City of Legends

Yes, RenaissanceFive, my lit and arts mag, is still being slaved over.  You would not, can not imagine the people we have working on this thing.  I can assure you, if you are a long-time reader, you will be blown away by our creative team on the first issue.

The new book, Apokalypsis, is on hold…not because of anything other than it is changing direction.  It will now be single-muse focused.  And if you can’t guess which muse, you really need to read more.

The legendary Ophidian himself, Conrad Hoyer, and I are beginning a musical/poetry collaboration that may surprise a lot of people.  Stay tuned.

Yes, I am going to retrofit williamfdevault.com and yes, I am considering a monograph of my poetry suite "The Sacraments".  And, yes, I am giddy to the point of madness in love.  It is starting to annoy people.  Not me.  It is good to be happy.

I will be changing my geographic base of operations within the next twelve months.  To where. depends on several factors.  I will keep you in the loop,

I have long lived by the notion that one should not have regrets.   My daughter, for instance, tried to convince me once that I should never married her mother, because we were ill-suited for one another.  I told her that without that marriage, she and her two brothers, all of whom I love, would have never existed.  I therefore refused the premise of her point.

I am not perfect.  I have things in my life that are troubling to me, but overall, my life is rich and good and true.  I have my health.  I have friends. I have a literary legacy that may yet reach critical mass, and I have the love of a good woman (whether or not she can put up with me is another question).

But, if I could compartmentalize my life and pick a handful of events that I could and would regret, regardless of what good may have, directly or indirectly, been derived from them, here they are.  Hold onto your hats.

1. Marriage to my second wife.  Huge mistake.  She was young, beautiful and aggressively pursued the union.  But the marriage made me sacrifice my career and literary ambitions for a time, and sabotaged my relationship with my daughter.  She (the second wife) made out well on the deal and is quite possibly alive today because of the union, but…nevertheless.  The financial damage done was massive, to me.
2. The lionization of the Panther Cycles, indeed, the realtionship with the Panther.  It was a clumsy attempt to make a mystique out of a mistake.  My first marriage was a mess, true, but I allowed myself to try and salvage something epic out of what was, in truth, a disaster of epic proportions.  Some of the poetry in the ‘Cycles is solid, but a lot of it is "abstra" work, assigning virtues and qualities to the Panther that she never possessed.  It was hyperbole on a level I would never again touch, and I confess it now.
3. My early infidelities in my first marriage.  These sabotaged the bond and probably were a key element in the slow, painful disintegration of the marriage.  I was always suspect, and subject to a fair amount of emotional and verbal abuse from friends and family thus that I was constantly unhappy.  This contributed to the Panther debacle.
4. Not being more aggressive in my poetry career.  It is not too late for this, as even with it as a part-time gig I have made inroads.  The Sunday Girl, perhaps, can help me by giving me the support, emotionally, that no one previously ever has.  I seem to have been forever deviled by those who either a) had no conceopt of what poetry means to me or b) were there for a quick immortalization treatment.  I earnestly believe she could finally be the one.

I think that’s enough for now, my head hurts.  But I am trying to purge my demons to make myself a better person, a better husband in waiting.  And to do this I must be honest with myself to a degree I have never before accomplished.

I am not unaware that my latest work, a seven poem cycle using the sacraments of the Catholic Church as metaphors for romantic and even erotic imagery and actions, has created a stir.  I expected it to.

But the truth is, I am an heretic.  Always have been, always will be.  But for clarity, let’s set the record straight about these seven works.

• Nowhere do I use obscene or profane language.
• The romantic and erotic imagery is established as being in the framework of a lifelong, committed and yes, wedded union between two individuals, specifically myself and the Sunday Girl.  It is not a call to excess, adultery or self-flagellation.  Okay, maybe a little self-flagellation.
• It is beautiful, soulful and one of the most proud accomplishments of my life to have penned these.  I include what is almost certainly the only surviving haiku of my career as a writer, a sonnet and a return to my own triskadekian canto form. 

The seven poems are:

• Baptism:  The cleansing and public conversion rite, making the transition, marking the preparation to receive the spirit.
• Confession:  Admitting past mistakes and errors in judgment, making clean and clear the way.
• Communion and Absolution:  The taking of the flesh and the blood into you.  In this case I literally used this (and some Catholic friends are NOT happy with me right now) as an allegory for oral sex, where flesh and body fluids are exchanged and taken into one another to blur the barriers between one body and the other.
• Confirmation:  Affirm what was said in the throes of passion, the morning after.
• Matrimony:  The haiku.  A proposal made and answered within a specific time of year.
• Last Rites:  A sonnet of the passing of one who is beloved, in the arms of their lover.  This damn thing just about killed me to write, for by this point in the write I was inside the sphere of this love.  To one day be so parted from her will be unbearable.
• Ordination:  A triskadekian canto of how love is meant to be witnessed and proclaimed, that to love is like taking on the vestments and becoming an evangelist for the person you love.

Controversial, of course.  Beautiful, undeniable.  All my love to the light that passed through me to the page, my beloved Sunday Girl.

I didn’t.  :)  Spent the morning with my folks, the middle of the day with my sons and the evening with…the Sunday Girl, remotely, but nonetheless.  She wrote a poem for me, beautiful and purposeful, and video’d herself reading it and it was a religious experience as far as I am concerned.  I’d share it with you but things are said that are private to us.

The name of the poem was "Only skin" and it was about faith and hope and passion.  I loved it, and her reading of it.  Can you get a video tattoo’d on you?  Damn.  But I did write a response, a sonnet.  "White Sunday 42".

You shivered at the cold and thought the room
would be empty on your return, iron
headboard still cold and hard and your bridegroom
gone, a sea of insecurities, dawn
and midnight, stolen in a promised kiss
that would never come.  But I kept faith, held
on when silence roared for I would not miss
this consecration for life or withheld
my love for doubt.  You will always find me,
patient if not perfect.  Not only skin
but lambent determination to see
this through with you, to everyday begin
the best I know how, in your heart and arms,
and surrendered to your brave love and charms.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

This was my best birthday, ever.

writing with a revived gusto…a full cycle this morning (check it out on deviantart.com or at my Amomancer blog.

Just wrote one of the most kick-ass sonnets I will ever write ("Unfulfilled Wish for Intimacy") and am right now bouncing through the internet on multiple sites while the cats are diving for cover as I play "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" at 11…"Moonage Daydream" really works for me right now.

I have sublimated some negativity into a purified emotional stream and am right now playing alchemist with my soul and heart.

Sam Cooke sang "A change has got to come."

I agree.  Time for a change.  Not evolutionary.  Revolutionary.  Either pick things up a magnitude or ten or…

hmmm.  Maybe just feeling the magic gloves tonight.  There are people in every corner of the Earth tonight who feel a little better for having read my works, today. 

But to me it is a cold, dark, lonely world. 

My dear friend and life-saver Iulia reminded me about what I’d said about becoming jaded.  And I want to believe that people say what they mean.  I am not used to being in a box, the sideshow, the flea circus.  Maybe that’s all this is.  But with my current adrenaline and testosterone levels being up around "Oh My God!  Run, he’s turning green!" and being cursed with a ridiculous cardiovascular durability, it is not a pleasant existence.  If the prize is real, worth every torment.  If not…I will draw experience and scars to give value.

It is a frighteningly cold and bitter sphere we inhabit.  I either have to, in my own words "give up.  give out.  give in to the inevitable.", find a hero(ine) or turn everything up to 12.6 and give the world one last hazy glory.

Right now, uncertain.  Have put on the headphones and playing all those monsters that make sure the cats go into hiding.  They really don’t like it when I acid dance to "Battleflag" by Lo Fidelity All Stars.  But, man, it burns the venom out of me.

Maybe the Sunday Girl is my redemption.  Maybe she is just another mirage.  Maybe there isn’t anyone out there with the will to burn at the highest degrees.

Let us find out, shall we?

My most exquisite friend, Thomas, asked me a philosophical question the other day (he is worried about my passion for the muse known as "the Sunday Girl" and how bent out of shape I am going to be, eventually) about what criteria I apply in letting people get close to me.  It was a valid introspective question.  There are days I hate my friend, Thomas.

Out of that grew a list that I will not, in this life, share with anyone.  Don’t ask.  But the question that followed was "Who are the ten dearest people in the world to you".  That one stopped me in my tracks, because you have no idea how hard it is for me to answer that.  So, I made up the list, then punted.

Here’s a follow up to that list, though.  A sort of statistical survey of the ten people I hold dearest in the world.

# of the people that I have written poetry about?  That’s easy, 10.

# who are related to me by blood?  Ah…4.  Yes, I know, with three kids and four sibs still alive and both parents still around, that means there are some people who did not make the top ten who maybe feel they should’ve.  Tough.

# who know they are that precious to you?  6.  You may not think it, but as effusive and passionate of a writer as I am, there are some people I know I have not expressed my affection for them nearly, dearly enough.  And some who don’t believe me.

# who you have spoken with in the last 24 hours?  If you include all forms of communications, email, text messages, phone calls and notes…6.

# who would include you in their list of the 10 people most precious to them?  Well, I can’t see into everyone’s hearts and, if I did, I think I would be very disappointed by what I see with some of these, but my best guess is somewhere between 5 and seven.

Try this at home, kids, but don’t take it too seriously.  Sorry, I have to now go off in a corner and weep.  Sometimes I hate my friend, Thomas.  And he’s not on my list.  But the Sunday Girl is.  So, there.

…Is a vent for the explosion…

Thus let it be with Caesar.

I made the tactical error of allowing myself to get too hyped up, in a good way, over some things.  Now I am having to write almost constantly to not lose my mind.  I’m having to keep the bomb a rocket.  (You people over on www.deviantart.com know of what I speak…)

Am I okay?  yes.  Am I going to be okay?  hell, yes.  Do I have some issues to work out?  (insane maniacal laughter and the sound of a Saturn V first stage igniting)  Later!!   (whoosh!!!)

Over the next few weeks I have several major and side projects due to come to fruition, and I just added another.

Many visitors here also come to my "official" site at williamfdevault.com largely for the illustrative works there, where selected poems of mine have been married to art and photography by some very talented people from around the world.

I plan to make some changes there.  Some works coming down, some going up and some illustrations changing as I have found stronger and better works.

If you haven’t yet been there, go, so that you will know what changed and can gripe about the changes more earnestly.  If you have been there, and want some things to stay the same, let me know.  I am not a total iconoclast, especially when the icon in question is me.

When you are constrained, by whatever means.  When I am constrained by whatever means.  Perceptions, technology, whatever.  I get frustrated.

Not enough to give up on things worthwhile, but one mustn’t be in a perfectly comfortable position at all times to achieve one’s goals  (only one or two people in the world right now know exactly what I am talking about, but that’s okay…).

I am reminded of the scene in "Enter the Dragon" when Bruce Lee finds himself trapped in a sealed room.  He doesn’t waste his focus or injure himself trying to break out, but he calmly, purposefully stride to the corner, sits down and waits. 

But that doesn’t mean he was celebrating inside.  Much love.  This has been a remarkable day in my life when I have thought things I never thought before, said things I have never said before and stepped into states of thought and being previously unimagined and unexpected. 

Life is good.  Not perfect, as perfection breeds complacency.  I never want to be fully sated.  Although I would welcome the attempt.

Today my father turns 87.  He is in good health and I am happy is is strong and well and in my life.  I am blessed.  He is a good man.

As I write I am sitting here with my headphone son, bombarding my soul with the most gut-wrenching songs I know.  Not to punish myself, but to test the fibers.  In case you have been living in a hermetically-sealed mason jaw on Funk & Wagnall’s back porch for the last several weeks, I gave my heart.  Vegas oddsmakers are disappointed, as they had me as a 3:2 to never say "I love you" to a woman again.  I love it when I confound my critics.  I think I’ve made a career of it, and a legacy.  Always bet on red.

No, people, I will stop giving my heart permanently when I am dead.  And maybe not even then, I have hope of an afterlife.  I may fall and get bloodied, but I am resolute.  I have every hope this will not be necessary to test, again, this one, this "Sunday Girl" is extraordinary. 

But I am sitting here listening to the likes of Bush’s "Glycerine", Art Garfunkle’s "All I Know" and Neil Young’s prophetic "Heart of Gold".  Glutton for punishment?  Nah, just sparring with my soul.  My last two significant relationships bloodied me pretty badly.  I have to get tough, strong, fast and resilient.  I don’t plan to fall or fail, or to see this one slip away and crumble to dust, but that, in the end is an exercise of her free will and beyond my ethical boundaries to control.  Yes, I have shown an ability to influence people with my words, but to usurp free will?  No!

I have updated my Amomancer blog with more of the White Sunday works…I am considering a totem shift (yes, I know I foreswore the totems during the Aubergine era, but we all saw how well that went).  I am considering (furtive glances to the side) changing her totem from "The Sunday Girl" or "White Sunday" to…Apokalypsis.  There’s a couple of very valid reasons to do so.  I’m thinking about it.  Suggestions?  Ideas?  Bribes?