people I'd not heard from in years crawled out of the wood work and hooted.
It was...gratifying.
Right now I'm vibejacking...using music to manipulate my moods. A necessity. Want to make me fragile? Steal Queen, Bowie, Everclear, Tom Cochrane, Ani DiFranco, Joan Osborne and Emerson Lake & Palmer from the universe...
Goin to record more tonight...have it out on iTunes in a day or two....
Enjoi. This my therapy. Some people pay someone to fix them, I fix myself and get paid doing it.
Survival as an enterprise.
Got ITunes?
Then go to the Music Store and search on "DeVault".
Yeah, uh huh...we're now mainstream.
Over an hour of my podcasts already in the iTunes Music Store, with more to come...you can subscribe to my podcasts or just pick and choose...and they're all free (if, however, out of a sense of guilt and duty and charity you want to a) buy a book at The City of Legends Bookstore or b) have a particularly bright and beautiful female relative you'd like to offer up as my next great muse...you know what to do.
We should also be bringing up a second feed soon of my book discussions. We are debating whether or not to record entire volumes...yes, entire volumes. And, yes, I chose to put the "Explicit" labels on my collection. Some works are just too mature for children and unevolved intellects.
Also, expect more "mixes"...podcasts with mutliple works read as a unit...including one I laid down this evening called "INVOCATO Sampler" which features fresh reads of
*Glass Roses
*Heal Swift
*Radiant Tigers
*Penance
*Cartouche
-and-
*Touch Not the Walls
Now, let's take the planet, for the poets.
Just waiting now, to see how long it takes iTunes to approve the first wave of my Podcasts for inclusion in their directory. Place your bets. Place your bets.
I hate waiting. Not in the sense of things not happening when I want them to, but in the sense of dead-air waiting, where nothing seems to be happening. Still waters run deep, but they also tend to be stagnant. The strong, silent type are usually also dull, as activity, even chaotic activity, tends to beget further activity.
Now that we are anchoring ourselves i the real world with podcasts, whaddaya think? Should I proceed to eventually put everything to audio? I mean, I could easily go down the list at William F. DeVault's City of Legends and record everything...everything, then record each of my books, full length.
Yes, that would include THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES...
I am still not dazzled by the applicants for the position of cover model for my next book. So, let's cut to the chase: If you are a woman who wants to be a model, or thinks she has an interesting look, and wants a chance to break in with a battering ram, this is your chance. All I need is someone to catch my fancy, and you win the opportunity to front for a book next Spring. If I don't get anyone that's right, I'll make other plans, or go looking for someone who is right for the project.
Even if you aren't exactly right, if you send me a good picture or two and give permission, I may post them on this blog and give you some much needed exposure.
I just go through authorizing about 3 hours worth of the poet's stuff (I never know what to call him: William? William F. DeVault? the big guy? Mr. Fancy Pants? I could tell you some great stories about his past nicknames, almost all of which have to do with someone slapping him with a not-so-subtle nickname...) for....iTunes distribution through the iTunes store (creating RSS feeds is a bitch...and now, so am I.
I don't know how long the authorization process takes, but I've done my part. I'll let you know when I know.
Now...someone, somewhere...distract him. He's not in Los Angeles anymore so he's not thigh deep in gorgeous muses...so he writes. And edits. And designs. And plots. And schemes. Then hands it all of to me to implement. I feel like God's admin.
I suggested to him the other day he should write a sitcom called "Bragi loves Brigit"...no sense of humor. None. I tell you, he is turning dour and humorless and irritable.
He swung by the Blue Moose Cafe in Morgantown earlier today and dropped off a copy of The Morgantown Suite Poems for the owner, Gary Tannenbaum, who has, in times past, been very supportive of his writings. Neat guy, or so I am told.
Me, I am going to fix myseff a bowl of ice cream, put up my feet and see what's on VH-1.
Authors Den hosted out my recording "chrysalis" - which was already hosted on archive.org, to Odeo...
check it out and let me know what you think of both the work and the web-presentation from this site...
Chrysalis at Odeo
I am going to turn over most of the RSS conversions to E.J. for the nonce...will check back later today...
also above you'll see the headshot I'm using for the iTunes uploads of the Radio City of Legends content. Lost weight, gone to the straight goatee and feeling strong enough to pull the ears off a gontharg (sp?)
How am I possible?
Spent most of the last few hours labouring to bring to fruition the next part of my world-conquering master plan...RSS feeds.
Will have them up and iTunes compatible by tomorrow, or am climbing a skycraper with an aspiring actress in each hand (gonna do King Kong one better)
I am suffering from "West Wing" withdrawal. At least "Lost" came back in time to keep me from going completely, barkingly, wish-I'd-read-more-books-on-Houdine-so-I'd-know-how-to-get-out-of-a-straitjacket mad.
Actually, I think, during my magic phase I read all of the books on or about Houdini, so I do know how he got out of a straitjacket.
Which digresses me to another point. I was just informed the other day that the reason I lost my position as a Sunday School teacher more than three decades ago was becaue I did a magic trick for the kids. Notwithstanding I was called on to do them for parties of the kids from church, and even in Vacation Bible School...I was told, in no uncertain terms, that the one day I brought in the silks-to-oranges trick marked the beginning of the end for me because "some people do not consider magic biblical".
Wow. Glad to know, after thirty years, that I was doing the devil's work...someone get Andre Kole (the brilliant magical genius who used to tour for Campus Crusade for Christ, and let him know he better put out a statement...) Of course, I have been previously told that the reason I was ousted was my youth (although I was a year older than I had been when appointed) and the fact my girlfriend wore short skirts. Sigh.
I am bemused. Just reminding myself that the second agreement says that what people think or say about you says nothing about you and everything about them: It is a statement of their character, not yours. I am glad in a world of hunger, death, torture, suffering, terrorism, heart disease, abortion rights, racial strife, political unrest, war, cancer, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, meth ice, streetgangs, white collar crime, flood, famine, nuclear proliferation, weapons of mass distraction and pestilence, we can still take time out to piss on the roses.
going to go berserk this weekend, since the RSS conversions are on hold, and record a trebuchet load for the podcasts at Radio City of Legends...
if you have a favourite or ten you'd like to hear, drop me a line at williamfdevault@cityoflegends.com
meanwhile, the poetry beast himself will labour in his dark and ichorous tower...
Wrote a long dissertation this morning on morality, hypocricy and politics.
Deleted it, rather than posting it here...deer season starts on Monday, so I figure the kind of people I'd most likely offend have the ammo to pick me off.
Based on my statistics up to this point...here are the most popular listens on my podcasting site...note that three of the ten are not by me (pout) but that's part of the poets and poetry game, if we all liked the same thing it would be a wearisome world.
Note I am includig the direct links to these MP3's even thought his means if you use them, it won't count in my stats.
Okay, things may start happening quickly these next few months...follow along as best you can and try not to lose me on the drum solos.
There is a plan, a terrible, beautiful and arrogant plan to supplant the City of Legends as my home. No, I'm not selling the domain name (someone did contact me about that a few weeks ago, but when I wrote back that I would need more info and that I wouldn't sell to a porn site or spammer, he evaporated, so I guess that tells me a lot right there) but I am looking to expand the city to a true "City" through a set of carefully selected domains I integrate into the 'City, using it as a proper city square. I'd move most of my stuff to a linked site...domain name? (maniacal laugh) that's my secret.
Stay tuned on this count.
Numero dos...
I am tottering on the brink with the podcasts...two aspects. In the first case, we shall move forward soon to establish true podcasting,w ith subscribable RSS feeds. Secondly, the menu will grow...I want at least twenty four hours of material on the site by...January 1st, 2006.
Third and final? (There is no final with me...never...when I'm dead there will still be surprises...the will alone will screw things up for decades...but the third?) My friend Andy is right, I need to get back on the road, touring. Personally and financially, much more satisfying than what I'm doing now...with the new year will come an aggressive return to touring.
Special note to my new friend down in Tasmania...drop me a line sometime...I'd like to read some of your stuff, especially your startling use of the 261 schema!
Didn't get the mondo-promo at work. My reaction was twofold: incredulity that they found anyone more qualified (unlikely) and that this frees me up for the other 8,426,922,389.4 things on my plate.
(listening to David Bowie's live rendition of his darkly erotic "Width of a Circle"...forgive me if I go off on tangents)
AuthorsDen contacted me...looks like they are going to use the recording of my reading the 10th Panther Cycle on their podcasts...that's good, very good. Maybe I will listen to E.J. They also wanted to employ some of my other recordings from Radio City of Legends. You go, guys.
I dreamt last night...rare enough for me, but I dreamt...jasmine. So, that corner of my soul is still alive. Theer was a story around that, blistering heat and stone figures and I was somehow thrust into scenes from some of my more allegorical works. It was...bracing.
I'm considering commissioning an official COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES mug through Cafe Press. Cheaper to give away than books!
Am I missing love or the illusion of love? I recall what I wrote in "Anamnesis"...
"if you drink the mirage you will still die of thirst."
Well, said, O god of poetry.
Waking up alone, with no one to snuggle, cuddle or get acrobatic with, it is easy to maintain my Blog...and my website...no distractions worth being distracted by...
This morning I finally got the all-clear and promoted three more sound files to the Radio City of Legends page...
Daniel S. McTaggart's "Punching Glass" about a true event from his youth.
Another from the aforementioned Tag-meister, entitled "An Assortment of Entrees", which is a short film in words of a scene at a local diner.
And my reading of "The 10th Panther Cycle: The Penetrating Rose" from my book THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. E.J. says this proves I should go and record the entirety of the book...but my numbers indicate that such a project would result in a run time for all the cycles of approximately 12 hours, once you add in the forewords and acknowledgements. Besides, this would step on one of my dream projects, to hold a 12-hour reading of the 'Cycles, live.
Anyone got a venue to suggest?
Anyway, check these out...then go and order a copy of TCPC from my bookstore, or the publisher, Lulu.com, or Amazon.com, etc...makes a great Christmas gift for a lover or someone you're trying to get the signal to. Note: If someone gives you a copy of this for Chrstmas, that's their way of saying "Let's go for it".
Got a form letter email yesterday from Xlibris, offering to have me come on board in their stable of gullible young authors. I wrote them back, pointing out that their statistics indicate that the average author they have has made less than $120 in royalties. Their actual words are "We have published over 14,000 titles and paid out over $1.6 million in royalties..." This is not an attractive offer to anyone with opposable thumbs.
Whoooooo! Yeah, I'm going to chuck my margins and relationship with my publishers over that...
Got a call a few minutes ago...my ex (the first one) with word that my twin sons got their report cards...
Elric: one "C" (Phys Ed), one "B", one "A+" (History) the rest A's
Dante: One "C" (Phys Ed), one "A+" (Algebra) and the rest A's
Must've gotten their mother's brains. Now, why parallel C's in Physical Education? A mystery for the ages.
Spoke at length with an old friend this evening...I've known him since the 60's...his advice? Get laid.
I told him I'd take the advice under consideration.
Some news for you all tomorrow regarding some new venues to find my works...for now...I'm going to go watch "Lost".
My phone rang a few minutes ago...a blocked number, but curioisty got the better of me.
It was a collection agency. No, not looking for me...all the ones that want my turnip-blood already know where to find me. Looking for my ex.
I explained to the painfully polite gentleman that:
a: We have been divorced for a year.
b: One of the terms in the divorce papers indemnifies one another from the other's debts.
c: I've not heard from her in almost a year.
d: I got this cell phone number two months after the last time I spoke with her (I had been planning to get cellphones sooner, as she had asked me to get us both phones, and send her one so we could stay in touch without the people around her knowing we were still talking, but her girlfriend found out we were stil in touch and banned her from speaking to me.)
e: The house she shared with her mother in Diamondhead, Mississippi was, to my best information, destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, so at this point chasing her was trying to milk a rock.
I took his information and told him if I heard anything, or had the opportunity to help out at all, I would get in touch with him. All in all the most civilized conversation I've had with a collector in my life.
But it made me realize, looking over my email addresses, just how many of the people I speak with fall away, every so often, old friends, old lovers, even my former Priest, all have evaporated.
Does the word Pariah apply here? No, I don't think so, unless someone has been doing one heck of an anti-PR campaign on my character and actions (and then I would at least expect some bristling "to hell with you" notes).
So, I started today, cleaning out my address book. Trashing names and addresses, old emails and pictures.
All gone. Like promises never meant to be kept. The best intentioned of untested prophecies.
Seven months ago (or so) I did a blog at AuthorsDen about a question someone had asked me about what my ten favourite things are. The list I gave was as follows (in random order):
KIssing
The sound of thunder
A woman, biting her lower lip.
The smell of bacon frying
Snow
Spooning
Nailing a moment in a poem
Pachabel's Canon in D Minor
Making love
God
I was considering making a revision to the list, but upon second reading realized I couldn't. Yes, there are hundreds of things that from moment to moment make their leap to the level of these ten, but to demote any of these? Get real!
Kissing is wonderful and wondrous, a way of being sexual without having to be sexual. The art of kissing, I think, has been lost. Well, in my recent experience. My second wife did not like to kiss (read into that what you must or will) and thus I have felt its absence in my life for about a decade. Best kisser I ever kissed? Wow, let's stir that hornet's nest...hmmm...Alisha. By a slim margin, and I won't say over whom.
The sound of thunder is a relaxing sound to me. It puts me in my place in the universe and reminds me of being at home, in the confort of my room, listening to a late night thunderstorm.
A woman, biting her lower lip. I don't know why, for sure, but this one facial expression hits me in several places at once and makes me totally melt. Ask any woman who has ever used it on me, intentionally or not.
The smell of bacon frying. Breakfast, first moments of wakefulness, home, camping, the promise of something yummy. All in a flash to the ancient brain. And yes, I like my bacon crisp.
Snow. God, but I love snow. I love to go outside after a snowstorm and lay in it in shorts and t-shirt. I love watching it fall. I love the way it sticks to my eyelashes and brushes my face, I like the way it covers a multitude of surface flaws.
Spooning. Yes. There you go. I am a cuddler. Before and after. When Brigit left, back in Venice Beach, I took to cradling a blanket in my arms and sleeping with my futon folded into the sofa configuration for the illusion of having someone next to me. If you don't sleep more soundly in an embrace, you're sleeping with the wrong person.
Nailing a moment in a poem. A real sense of accomplishment, when you have just written something you read it and it blows you away. After all these years, you'd think I'd be immune to that...not a chance.
Pachabel's Canon in D Minor. Takes me back to college, and just the overall ethereal beauty of this piece is so perfect a tranquilizer, musically.
Making love. Don't make me expain this. I draw strength from intimacy, one of the reasons I find myself in a fractured and depleted state at this time, lacking one of my core revitalization methods. I won't bore you with the details.
God. I believe in God as much as I believe in anything else my senses tell me exists. God made me, but S/He made me who I am. When I write, I feel His/Her pleasure. And more than the love of a good woman, the approval of a friend or family member or the dollar signs on a royalty check, that's all I really need to get through the day.
Oh, and E.J.? I noticed the change to the blog layout. I approve.
I revised the look and feel for the blog site for the big guy, let's see how long it takes for him to notice.
Also, I see he's been picked up by a blog accumulator for "blogging poets". They have him on a list of poetry blog sites to visit (amusingly enough, and I am probably the only one to think of this, his number in the list is 68...close, but not quite what I would have picked for him)
Anyway, back to work...we're working on something grotesquely huge and arrogant (how arrogant? you cannot imagine how arrogant. that's how arrogant.)
Back to work.
lean into it
the wind
splinters
against the force of will
you kill the pain
when you strip away the sense
of dense surprise
it was depending on catching you with
the width of pain
reigning fire
if the pen is mightier than the sword
then the keyboard is armageddon.
duck and suck stale breath
as you run for cover, lover,
I haven't any use for excuses
the loser loses.
and so does the winner,
but they stand with the illusion of victory
how much longer will hold the walls
that pens libido in the pit
deep
within
the darkest
reaches
of my bloodstone labyrinth...
he rages in cages concentric,
the razor wire does not shield desire
from the fury of his madness
but gives him new focus
and a memory of pain
he only feeds on
growing stronger every moment.
there you go, raw eruptions of words...will any become the building blocks of future poems?
only time will tell.
I finally. Finally. Got a piece by Daniel S. McTaggart up on the Radio City of Legends page...better check it out: Guerilla Poetry is the name.
Are Men Necessary? is the name of a new book that has tongues wagging. Funny, I explored that very thing in a novel I "assisted with"...
If the premise is that men do not like powerful, confident, intelligent women...I don't know where those gutless wonder guys go, but it isn't the path I walk...I am driven by the need, more than ever, to find a peer. Yes, I like beauty. But I also have found the truth of the old saying "Show me a beautiful woman and I'll show you a man who is tired of putting up with her crap."
That's not to say a beautiful woman can't also be brilliant and worthy, it is just that society so often expects so little of them other than beauty that they never get around to exploring their potential. Such a shame. Beautiful creatures trapped in the mason jars of small town mentality, dying from lack of air and freedom. Starving for opportunity. Withering into the night (sounds like a great opening line for a poem...)
I opened the Pandorian Box of my music files the other day, and now find myself humming dread melodies when silence finds me.
Okay, a brief note on the 261 format...people who've read my book "from an unexpetced quarter" ask me about it, and I just smile and make low growling noises...not too social, I know, but I get away with it because I am a poet.
Slight digression: Why does everyone always expect greater eccentricity from a creative soul?
Any the way...here's the magic formula for a 261 form (I sometimes call them the "Alishan" form, as they were developed as tribute to Alisha, my muse.
Three stanzas. Don't count meter...count syllables.
Each stanza has fives lines with this many syllables per line: 15/18/21/18/15. (this makes 261 syllables, total, hence the name)
Each stanza's first line begins with a three-syllable phrase word that sets the tone for the stanza. I present an example below.
261: Dance away. The Imp Smiles. Weaving words.
Dance away. Spin the web and set traps for the soul, romantic
and riddled with passion, ripe to fall ito hands eagerly awaiting fate,
forced like sweet cider, pressed so hard from a fruit forbidden by a zealous, jealous God.
Delighting in the dark, surrender once hidden now held to consecrate,
consummate, liberate a sense of self esteem didatic.
The imp smiles. Knowing well the web spread will hold in cold carnage
the soul that would predate upon soft, innocent, essential will-o-wisp
that faux flirts with essence both heady and naive, ready to receive a nectar odd
and strange to senses spared the bitter ravishment of desire, charcoaled crisp
in ancient furnaces awakened by lover's new couer rage.
Weaving words. Can my web make you fall into arms that have dared
to embrace the windswept worlds of pale goddesses far less the worthy to
take comfort in the dance of the Amomancer? I would uncover, arouse and prod
your noble heart to wake and to take of me my focused heat and to undo
the lessons of lessers, healing in our sealing fears, unscared.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
Note also the title is a recitation of the three stanza theme phrases/words.
Why don't I use it more? 1: Alisha is not in my life at this time. 2: The lines get so long they are cumbersome for publication. The one published set of them in the aforementioned book got butchered by editing and line wraps. I don't forgive easily.
That's it for today, campers. Later!
Darkness lusts for earnest needs,
to pave the way for memory
it bleeds, it feeds and leaves its seeds
fresh fallen from the wisdom tree.
And we are all within its thrall
to talk the walk we daren't start
the pilgrims of the rapture's call
bound up in ties to ancient heart.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
(for Jezz)
a beautiful willow bends in the rain
as the wind bears her down in response to her pain,
her limbs feel the pull of the long winter's wrath
that has stolen her sun, her blossoms, her laugh.
her leaves are now fallen, she groans in the night
and the grey morning mists persist to block light.
but I know she'll endure, and remember her pride
when her leaves readorn her, the Springtime's sweet bride.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
(for Nic, who deserves a poem for herself*** - my humble donation)
I have never forgotten the lesson of my brother's car accident. He was battered by the impact of the 18-wheel truck slamming at 60 miles an hour into the compact car he was in with his fiance. She was killed.
And yet, he only slowly remembered the incident. It took him days to place himself in the car with her. Days more to ask her status. The mind only lets you remember what you can handle, however marginally. It won't let you be destroyed in the maelstrom, although it sure as hell doesn't mind you feeling the lash of the wind.
So, today, when my hands crossed my keyboard as I wrote, just hours after a joint recording session with Dan McTaggart (we captured some good stuff, watch for it on my website's podcasting page in a day or two), I asked myself what music I could cope with...usually the most I can take is Johnny Cash's disturbing version of "Hurt".
But I am stronger. I pressed the keys and summoned up the toxic folder. Songs that have the capacity to tear heart from soul and flesh to bone. I had passworded it, to protect myself. I could not recall the password over the past months.
Today I did. Ann's birthday appended to Brigit's middle name.
The folder opened to my touch and I pressed the mouse button to start the music playing.
Pain. But the skin is growing back, I made it through "Crash Into Me" and "Heart of Gold" and "Kiss from a Rose". I almost stopped at "Tupelo Honey" but pushed myself away from the keyboard. Then, the thousand knives of Portishead's "Glory Box".
Neitzche never walked this path. But I smelled him on the wind.
Night blooming jasmine.
I will dream poetry tonight. I am almost through with the cold wombs.
There's a chapter in my favourite juvenile book, Penrod by Booth Tarkington (he also wrote The Magnificent Ambersons) called "The Great Tar Fight", about an incident where several boys end up coating themselves in warm tar and sullying an entire suburban block.
But what is extra cool about it, is the way the causation is analyzed...to quote from the book itself:
"Thus began the Great Tar Fight, the origin of which proved, afterward, so difficult for parents to trace, owing to the opposing accounts of the combatants. Marjorie said Penrod began it; Penrod said Mitchy-Mitch began it; Sam Williams said Georgie Bassett began it; Georgie and Maurice Levy said Penrod began it; Roderick Bitts, who had not recognized his first assailant, said Sam Williams began it.
Nobody thought of accusing the barber. But the barber did not begin it; it was the fly on the barber's nose that began it-- though, of course, something else began the fly. Somehow, we never manage to hang the real offender."
Somehow, we never do hang the real offender, and any recitation of guilt ends where we choose to end it. I was thinking on this the other day when someone asked me how I ended up back in Morgantown. Depending on where I end the recitation of facts, I can lay blame at the feet of a thousand different people, events and forces...some pre-dating my birth. Hell, probably some pre-dating life on earth.
That's not to say that living in the home of West Virginia University is a disaster, or that there are not nice people here. It is just the fish out of water situation. I fit here like a penguin in the Kalahari...well, maybe not that discordant, but I get regular comments from people about how much I do not fit in "around here"...so much so that I have curtailed my public associations or at least gone underground.
Fitting in has never been high on my list...name anyone in this life who has accomplished anything other than being a good boot-licker and I'll show you someone who didn't "fit in"...not to seek oddness for oddness' sake, but it is a side effect of curiosity, self-awareness and accomplishment (no, never want to be as odd as many who have "made it"...think Paris Hilton or Michael Jackson, perople who have been given so much freedom by their own or others' accomplishments that they have no regard for the reality of the world they live in)
Anyway, the choice to return to the this town was a conscious choice made at a time when a conscious choice was called for. Many factors entered into it: a desire to be closer to my sons, the Appalachian Education Initiative's "Art&Soul" volume, my father's surgery, a desire not to fall right back into a relationship (I promised Ann I'd behave for a time, and so I have...not so much for her benefit, but for my own, to prove to myself I was not just a walking gonad. Although, to be honest, owing to my rep...I get accused of that a lot...insultingly so, by some, but I supposed it is to be expected.)
And thus ends the Great Tar Fight...
It will change in the next day or two, as I add more, but I wanted to lay out what we've managed to assemble so far on the Radio City of Legends podcasting center at City of Legends...
Books: Each of these is a 10-20 minute talk about one of my books, including a few readings from the volume:
From an Unexpected Quarter (14:34)
INVOCATO (13:32)
Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion (10:26)
The Morgantown Suite Poems (10:24)
The Compleat Panther Cycles (19:40)
Muses: I talk about some of the extraordinary women who have insired my works, including some readings in each segment:
Alisha (The Will O Wisp, The Truth) (12:18)
The Goldenheart (10:40)
Psyche (The Electric Lady, Nemicorn) (12:32)
From Out of the City (5:04) is the featured audio of the month
Nordette Adams' works: The Jersey Goddess brings it!:
Crescent City Blues in K (3:30)
One Dumb Bird (2:16)
Singles and Mood Sets: Individual readings or clusters of a few thematically related works:
TRIUMPH (5:02)
Mood Erotique: (3 poems; Aside, Astride the Phoenix; gibbous; Intimacies) (3:24)
Chrysalis: (1:54)
Horizon: (1:21)
In the Garden: (1:29)
First Date Blues: (1:12)
The Unicorns: (1:06)
Mood Romantique: (5 poems; Soubrette, The Patchwork Skirt of My Love, Damascus (Movement III), Damascus (Movement VII), Cithara Song...strummed lightly as the sun leaps the horizon) (6:40)
The Philosophy of Dreams: (2:24)
ritornelle for silence: (0:38)
Panther on the Beach: (1:54)
We Owe Debt to Memory: (1:08)
Illusion of Grey: (1:43)
Mood Poetique: (7:10)
The Jester of Hearts: (1:50)
The Darker Angels: (1:50)
Theocricide at Mach 10e6: (2:07)
Goblins in My Attic: (0:22)
Pretty good list so far...but more to come, including works from Dave Taub, Daniel McTaggart and my complete reading of "Diogenes"....this week!
I was asked in a note where I'd like to read on my 2006 Tour...
I thought about it, then the locales came to me, for most of them...some, just cities, some are venues...
Boston. Definitely.
New York. In Soho, as well as at the Algonquin Hotel and on Long Island (joint read with my dear poetry sister Mari Laureano)
Philadelphia.
DC...on the Mall, in a perfect world, or on the Capitol steps.
Greenville, SC...where I was born.
Tampa, Miami, Marathon Key and Orlando, in Florida.
Mishawaka, Indiana.
Warrensburg, Missouri (Central Missouri State University)
Atlanta.
Mobile, Alabama.
Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
New Orleans.
Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas.
Sault Saint Marie, Michigan.
Cleveland, Ohio.
Minot, North Dakota.
Boulder and Denver, Colorado.
Tacoma, Washington.
Las Vegas. (This time, I'd leave it there.)
Tucson and Phoenix, AZ.
Albequeque, New Mexico.
San Diego, Salinas, San Francisco and North Hollywood, California.
I'm sure I'm missing something or someone...but it's a start. Live in any of those towns? Drop me a line and let me know what's a good venue...
Thought for the day: Only the ignorant or the craven never give you the right to defend your actions. That's a statement of their character, not yours.
Two down. One to go.
Three deep breaths.
I've been twice asked by well-meaning individuals who have encountered my works as to why I am where I am, doing what I am doing. On the third query, the shell cracks...
I remember when I was working selling cars in Mississippi, one of the guys found out I used to be a youth counselor and drug educator in California. He sat me down and said "If you can do something that important, what are doing wasting your life here?"
I had to explain to him my wife wanted to be nearer her Mom.
It tasted wrong, it was true, but it tasted wrong...I had, again and for the last time, placed her desires ahaead of the common good. That was the moment when the marriage began to unravel, not when I peeled the cover off the illusions and found out what was really moving beneath the surface, behind my back. That was all just justification. The outrage helped move me to action, but it was action poured like burning, liquid stone into channels already carved by my awareness of lost time and mistakes unrepented and perhaps unrepentable (is that a word? if not before, it is now...one of the great things about being a poet, you get to coin words)
Yes, I am hiding. From the world, from the challenges. Bruised and bloodied, but resolute, knowing that I will eventually return to the front, but wanting to draw every last bit of healing before I must. For those who think I think myself a messiah, consider Morgantown my Gethsemane. I have no delusions or illusions of such, but, people are more comfortable with their perceptions than reality. There is comfort in the tapestries we ourselves weave, even if they are flawed.
Health is good...getting another doctor to tell me it will take kryptonite to kill me is always revitalizing. Having college-age women guesses my age at 35 is a pleasant thing. Having three books and fantastic reviews under my belt from this year, no complaints.
Yes, Peri and Ann have proven to be a drain, emotionally...making me question my value as a human being. Ann is a simple thing, my choice of the Leopard as her totem was more than coincidental, psychologically. Peri's stance is more corrosive. Not fully aware of her purposes and thoughts, I have had to separate myself from speculation and merely treat the wound, rather than the cause, which is always frustrating to me. Apathy is always more insulting than anger, although I suspect the root of her apathy is anger with me, probably misinformed or misplaced, but I'll probably never know, so I'll drag this part of myself as a bloody, paralyzed stump and keep moving.
So far this year: Best Year Ever, as a writer. Other career paths? Don't make me laugh. Relationship wise? Depends on whom you ask. Many friends would beat me over the head with a copy of "The Four Agreements" and point out that other peoples' conduct is a reflection of them, not me. But telling a person that the barbed poignard should not hurt does not make the agony less.
Not feeling down at this time, but rather, intellectualizing it all.
What miracle do I have prepped for the final act of 2005? Hint: I shaved off the moustache last week.
And what makes you think I have anything planned? (twinkle in eye giving me away...)
Posted some new stuff on Authors Den...pleased to see that space for writers still going strong. Tag has recently posted, and that's good for him...if you live someplace where you don't get the feeback and/or encouragement you might get living in a large city with active venues for your work, online suffices and in some ways exceeds those outlets.
Heard from my friend Nicoel, who lost her entire personal ibrary in Hurricane Katrina...she got her copy of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES and proceeded to get so engrossed in reading while walking, she tripped over furniture. I hated to hear of her hurting herself, but it is nice she was that mesmerized.
It bugs me that some people do NOT let you know when they get things you send them. I have always been big on acknowledgements.
Long day ahead of me...NOT looking foward to it, but I will survive...hey hey...
Just added TRIUMPH to the Radio City of Legends Podcast...five minutes of madness, click the link to hear it:
TRIUMPH
There's a scene in "LA Story" where Steve Martin writes on the window of his apartment "Bored Beyond Belief", so that it is readable from the outside.
I actually don't think his ennui was due to an actual lack of stimulus, but from a combination of factors, including a preconscious sheltering of one's life, brought on by disappointment. I speak from experience. I am usually at my most bored when I am too banged up to do anything about it.
Like, right now...here I am...working at a job about 1/10th my usual high-powered, high-paying position, in an area where the definition of "nightlife" is drinking until you puke. So far, so bad. The dating pool is less than 1% what I am used to. I have of sense of betrayal and abandonment so palpable that it clings to my skin when I rise every morning, from lovers, friends and even my own children.
Perhaps it is a season in which this dragon is moulting. Perhaps it is the start of the slow, inexorable slide to the end of the line.
Time will tell.
I sleep in one flippin' morning and E.J. takes over...remind me to lock the doors when I leave.
Although a little on the brutally sarcastic side, you make your point...yes, I seek goddesses, and if I find someone I have feelings for who is not already so transfigured, I supply the divine energy. Sort of a BYOT (bring your own transfiguration).
I should make a list of all my muses and what goddesses from mythology I find parallels in...then seek the rest, I suppose...hhhmmm...
Alabaster: Vesta
Psyche: Psyche
Valkyrie: Hera
The Panther: Bast
Brigit: Brigit
Alisha: Althia (the goddess of truth)
The Mad Gypsy: Ananke (the goddess of necessity)
The Leopard: Kaki (the goddess of vice)
wow, that leaves me about 6 million more goddesses to choose from...help!
Interesting musing, big guy...
I have noticed that you tend to get involved with goddesses.
There's Brigit, of course, the Celtic Goddess of Fire and Poetry.
Your first wife was definitely a Hera figure, the vindictive queen domestic goddess of the Greeks.
There's Psyche, the goddess of the soul.
The another was referred (or re-furred, perhaps?) to by yourself as Bast, the Egyptian cat-goddess.
And, of course, your second wife was the living incarnation of Pharmacopeia, the goddess of better semi-living through chemistry.
(snarfle)
Yeah, I know, mean...but no worse than what others have said. Thanks for the three-dollar word...I looked it up, you're right...even though some would say it means "loved by god"...then "necrophilia" would mean "loved by corpses" and "pedophilia" would mean "loved by children"...it actually means to love god or gods (or, in your case, goddesses...as addictions go, it's not the most strange, but it is more interesting than, say, daytime soap operas.)
It was pointed out to me that I am overlooking an obvious mate.
Not one I am aware of yet, but one from a mythological aspect...seeing as in some works I am identified with or as Bragi, the Norse God of Poetry and Eloquence...the logical mate for me would be Bragi's wife, Idun, the Goddess of Youth.
Now, just to find an eternally young woman with nice apples... (but I am NOT growing my beard out as in the picture above...)
Oh, my Bragi works...here's two of them:
Bragi bleeds
the serpent and the succubus
are baring polished fang for you.
I caught the faintest glimmer
of greylight off their
ruby-blue metal surfaces.
I heard the sheaths' whispering
to me again last night
as I dreamed memory.
slow cuts the quickslitter
that drives home venom angry
and opaque. take this phial
and drink warm wine tonight
when they come for you, as I do.
no less breathes a riddle than I.
no more to dream
the clocks' mockery.
Bragi, awakening in his tomb
cracked and battered escarpments of my heart,
running crimson and gold with blood and amber
from my faulted, vaulted passions. rodents clamber
up the thorny roses grown on that decay. part
predator. part prey. part symbiote and parasite.
grandiose and pathetic. the warm wine runs away,
spilled by careless hands and hearts, every day.
I pluck cithara strings to wake the flower of night.
I play for you the melodies.
I pray for you the memories.
I cry for you the threnodies.
and barter still the remedies.
cold and wasted thoughts I would know no more,
a monument to lovers' kiss and merg'd minds.
as Odysseus bore the stick that finally blinds
the sleeping giant. barren bones and paramour.
epic tales of love and lies and truths unflown.
love: an addiction and a venom I use and sell.
thumbscrewed to the walls in my dungeon cell.
murmuring mad words and dreams outgrown.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
The first was written in 1981, it came to me out of the blue one day as I sat in my office in Washington, DC. It was the first time I identified my totem as Bragi, and it was my first reference to the colour ruby-blue...which recurs in some later works.
The latter was written a few years ago, after my second marriage, it invoked the Panther (roses), barren bones and paramour (Goldenheart), cithara (Alisha) and threnodies (Alabaster)...talk about self-referencing. The metaphysical and confessional tones of both always please me, immensely.
I am gratified by the strong response my little piece on writing poetry got last night, I do apologize for the lack of craft information. I'll do some entries on t hat this weekend...I'll even teach you the Alisian Canto and Triskadekian style.
Whenever I am faced with a poet looking to me for mentoring, I always start with the crucial question: Motive. What makes you want to write poetry?
I phrase it this way: For you is poetry a hobby, a job, a career or a religion. Only the last answer suffices. I don't want to teach people how to write poetry, I want to work with poets. People for whom there is a transfiguring power in the words, the catharsis. You can't want to write poetry. You have to need it.
I've never been at a party where someone asks a doctor what they do for a living, then responds "Oh, my kid can put on a band aid!"...yet, I can't tell you how many times someone has said to me "My kid writes poems" or "I wrote a poem in high school".
And every poet has their own demons and angels to answer for, as well as their own voice to find. There's nothing wrong with writing a poem or ten or two hundred. I like it that so many people can write something what at least passes for poetry, that gives them a commonality with me.
But, it is like a friend of mine the other day. He has a couple of my books, we've known each other for some times...but just a week or so ago, listening to one of my recordings, he said he said to himself "Hey, Bill is a poet." (I don't go by Bill usually, but this guy has known me since before my voice changed, so he gets a pass...)
I was bemused. I wonder what he thought of me when he was just reading my books? "Hey, Bill wrote a book?" or "Hey, Bill wrote some poems?" In some ways, probably...and there is that line between the act and the actor.
I live on this side of that line. If you think about it there is great loneliness in the religion of poetry, the ability to connect on a normal, human level is impaired, as the wavelength is different than common thought.
And how many times have you had a friend, a lover, even a parent say to you "I don't understand what you do and wish you'd stop?"
Try that for a few decades.
In some ways poetry IS like a religion, like Christianity is supposed to be (not the politicized foster child practiced so much in this country) a stepping apart, a seeking of a God all too ready to embrace us, not for our rituals and sociological views (as poets can be of all stripes) but because we have surrendered to a difficult path, a way of accepting that which is in open hands, open hearts and open minds.
How to write a poem?
Someone asked me that question the other day. How to write a poem? Why not "how to eat an apple" or "how to kiss a beautiful woman"? The action cannot be too analyzed, too scripted, lest you fall to craft and hollow actions over a true relishment of the process, the moment, the experience.
Poetry is my muse. Abstra, the queen of my totem muses, is poetry herself, an avatar. As Elizabeth wedded herself to her throne, I have wedded myself to my estates. To me there is the slenderest of membranes between myself and my art, thinner than the slick of wetness between mouths locked in an eternal kiss. I long ago gave myself over to its possession.
It wasn't Jan who lured me from my oaths to Nancy into infidelity, it was Abstra, the muse.
It wasn't Arache or Aurora or the Panther who seduced me from my marriage, it was my poetry, that part of me which is more than religion, more than essence, more than quintessence. A walking dream, leading me to a transcendent state where I am more abstract than real, more spirit than flesh.
And, in the end, it was my obedience to that gentle mistress that lead me to walk away from the wreckage of my second marriage, against my better desires.
So, how to write a poem? Go read a dictionary. If you already have an absurdly prodigious vocabulary, skip around until you hit a word that is new to you and resonates with you. I offer up the word "solferino". Look it up, it has inspired many poems for me, based on different aspects of the word, the history and the meaning,t he sensory invcations and evocations.
Then, use the word in a sentence.
Then throw that sentence out.
Then write a new sentence. Read it aloud, liste to the cadence. If it has not a musical quality to it, through rhythm or the beauty of the melody of the words, throw that one out. Rinse. Repeat.
When you have a sentence that is beautiful, you are ready to start.
Relax. Open your mind. Open your heart. Speak the sentence like a magic spell, unleah the amomancer within you. Have pen and paper or keyboard nearby...you're going to want to keep what boils up from your preconscious.
Look down at the page. See that? That's blood and marrow on paper. Does your soul ache to read it? Does your mind twist in the revelation of the moment? Are you frightened, aroused or ashamed by what it means to you?
Congratulations, you just wrote a poem. You have tasted being a smallgod, a creator. I am proud of you. Now, do it 11,000 times.
I just wrote this, following my own advice (except I took solferino to strike the spark):
spooning in the dark snows
you stir in sheltered shadows, my arms forming cage and armour,
holding you to me before the heat we have summoned fades, shades
stealing light from the solferino fires I kissed and fed and bled
to conflagration that you may take a sip of the pleasure
your mere existence in this sphere brings to me,
sings to me like an unique bird perched on the bare branches
of a winter's tree, reminding me of coming Spring
as it takes wing but leaves behind a feather
to be pressed into my scrapbooked soul
as I listen to your soft murmurs, resting echoes
of the feralities we bartered a few hours ago.
and will again, as my blood quickens
to the touch of your skin.
William F. Devault. all rights reserved.
Just added another "set piece" to the podcasts: I called it "Taste and Fragrance" as all three works in it are strong on those images. I chose "The Hunger", from the erotic poetry cycle "Penetralia" the final movement - "Summoner" and "Jasmine and Plumeria" for the "Pink Jade" works.
Restless...considering cutting off my trademark ponytail (I should save it if I do and sell it on eBay one day). Change can be a good thing, even if just meaningless gestures.
At a crossroads on some majr life choices...I hate these moments, as I always can see ten thousand variables. There is a blessing in being slow or dense or of limited vision, you don't agonize over decisions, you may make bad ones just as often as clever or insightful people, but you have the arrogance of ignorance to embrace whatever you choose as the right path. I'm not claiming a virtue in an above-average brain pan...indeed, I think sometimes, particularly in modern America, where slogans have replaced ratinal thought and loyalty to a political party or social cause is prized over integrity and truth, it is a decided handicap.
C.S. Lewis was right about the dumbing-down process of democratic cultures.
Added three new podcasts to the Radio City of Legends site:
-The Darker Angels
-a discussion of my muse, The Goldenheart, inclusing readings from "the goldenheart cycles"
-a discussion of and reading from my book, "The Compleat Panther Cycles"
Together they bring the complete library up to almost three hours...we're humping along now...I was having some problem with the CCpublisher module I was using for the uploads to archive.org, but I licked the problem and got the logjam cleared out.
Need. That was the second half of Thomas' talk with me yesterday...he spoke of need. How, in his perception, women need to be needed. He says that since I don't seem to need, I frustrate them. I agree that I am a bit more resilient than most...and that I do not give in to emotional ultimatums (they've been tried) but my need is as great, or greater, than anyone's...indeed, the entire emotional engine that fuels me is predicated on having a woman to adore, to love and to be loved by...no one who has watched my emotional wreckage at the hands of a lover would doubt that.
I am just an able phoenix.
Just like the hero of Orson Scott Card's "A Thousand Deaths" I have died a thousand times, experienced the pain, the moment of death, in my heart, then found myself reborn. Unlike the character, though, I have not become inured to the pain...I felt Ann's absence from my life as totally as any betrayal by friend or lover. I know I held a little of myself back, as there was always that small speck of sanity in the recesses of a locked corner of my soul that knew she would leave once she was healed enough.
sparking
-------
An able phoenix I am, I trust,
A creature of fire, waiting dust
with a grin contorted with wisdom born of countless ressurrections.
I don't need your protection
I just want your affection
until the fuse runs out and the fire takes me back to start again.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
Just got through having my brain dissected by a friend who is a remarkable student of human nature...he's always afraid I'll be offended or hurt by his observations.
Nope. Not offended, and no real pain...most of his material is stuff I already know. A few new insights about why I'm 0 for 2 in the marriage department. His analysis: I treat women too well.
Yeah, I know. It's not that all women turn on you if you treat them too well, it is just I seem to have selected several in my life who have that little personality quirk. It has been suggested that I am attracted to the broken blossoms, the bruised flowers, and that those are not emotionally equipped to deal with someoe who isn't there to dish out further abuse...they anticipate the punch line and when it doesn't come, they actually grow disrespectful and bored.
Perhaps.
I'm not a hopeless romantic, but a hopeful one. Even bruised, the fragrance still lingers and the attar of inspiration is essential.
Just got the updates to the podcast menu complete on the site (or should I say "compleat"?). I added two longer selections...totalling almost a quarter-hour of material..."Mood Romantique" and "Mood Poetique"...we're now up to over two hours of material for listening and downloading.
Heard, at last, from Selke over the weekend...she's fine...this is good. I had someone challenge me on my "no unasked contact" rule...as it seems to have made for some rather strange relationships (Alisha is the one usually highlighted) my take is this...I don't ban people from contacting me, or even make it difficult for them. I'm about communication, about discourse, discussion, open thoughts and hearts (even with people who snark and gossip behind my back, Katherine).
But, I also know that sometimes you can blunder into people's lives and create problems. I don't want to be guilty of that...I make enough mistakes without going where I am unwelcome. One friend even called it the "vampire rule" ("Enter freely and of your own will") and maybe there's an origin to that concept there.
Relationships (includes friendships and family ties, get your mind out of the gutter) hampered by the "Vampire" clause include those with my daughter, my second ex-wife and not only my muses "Goldenheart" and "The Truth" but also friends such as Elizabeth, Terri and Camille.
And I am a rogue? Hardly. Predatory? Never. You;re talking about a man who would not even sleep with his own wife if she'd been drinking, as I would consider that rape. If I had slept with half the women I have been reputed to sleep with, parts of me would have fallen off by now (some of the assumed connections are flattering, some are insulting...) Yes, I am flawed in many aspects, my demons have tea with me every morning, and I know I am capable of epic stupidity (I don't mind being flayed alive for my sins, it just bugs me to no end when a falsehood is hung on me) and the occasional act of seeming arrogance...usually because I have surrendered my will to another who then uses me as lightning rod for their own gulity thoughts and deeds.
It's time to trot out an oldie but a goodie...originally composed for the Panther, this time invoked for Ann. I carry my crosses only so far before I get bored with being the reserve clause to impertinent children (don't worry, Peri, you're my daughter and I love you, despite my flaws, I will not dump you from my life, that would be wrong on so many levels...)
TRANSCENDENCE
the heavens are in heat tonight
for this penitent, penetrative dream.
the iron lion stands astride memory.
mantichore wings of black lace fragments
of a leather lost to the weather of whim.
to him alone is there an accounting.
countdown.
grey skies to brown toxic fumes
as the hypergolic moments when
soul and intellect touch in the ceramic chamber
of a nautilus heart.
the skies scream aside in a fictional friction
of breath drawn out to thread like taffy
pulled too long.
an obit of an orbit, undecayed
as the patina colossus pulls free his lame heel
from the grounding earth
and raises high the last romantic verb.
liftoff.
and I am gone.
gone beyond imagination.
a consecration of madness
sold in gold and honeysuckle silver.
quicksliver slowed to sublimate
into a crystalline matrix of time.
farewell.
farewell.
but it is no longer my concern.
for I burn tonight in orbit no longer.
stronger than an epiphany
made construct in the shallows of an id.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
And, you may ask, what is "the last romantic verb"? I'll tell someone that again, some day...maybe this time it will be someone who can remember it.
