final sunday

I am cast out.
orphaned.
left for dead by the side of a wide road
so that others can swerve
to miss my fading form.
nothing warm
comes from this.
another legacy of ashes
left on my tongue
the taste of dung
and vinegar
from an apple orchard
I had once considered
a sanctuary.

the colding feat.
I am incomplete
and competing for sustenance
is not in my nature.
I will drag myself
into the dark
that I may not offend
those for whom
pain
is too intimate.
and I will find
myself.  unbroken
once I fit 
all the pieces.

drinking stagnation.
the hunger unabated.
but I will bind my wounds.
plant fists to earth and roar.
sore in a thousand places.
it is good you do not 
have to see me like this,
the tattered, battered man,
the orphan of Aphrodite.
but I will not change
my coat of arms.
I will still be a priest to your divinity.
and I will love you
every time I feel my hollow soul.


William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

the edits are done

and "Selected Poems and Passions:  1996-2004" is slotted for release sometime next month...either August 16th (my birthday) or August 12th (the first day of the apple harvest, consistent with my poem "matrimony" from "The Sacraments" within the White Sunday poems).

it all gets so complicated.

some poems got cut by my editor, M.K., as did the use of the faux pen-and-ink drawings I have included in a few of my past books.  Her position...was disappointing, but I accept her taste and judgement.  she even made a few minor structural changes to a few pieces that needed them.

she solved the issue of the line-wraps for "aureate" in an elegant manner that I would not have accepted had it not been so well executed, so she out smarted me.  I may have to re-evaluate my generic loathing of all editors.  Dammit.