from out of the city, with clarity

In these last few weeks, visiting old haunts in Los Angeles and Central California, meeting with old friends and finding who amongst my new friends is more than a shadow...and, of course, falling in love, all these things have given me some perspective.

One of the key poems I got some angle on was my 1997 work "from out of the city", long considered something of a curiosity for its seeming precognizant statement regarding 9/11. A claim I have long dismissed and will drive a wooden stake the heart of now. I actually see with clearer eyes how intimate this work is to my life.

What follows is the poem, annotated (italics):

from out of the city

From out of the city came words. Small words.
("the city" is "the city of legends", my website...or perhaps even the entirety of my works. the "small words" are simplistic statements.)
Words like lead pellets, ringing on armour, stinging on flesh
and carrying a message of rage and honor defended.
(despite being "small words", they carry great power, due to their earnestness, and speak of rage and honor defended, when I stood up for love in following through on my oath to the panther.)

The prophet spoke in broken syntax, the facts spoke
for themselves in time and he was carried to the city square
to be stoned to death, in accordance with the law.
(My words were heavily stylized, and broken into hundreds of poems and poetic fragments. I was verbally assaulted and insulted for my actions by those who saw the impropriety of the situation as more important than my heart.)

Morning slid over the horizon as if on rails invisible,
and split the night like Trinity. Infinity seemed possible
except for the silence of the waking world, one eye open.
(When I realized that my lover had deserted me after I had walked away from my life, it was only a single moment of clarity the next morning that saved me from self-destruction, sort of a reverse "Nosferatu's Dream".)

Mourn the night and rise. Rise to your feet and climb
the hill you always said you'd climb before the end of all things.
For it is upon you, even in the optimism of dawn.
(This is an exhortation to my conscious mind from my preconscious, to accept the loss and move forward, being aware of my losses even though I will, by my nature, seek the best of what has passed.)

Mourn the night and rise. Rise to your vision, rise!
The afterlife is not waiting for you, but you for it,
and the madness of martyrs may call it too soon.
(I continue the exhortation, and warn myself that even the actions of others or random events could end the path before my work is done.)

Mourn the night and rise. Spread your bastard wings
and catch the feral winds that come on the sun's fire
to sweep away the night into small shadow piles in corners.
(Guess who? "The dragon" is back, a representation in my works for my superego. The past is consumed by light and heat and it is time to rise to the truth and get on my way.)

From out of the city came words. Final words.
Words like Eden. Gethsemane. Golgotha. And then.
And then. And then, the silence. The violence of indifference.
(The greatest danger, when pained, is to stop caring. Do not stop caring, I was warning myself. Do not die. Do not allow my words of the time to be "final words", as that silence would be a violence to the world.)

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Takes on a different flavour now, hm? I think so. It just took my all these years to realize I knew the answers, I knew the game and I was ready to continue, even then. The epiphanies of the last few weeks have been amazing, I feel like a child taking Catechism, learning mysteries never before considered. I am moving up a magnitude in the understanding of my own works.