getting into the space

Starting the pre-appearance psych-up (even if it is an open microphone event). There are not words for how much I hate public readings, but I receive them like intramuscular injections of liquid fire to kill swallowed parasite: a painful necessity.

In my isolation I have rediscovered elements of my voice that I supressed when involved, and this is good...but there are days, hours, moments, when I would trade my eyes for the love of a worthy muse...

I seek absolution at the microphone.
On the page.
In the arms of a lover.

The audience is my priest,
I shrive,
I shrivel,
I writhe like a tortured wyrm
in the pit of fire that is my preconscious,
the screams rising in metered torments.

What peace I cannot find in life,
I seek on the page, on the stage,
in a cage of expectations.
What I once feared as beyond me
is now the lowest bar of a latticework
on which grows roses of unspeakable beauty,
a divine fragrance and the cruelest of thorns,
the horns of all my devils,
waiting to pink me with their venomed points.

My skin is crawling with a life of its own
as I contemplate the frame of my works.

This is my Gethsemane,
my temptation to flee back
into the faceless sea
of the walking dead.

Sentience is a bitter oil
on my tongue,
quenching not my thirst
and blistering my skin.

The Amomancer once again
once again
once again
opens his eyes
to an ancient obligation
and begins to speak...


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.