A little data mining

Based on recent data mining, here are some of the exact search arguments people have used in recent weeks to find my site or my blog from various search engines:

*amomancer
*selke reads devault
*william f devault
*glass samurai
*the priest of passion devault
*Morgantown sex
*nemicorn
*kincheloe afb elementary school
*hypersexual poems
*vodka poem
*cinderella and naked
*best place for cybersex
*pink jade - soft as dawn

Interesting list, no? Strange, some of them. I wonder who was looking for this one or that one and what did they think of what they found?

therianthropic fantasies

This flickered from my preconscious, an echo of the dream. Perhaps I was not a vampire in the dream?


therianthropic fantasies
consuming me
have the witches found me
to ground me
confound me
with my nature
once rejected
now perfected


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

A dark and violent dream

I had a dark and violent dream the other night. I was a Vampire.

Not the immaterial, shapeless intelligent malevolence of "The Nosferatu's Dream", but the classic Western vampire.

The dream was dark, violent, sexual and disturbing only in that my normal lucid dreaming safeguards did not kick in.

Or did they? Did I choose not to take control of the script as I was enjoying the beast being unleashed to feed? Or was I in control and allowing myself to do those things because I felt the need to bleed the fire of my veins and feed from another source?

Perhaps I have held on too tight for too long and it is time to remind myself of what the feeling of madness is. The amount of time I have spent without a true muse is a record for me, everyday is like waking up to be drawn and quartered.

I am hungry. In ways I have never known before.

The Rimbaud Reflex

I am battling the Rimbaud Reflex, perhaps more at war with myself in this regard than at any time since Spring of 1979.

It is Hell in here. It has been intimated to me that some of the personal relationships I cannot seem to fix would be more mendable if I put aside my poetry and lived a more normal life.

Advice to myself

Don't surrender to the darkness.

Make it your own.

Just wait awhile

I am sorry to report that I do not yet have the podcast complete. A combination of technical problems caused by power interruptions brought about by bad weather...and my own perfectionistic nature.

So, bear with me.

To quote Janet Jackson "I'll be worth it, I promise."

The music gets to me

Sat down in the studio, plugged in my headphones and began the ritual of listening, over and over again, to the music Izzy sent as background for the podcast. This gets me thinking, speaking, even moving in rhythm of the music. It modifies my flow and synchs me to the feel of the music.

Yes, the words are the colours of my soul, but the music is the canvas on which it is spread like a beautiful woman, surrendering upon sheets of satin and silk. Her skin soft and warm and an invitation to worship altar of passion.

I digress. Phew.

The piece that Izzy sent is strange. Hypnotic. It got inside me. And I had to step away for a bit. We're still recording, still tweaking, and by all the Gods real and dreamt and slandered, the podcast will be done this weekend. The fire is upon me and must be purged in release.

Izzy lays it down

Izzy (from my band, The Gods of Love) sent me a soundfile last night, an MP3. No comment, just three minute clip.

I listened to it this morning. Okay, that's that. I will either modify it to use as a soundwall behind this weekend's podcast reading...

or I will use it as a marker for a climax in the reading. Brining it up and over, so to speak.

Thanks Izzy, you may get into poetry heaven yet.

T MInus 24 hours and counting

Friday has arrived. One day until the studio sessions for the new podcast. Really wound up, didn't realize I had that much testosterone left in my veins. The darkness is upon me, but in a good, creative, focused way.

No further word from the muses...I may just have to select several pieces based on what I think works.

By the way, when you have a chance, swing by www.goodreads.com if you are an avid reader of books. Nice site, free to join and you should even nudge me to be your friend on there.

I was trying to get a consensus amongst my siblings to get my father a DNA test for his birthday next week. he's the last of his generation in the family and it would clear up outstanding questions about the origins and roots of the family (both he and two of my brothers have spent major time tracing the family roots, only making them more obscure and confused in the process).

Unfortunately, he also needs new patio furniture and I got voted down. Well more like a UN Security Council veto. Any one of the five permanent balks, the rest generally don't want a deadlock so they swing their votes. Maybe next year or for Christmas (he turns 84 this year, we might want to get a move on...)

trimming the address book

I, from time to time, clean house. By house I mean my email address book, which seems to accumulate names and relationships faster than Paris Hilton at a frat party.

Now there's a thought.

But, it is always stressful. Here's an old friend from high school. Who hasn't answered my last email, from two years ago. Delete.

Here's a former lover, and the person she is now married to. Tacky. Delete. Oh and the guy she was married to when she was seeing you. Delete.

Here's a friend I once bailed out of a disaster of Biblical proportions. I'm still waiting for a thank you. Delete.

A handful of former students from when I taught at M-Tech in Morgantown. Delete. The administrator at M-Tech. Delete.

Wow...here's a half a dozen I have no idea who they are. Delete.

In a few minutes I slashed, with some regret, half of my email address book.

Sorry, Mike, Don, Kristy, Jaime, Paula, Ellen, Thomas, Tim, Jake, T.K. and Donna. Oh, and Steph and Bob and Ray and Ginger.

And after it is all silent...I say a small prayer under my breath that I have not cut anyone who might need to hear from me sometime.

When the moment is right

I received this email this morning from Karen, who used to live in the same town I grew up in, Morgantown, WV. She had ordered, through my website, a book and my CD THE NAKED READS...

"Good Morning -
Went to the post office yesterday picked it up.
Enjoyed the cd - listened to it this morning on the way to work.
Your friend was right - you have a great voice for "your" poetry -
I did my daily meditation to it and I must say it put a great "spin" on it this
morning!!!!!
I have been way past the romantic part of my life - I know
that to some that seems sad but I am working on "me" - really "me" - at
the age of 54 - I so appreciate the different times of my life.

I married early got out of that one and left Morgantown. I fell in love
in Virginia Beach and when I read your poetry - that is who I reflect on.

My fires burned bright for this man. We were not meant to be but to this
day he is a dear friend: One that I hadn't talked to in 25 years but
since I started working on me - I have picked up correspondence with.

He will always be the ONE TRUE LOVE of my life.

This morning you truly made me ache for that period in my life again -
if only for a moment.

Have a great day, please keep on doing what you do best - exposing your
soul - wow - I only hope that one day I can do that - it must be so freeing!

A grateful fellow refugee,
Karen"

This sort of thing is what gets me through the day. Thanks to you, Karen.

Musing

It's just another day, one more to remember (or forget) and one less to live. I don't find either aspect particularly frightening or annoying, you learn to live with the parameters.

The podcast planning is marching along as I begin making some hard choices. Do I represent the silent muses by selecting from their inspirations or do I leave their corners of my history untouched? Do I really want music? Where's my other sock?

I get the sense (although no one wants to say it) that I am unwelcome where I am right now, which is a cold sense of darkness. My options are few, but I will fold my tent and move on at first opportunity. There are those who would not have me do so (or at least, not right away), but I try not to linger where I am inconvenient. I have been a guest too long in the house I bought.

Besides, the couch is uncomfortable...more so after 6 months.

That there are others being discomfitted, disaccommodated or deprived due to my presence is a burden I do not wish to carry, even if it is the attitudes or prejudices of others towards me, and not I myself, causing this trouble. It is not a cry for understanding or empathy I make, merely an observation, strangely dispassionately, that I make.

I have cared too long and sacrificed too much to have much left to care about. When a man has nothing left to stir his soul, nothing left to fear or hate or love, that is when he is truly free.

continuing the planning for the podcast

I decided to throw common sense and caution to the wind and place myself in danger of reprisal and wrath and ask my ex (the first one, the Valkyrie) what poem or poems of mine she might want to have me read as part of this weekend's podcast.

She fixed me with that look that she admits she's is fantasizing about my head exploding in flames, then said she does not listen to my podcasts. She employed a tone reminiscent of one telling a phone solicitor you have caller id, a GPS and a cruise missile.

Of course, this didn't answer my question. But I decided that escaping with all body parts still attached for future use was better than making sure her reticence didn't turn into obvious exclusion, and stepped away.

I may include one or more pieces from that era. There's some damn fine works dedicated to her. But it will be by my grace.

Another request

And this is:

Jazz is requesting

Vodka and Condoms

for the big podcast. So, that goes on the list.

the podcast: By request of the Muses

I am working on the frame for the podcast this week, I want something that, if I were to step into the path of a runaway Kzinti battlepod ten seconds after I finish, I'd have gone out right.

Not that I plan to go out anytime in the next, oh, 40 years. To quote Col. Frank Slade (Al Pacino) in SCENT OF A WOMAN: I'm just getting started...

I practiced my voice this morning. Not the usual voice I use for the podcasts...that voice. The hungry jungle cat. The radiant tiger on steroids. The voice that sounds like it is being whispered into your ear as you lay, eyes shut against distractions, your weary head upon a satin pillow, bare skin to the cool jasmine air.

I framed the setting, it will take place in the City.

I transferred the texts of not only the three requested pieces, but also about a dozen other pieces I anticipate being the requests of those who might respond (we all know the Leopard will request SACRED SMILE and Selke will ask for KISS).

I am contemplating having the band lend a hand for some mood music. At least let Izzy slide something into the night air, something seductive, sad and passionate.

Four days. Then something is unleashed.

by royal request of the true muses

Just to let you know, so far we have a few pieces selected for this week's podcast (discussed earlier).

At the request of Pink Jade and The Mad Gypsy (the first of the muses to surface for this by request reading), I will be performing

You Could Not Say the Words
Tracery
Soft as Dawn

Now, what shall the other muses dare request?

President Bush

Doctors report that after axamining his colon, they found no trace of cancer in President Bush.

They checked the wrong end.

(rimshot)

An open letter to my muses

I am dropping this into my blog, as I do not have the email addresses on all my former muses. But I know that many of them pay the occasional visit to my blog (I know more than you may think, my dear).

I am working on a special podcast of my most evocative and fiery works, and I invite each and every past muse to name one or more of my works, particularly if it is one of you, to be included in the podcast.

I am missing direct contact info on the follwing muses: The Leopard, Brigit, The Goldenheart, The Panther, Selke, Suede, The Truth and Psyche (The Electric Lady). You know who you are.

You can leave a comment here, with evidence of who you are, or email me at my cityoflegends email address.

Wherever you are, thank you for your inspiration, passion and kindness.

a new sobriquet

I was checking out a few website metrics over the weekend and found something unexpected, something that begs my claim to a new sobriquet. Like I don't already have enough of those?

There seems to be a feisty virtual community of people who are fascinated by my erotic poem THE PRIEST OF PASSION SERVES THE SACRAMENT, which is available both in written form in various places and in recorded form on Radio City of Legends (link on the left).

I had no idea. Duh.

I went back and read the poem. Edgy. Erotic. dark. sexual. Sensual. Gothic. Rough. Nasty. Romantic. And, ultimately, evocative of someone I will not name here.

If you want to check it out, swing over to EJ's Amomancer blog (the link is on the left side of your screen) and spin down to March 16, 2007.

Just be aware that I, The Priest of Passion, have warned you there are dangers in taking the sacraments lightly.

Tonight's debate

Tonight the Democratic Party candidates for the Presidency will be debating in an unusual forum, wherein the questions were submitted via YouTube. Could be fun.

But I also read today that many are feeling tonight is the first great catchpoint for Hillary Clinton's campaign. The other candidates have made no dent in her levels of support up until now, so tonight the gloves will come off and 7 men will try to beat up on one woman while trying not to alienate women everywhere (and those last two chivalrous men left on Planet Earth).

I think it will be interesting to see them try. Unlike her husband, arguably the greatest American President since Teddy Roosevelt (in my book), Hillary has a reputation for a bit of a short-fuse temper and they may try and get her to explode and gaffe.

It will be worth watching. But I am still firmly supporting her.

Unless Al Gore gets in. Then she certainly would be welcome as Vice President.

Shelter from the Storm

I got an email from EJ, telling me he was listening to the radio the other evening and Bob Dylan's classic "Shelter from the Storm" came on, and he thought of me.

If you've ever read the lyrics, it's not the world's greatest poetry, but when you read the braille emotions and the story in the images...yesh, that's me.

Sometimes. Sometimes. The world makes sense.

Hogwarts and all

Here it is, Monday. A very quiet weekend has passed, just busy enough to interfere in my plans, but that sort of mild salsa content that makes it seem like only a fraction of what could have been had was had.

Several people failed to follow up contacts with me. In a word: Aggravating. I don't like being left hanging and usually dismiss out of hand those who do. But I am also a sucker for a pretty face with a sad tale to tell, so perhaps I shall relent in at least one case.

Harry Potter took up a part of my weekend. I found an excellent set of spoilers on Wikipedia (and although I never 1000% trust that source, seeing how many factual errors I once counted in the entry on me before I stopped looking at it...) sat back and let those around me with enough money to support a starving child in Africa for two months spend it on supporting a billionaire's dynasty and neglect family, friends and household pets in the name of...whatever the cause is you would refer that to.

Hey, maybe that's what happened to those people I never heard from this weekend?

new poem on a Sunday morning

Sitting here on a warm Sunday morning, listening to Blues Traveler, and relaxing.

Strange week, but I'm durable. Nothing like having been battle-tested by life.

No Prototypes to Life

I've been up and down,
lost and found,
run to ground
and without a sound,
hunted to the edge of life.

Father and son,
finished what I've begun,
lost and won,
straight out of the gun,
husband to necessary wife.

Poet and prophet and profited little
in the hot noonday sun I've blood in my spittle
from the lows and the blows and God only knows,
back from the stars with bruises and scars my memory shows.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Hey, that came out okay.

a pondering of the preponderence

A late night reverie, examining my soul, my heart.

I have charted the path of my emotions and found it neither narrowed nor blocked with age and experience...

but it has become un-navigable, so bent and twisted by disappointment and doubt and the reflexive currents of grim memory.

I shout no less passionately at the sky and the clouds and the wind and the rain, but neither the wind nor the rain nor the sun penetrates this labyrinth.

I am, I believe, immutably alone. For all my action as the faith healer of the heart, having patched back together so many crack'd souls, there is no shamaness I can imagine of the craft and conviction to restore me.

I am not in pain, but numb, terrified (at some levels) of feeling again, for I known what damage follows that joy. I have been the balm and am now, not used up, but feeling used by those who needed me to lead them from their darkness. I am Charon at the water's edge, dwelling too well on the nature of my duties and the hollows of my future.

JC was right, by inference...the damage Ann did may still not be healed. And yet, while I may wish for the end of that pain, when and if it comes I would be diminished, for I gave all I had (too much, most would say) and it was, not inadequate, but unsuited to the task and I burned bridges with friends and family, and even with aspects of myself, that are incapable of being rebuilt.

I know the answer. Don't dwell on it, accept the patchwork nature of my heart (it has always been so) and take my soul up another magnitude, find new fuel and new heat to burn yet brighter. But to echo a question I asked more than a quarter of a century ago...what if it is beyond me? What if I have reached my limit, the boundaries between the man made myth and the place where only the myth remains?

I need some rest. And, I suspect, a lover.

Happy Birthday

Just wanted to let everyone know that today my twin sons, Elric and Dante (their real names), turned 14.

Love 'em.

When I was younger, so much younger than today

I heard from a friend a short bit ago, about a crumbled relationship. It was a sad sorry, full of bitter herbs and vinegar. Anger and regret.

And a part of me wanted to tell her to step back and look at it from his angle. I know that's the wrong thing to do if you want to keep a friend (I learned that the hard way) but it was my instinct.

I am often cited as saying about someone that another person is having problems with that they need to look at it from their angle. This invariably leads to someone getting mad at me for excusing another person's conduct.

But I am not excusing, I am explaining. A mad dog still has to be put down, but understanding how it got that way allows you to take much of the fear and anger out of you from the situation, which are far more damaging and damning than teeth and claws.

No one is perfect. Everyone has conflicts, internal and external. It is in accepting these and working to heal ourselves through understanding and forgiveness that we really evolve as people into who we need to be to deal with tomorrow.

I wish I knew this when I was a young man.

this cut is the deepest

My song CUT ME is now trapped in my head, I keep hearing that strange, gothic intro as I am trying to focus in on some reports requiring my attention.

I'd include a link here, but if you're too lazy to look it up at Radio City of Legends or on archive.org, you really don't deserve to hear it.

Forensic Watermarking

There's a stink on about the use of "forensic watermarking" wherein some computer printer manufacturers make certain that their printers imprint an almost impossible to detect pattern of yellow dots in each printed document, so that law enforcement authorities can easily figure out who counterfeited those fifties, wrote that ransom note and complained about the Bush Administration's conduct of the War in Iraq. (It's the third one that gets a little twitchy...)

Major news outlets are reporting that there has been some domestic spying using the method of tracking source of documents involving such groups as the ACLU. Chilling.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation has been kind enough to release a list of several printers that they have tested for this embedded "spyware", including their findings.

The EFF Printer Test

Just another frantic Friday

I heard yesterday from my old friend Alan. He had written some poetry and wanted to send it to me to look at. I almost never turn down an offer to read a new author's poetry, so refusing him would have been ungracious.

Besides, his wife is one of my truest fans (she keeps my books on a shelf only shared by Anne Rice, and anyone charitable enough to give Ms. Rice a place next to my works is a good soul. At least it is not next to Tom Clancy).

Starting to try to think about to attempt to get going in the direction of rebuilding my social life. I already have some great anecdotes, but I will hold them back for now. Too weird.

I woke up the other night from a dream and wrote a mountain of erotic poetry. Some pretty fair stuff. The engine is still running, just at a purring idle. No use in gunning it until there is a road to travel.

a new poem

Choose Your Moment

You have to choose your moment
to ease the torment,
to let loose your grip
and take to the sky.
The clouds will embrace you
your dreams won't disgrace you
if you give fear the slip
if you dare just to fly.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

(For J.C., because healing is tough.)

Taking up the banner

Looks like, with EJ on leave, I am forced to take up the banner and wave my own flag. Dammit.

I'll live.

Saw "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" last Saturday, on the Imax at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center (there's a mouthful). It was nice. Good action, well-paced, I even teared up a bit. I had not read a novel in years (I consider them mostly a waste of time) but afterwards went home and borrowed a copy of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and read it cover to cover.

Tag and I were supposed to be getting together early next month to finish the transition work on PSALMS OF THE MONSTER RIVER CULT, but we got tangled up on schedules. Sigh.

Where's EJ when I need him?

To Your Burning Disdain

A new piece. Dedicated to someone who inflamed my passions.

To Your Burning Disdain

your hair drawn aside.
your smooth
warm
flesh charms me.
disarms me.
and I am drawn in
to contemplate sin
to be laid as offering,
to the curve of your shoulders.
to the taste of your sweat.
to the sound of your breathing.
to the pain of regret.
if I left here, this moment,
having not played my hand,
having not made my case,
having not made my stand,
on this field of forgottens
that will soon fade away
in the whim of the moments
in the light of the day.
as I dream of your kisses
and the touch of your thighs
and the soul you are losing
behind half-shuttered eyes.
as I trace your desires
with fingertip dares
and the feel of my breath
on your soft shining hairs
that bend back from my tasting
the essence you strain
to keep buried in challenge
to your burning disdain.

and when all is turned silent
by the echoes faded far
I will lay down beside you
to affirm who we are.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

July 18th

Yes, today is July 18th, I would like to thank EJ for the charming and humbling tribute he gives to me and this day, on the Amomancer blog. I would argue with some of the more elaborate praise, but since I don't respond to critics, usually...it would be hypocritical to challenge praise.

Today will be any other day for me. My principles towards love and poetry have remained intact and resolute.

Thank you, EJ, for your kind service and I hope you get back to us soon...but for now,enjoi.

by the numbers on MySpace

By the numbers (in response to a challenge).

Of the 24 people and groups of people featured in my "Top Friends" on MySpace under the band (myspace.com/williamfdevaultandthegodsoflove) you will find:

5 whom I have written poems to or about
4 whom I have gone out on dates with
3 of whom I have kissed
2 who are blood relatives of me
1 who has known me more than 30 years
None that I have slept with

So there. Nyah!

EJ gets a vacation

Tomorrow is the 12th anniversary of the crafting of the 1st Panther Cycle and the day that EJ will place his 300th entry into his blog (which is actually just poems from my catalog, but nonetheless).

EJ is taking a vacation. I think he has done a damn fine job of keeping the Amomancer blog running, daily selecting a piece from my extensive catalog to keep the chain unbroken.

But now he needs a break, so after tomorrow's posting he's going to do his own thing for a bit. Wish him well and we'll just let people get caught up with the hundreds of works already posted.

Thanks, buddy.

slowing down

Seems the only things that slows me down is getting sick. Down for the count today, which means I might actually post to this thing later.

The Prince Music CD Giveaway

Having myself been roundly criticized a few times for making my works too available to the public at no charge (my recent placing of the entirety of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES on Archive.org, for instance) I respect and understand what Prince is doing in England with the release of his new CD PLANET EARTH.

A hearty round of applause for this remarkable man and his incredible works. He's an artist, and to him the art is what is important, not that Richard Branson gets two bucks for every CD sold.

55 years!

Happy 55th wedding anniversary to my parents.

I can truly say I would not be possible without them!

angst

Something new, from a new source of inspiration.

angst

the knot that binds me to my thoughts
of dread anticipation.
not pain but tension that remains,
to beckon reservation,
that holds me in the ragged folds
of shrouded resolution,
aloft and with a shadow, soft,
to prove my absolution.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

that project

Pssst...remember the project I mentioned months ago, the one involving my social life?

It's underway. Shhhh. I'm keeping this on the low down.

Nibbles only, so far. But interesting nibbles.

the voice

I slipped and used "the voice" on a female friend yesterday on the phone. This is my pillow talk reading voice, the seductive tones of Androne a/k/a "the actor", the voice my old editor, Jan Innes, banned me from using on the phone when she was on the line.

The friend said "What was that?"

I asked "What?"

She responded "That voice you used. I feel high."

I laughed. I had forgotten it, one of the old powers I laid aside a few years back. It doesn't work on everyone, but I have seen it wreak havoc with a woman's hormones when used for evil purposes.

Sigh. To think there are times I might actually wish to be evil, it would certainly make for a more interesting social life.

I promised her I would not use it on her again. There is nothing mystical about it, though. I just have the experience and pipes to pitch my voice at just the right range to make the hair on the back of a woman's neck stand up, if she is caught unawares.

I drop my voice low in tone and volume, smooth out the natural highs and speak softly and slowly, more in a purr than my usual chatter. I have seen it have remarkable impact under the right circumstances.

Maybe I should do an entire podcast in the voice. Maybe I should do all my podcasts in that voice. And my poetry readings.

I knew a woman who was so addicted to it she used to call up my office answering machine after hours for the thrill. When I found out about it I was flabbergasted and changed my message and the tone I used during it. Her obsession seemed a bit grotesque to me, like those women who send me nude pictures of themselves after reading the Panther Cycles.

Okay, well, those I appreciate.

Hmmm...bringing back the voice. Maybe.

Commitment Podcast

Well, the podcast is up...the theme is "Commitment", in honor of my parents' 55th anniverary this Thursday, July 12th.

The poems featured (along with some very nice mandolin and guitar work, courtesy of the house band) are:

The Philosophy of Dreams

Brave and Constant Hearts

and

I trust you are well

Download it at Apple's iTunes Music Store or at
Radio City of Legends

muse graphic novel?

Okay, here's one for the books. The comic books.

A few years ago I was experimenting with a technique for converting photographs to pen-and-ink like art for the puposes of doing a graphic novel, tentatively entitled "The Somewhat Deranged Adventure of Skye Meadows".

Never got around to it. Something about divorcing my model.

Anyway, I get an email from an old friend. Seems he has the brilliant idea to do a graphic novel, based on the same technique, but make it about a squad of mythological demi-humans based on my totem muses.

I told him to knock himself out and make sure I get my cut if he ever gets around to it. Now he wants me to consult on it, so we get "the feel" right.

Ummmm...yeah. I know what's next...he'll want me to write some stuff for it. Then I'll be in the middle of it when one of the old muses decides to take umbrage at the fact we have her as a half-badger werecreature with a chain mail bikini with her name.

Come to think of it...(evil laughter).

lost works

In the course of interviewing the poet for an article, knowing his propensity for one-draft writing, I asked him if her ever threw something away that he later regretted...

WFDV: Well, actually, there are lost works that I regret losing or misplacing.

EJ: Lost works?

WFDV: Yeah. The 8th Panther Cyle, which I tossed because it was so overwhelmingly dark. My first black catalog, which had like 350 pieces in it. A couple of poems I have writ on napkins and tablecloths for women I have been out with. Even a poem I once composed on a woman's thigh. All lost. Add to that the journals I lost to Hurrican Katrina that were in the care of my ex, and you have more than the output of most major poets, just in the lost works.

I just thought I'd pass that along. Interesting. He didn't elaborate on who the woman was he'd used for foolscap (or if he could recall the poem). I have my theory.

He also spoke of works he'd composed out loud with no pen or recording device, including a spontaneous finale to his stage show "Pen Dragon" he performed at West Virginia University in 1980.

podcast update

Technical delays have pushed back the promotion and avaiability of this week's podcast until this evening.

I apologize for the delay.

Live Earth

Still alive.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the success of Live Earth yesterday, helping to spread the word about climate change to a world ready to roll up their sleeves and ensure the continuity of our species.

For my children, and my children's children...thank you!

Spent the morning in the studio, working on this week's podcast. The theme is "Commitment", in honour of my parents, who celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary this week.

Izzy is getting on me to finish the vocals and final engineering on the latest rounds of songs. I'll get to them when I get to them.

The Sum Divine

Guitar please, single spot. No percussion.

The Sum Divine

We stand beneath the tree of life
and draw the shaded line
wherein we hide from sun and strife
and plumb the sum divine.

The branches reach and breach the wind
and we draw comfort still
from silent prayers when leaves have thinned
and summer rains have chilled.

We draw our eyes to haze'd skies to fix
our hearts on Northern lights
that play the flick of candle wicks
in hands of gods of ancient nights.

When comes the Spring and greengrass grows
to soften matted earth, our bed,
we draw the life from mossy clothes
the oak has spun with furtive thread.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

"I have seen things you people wouldn't believe."

reflections, fading to silence for a season

Somebody once asked me what I felt of the notion of being a salesman, as they said I have a natural ease with people.

Well, in the first case, I do not see myself as having a "natural ease" with people. I like people and I like to make them happy, sometimes to my own detriment, materially, but I am still a bit shy about asking people for things.

In the second case, I don't like the rate of return on sales efforts. You can blunder into a major sale, you can work your ass off for twenty years and never get anywhere. And, to be honest, that's how it should be in sales as selling is about adding nothing to the value of the service or product procured, just the illusion of value.

So it is with relationships. Some come to you for nothing you give. Some you must give all, tearing handfuls of your own flesh to make real. And you never are one hundred percent sure the deal is sealed until...well, I don;t know when, as it has never happened to me that I have had a relationship of that durability and joy.

I did a housecleaning earlier this week, discarding file upon file of correspondences that had built up over the years. Email and physical letters to and from Brigit, Selke, and even my second wife (the name that must not be spoken). People who have chosen to drop out of my life, for their own reasons.

I don't want to sell people on my value, and when I am not what fits with their life, that's not a place I want to cling to. But it is with sorrow and sweet remorse that I let go.

Months ago I mailed a CD containing the last images from my seocnd wife's modelling portfolio. She was and I imagine still is a lovely girl and should she had pushed harder I have no doubt but that she would have gone farther in the industry. I wish her naught but well. I have finally let go the last mementoes she left to me when last we parted.

Selke. Sigh. Anything I could say here would be a strange elaboration on a strange relationship.

Brigit. She does this, you know...drops from sight for a year or two then reappears to jostle my heart. It is good for me, actually, as I have grown so apart I sometimes forget the taste of passion in my mouth, the scent of it on the wind, the thought of it in my sphere. I hope she makes her orbital pass again, and soon. If not, such are the fates. I am better for her passage through my life.

There are others I miss in my sphere, others whose absence pains me, but there is naught for me to do. I have chosen this tower, this seat, this vista, and alone I sit, pondering the beauty I have held, the promise I have met, the souls I have enriched and the ruins I have slipped from as the last stones fell.

I am who I should be, and I miss those whom I have loved. Such is the irony of my life.

Annoying questions

Interesting week. Just found out that my nephew who is now in Kuwait, on his way to Iraq, snuck off with his girlfriend two weeks before leaving and they got married. Never heard of that happening, hm?

My daughter and her husband; their room mate had a patio barbecue explosion on the 4th. Neither my daughter or her husband were there, but their room mate received significant areas of 2nd degree burns, a buddy of his received 3rd degree burns to the legs, or so I am told. He gets morphine and skin grafts. Someone was feeding a table-top hibachi with a bowl of...wait for it...ready...kerosene, or so goes the story. Darwin Awards on line 2.

Me, I was sent a list of questions by E.J. as part of his process in rewriting my memoirs. Sample questions:

What was the most memorable date you ever had?
Three people you would have had a better life if you had never met them?
The aliens come, they will take you and one female of your choice away to start a new Earth...who do you take?
The best line you ever wrote?

Yeah, he's annoying the crap out of me. But it does have me thinking.

More like remembering. The first one was easy. Watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean with Brigit. When I die I expect that to be the last memory I flash to. Too perfect.

Three people? Not easy, as most of the people who have done the most damage to my life have needed me there for them. Mostly ex-loves who were recovering from serious emotional trauma or addictions and I needed to be there for them. The Superman suit has always been hard for me to lay aside. That's probably why I am alone now in the world, I've burned too much of what I was and had in pulling people out of the burning debris of their lives. Well, that and a certain youthful lack of common sense.

Who do I take to start the world over? Even she doesn't know who it would be, and I'll leave it that way. I have found a certain comfort in the shadows, for now.

The best line? Depends on my mood. I am terribly fond of "Please come awhile, remain and play" from "The Unicorns", likewise "I am lost in the possibilities of your presence" from "The Patchwork Skirt of My Love". Hard to say.

World Record update

The Guinness people have said that to them "what is being read is not of consequence", and that in order to have a certfied record with them (not quite the same as a Nobel Prize, but worthy of note) I would need to read just about anything for slightly over 110 hours.

Not that I do not have enough material for that (EJ estimates my poetry could be read for approximately 235 hours, the published works accounting for just a small fraction of that, but nonetheless).

I am considering going rogue over this, setting my own record and if Guinness chooses not to certify the record, I have one thing to say to them:

"Not brilliant".

a new lyric: The Natural Order

Thanks to my guitar-god, Izzy, who gave me the not only the beat but a sense of malevolentm barely-caged rage I had to express in this new piece that we'll be laying down this week (I and the 'Gods...). You'll understand when you hear it.

The Natural Order

the natural order is chaos
and all life ends in death
bartering your soul for an illusion of control
to buy one last bastard breath

we have the frequency
but the message isn't penetrating
the clouds and crowds that make us so proud
that drown out the down and out taut tatterwauling

the natural order is chaos
and you will return to the dirt
with a legacy of lies and cinnamon thighs
can you feel can you heal more than you hurt

the natural order is chaos
and the candles are lit to burn down
or the tallow is wasted when the mutton is tasted
and the shadows on the bed are blood never shed

we have the medium
but we are brought low by the heights
that we scaled when passion paled and we failed
can you speak can you seek more than you would hide

the natural order is chaos


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

"In this moment I am myself again, if only for this moment."

spending time with Angie and George

There is something pleasant about keeping company with George Clooney, Sarah McLachlan and Angelina Jolie.

No, not in a hot tub. Damn it.

But, as I mentioned before, the Poets for Humanity website has asked and received permission to feature my video "Jesus Wept" about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur on their Writers Alliance website page of videos about the crisis.

It was an honor to be asked and of great amusement to find myself hanging with the other people who have made music, poetry and documentary videos on the crisis.

So, check out the library at www.writersalliance.net/Darfur_videos.html.

Now, to get Al Gore's people to take me seriously. You know I volunteered to read at his inaugural in 2001...but the coup by the Supreme Court that lead to the War in Iraq and the death of thousands of our sons and daughter, fathers and mothers, friends and neighbors sort of got in the way.

Seizing the day?

It has been said that poets encourage us to "Seize the day", but I say that a poet has no need to seize the day, instead invoking the power of their amomancies to have the day come to them and lay down in their arms, surrendering to their soul.

The Iron Lion, you bet

I just heard a rumour that I bounced off His Royal Madness, and he informs me he is seriously leaning that way.

What way, you say?

Well, you have, by now, heard that he is going to try and establish a certified World Record (courtesy of, ironically for him, some beer company) for the longest continuous public reading by a poet of his own works.

Grand enough in it's own...and fairly simple, if you have the stamina of vocal cords. Just open THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES and read for 9-12 hours and you'll probably make it into the books. Yes, estimates say it would take that long to read the entire book, aloud, cover-to-cover.

But, no. The poet is considering doing something destined to freak out many of his hard-core fans:

Not read a single "panther" poem.

That's right, set aside a bound volume of over 640 works and still find enough material in his catalog to go for many, many hours.

I think it's brilliant, sort of a "I am not defined by this book" move.

What do you think?

Newsletter reminder

The question remains: Why are you not one of the people subscribing to the newsletter so you can keep abreast of what's happening in the 'City? Hm?

The link is just off to the side...see it? Use it.

Oh...and the new podcast is up. Which you would have known if you subscribed to the newsletter.