City of Legends

Not even close, if you believe my doctor, just going in so many directions, and drained a bit, trying to settle into a relationship that is, in a word, challenging.  Aren’t they all?

I am very gratified with the response to "padparadscha".  I enjoyed writing it, and am enjoying seeing people find resonance with it.  Tying it with my newfound avocation of collectiong gemstones (primarily black star sapphires and padparadscha) I am enjoying myself.

I realize I have been terrible at updating this blog, and will, again, resolve to do better…I am just stretched so thin (I write, I edit, I consult, I write long, meandering love letters, I flirt, I eat, I sleep, I breathe, I am, I said, I am…)

we begin a new phase.

don’t read into it anything, just that I am making some needed changes, consistent with my purpose and my vows. 

blue is not always blue, who knew that my phrase "ruby blue" would come back to me one day…thirty years after I first uttered it?

padparadscha

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

the path broadens, then narrows.
stone to clay to dust to grass to stone again.
when the sun is at the right angle
I can see the long neglected spires.

home.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

when the wind blows, it is from the South.
when the rain falls, it is down from the skies.
when the sun rises, I can see the the edge
of a world I have never comprehended.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

vacant streets save for the occasional ghost
of seasons and reasons long past and cast aside.
a bride of dust.  the pride of trust, forgotten.
I am home now, and there is much to be done.

home.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

the trivialities of other, lesser cities.
pale purgatories to one who has lived
where the gemstones pierce the night
and shed their light on the dreams of lovers.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

find your way to me, when you can and will.
I will clear out the upper levels of the palace
and lay new stone by my hands, black marble
for the bare feet of acolytes who have fled.

home.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

I hide in the open, so only the blind miss me.
the tumbling weeds and hungry hornets pass by
and acknowledge me not, for I am not relevant
in the green waves of prairie grass they inhabit.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

my voice echoes in the violent silence until…
until the echoes find synergy and it sounds
like a multitude, a host of fair heirs, chanting.
and all my words are of you.  all my words are true.

home.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

the dust slides on the smooth stone in the wind
as the moon illuminates without heat
and I shiver like a frightened child, alone
to face the morning with renewed vigor.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

trouvere.  priest.  worshipping one of seven.
penetration without flesh or even sound.
the riddle of scrimshaw on jigsaw people.
the towers shift in spectrum, but retain strength.

home.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

two hundred and twenty three stairs, gently curving,
and I am undeserving to ascend them, empty handed
but for yet another sack of words, awaiting worms
to feed upon me as I lay, sightless, forgotten.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

the lotus blossom minarets whistle in the wind
and I watch the dance of the stars, forgetting years
and vows I had made, without malice or regret
for I am caught up in the universe and the sky.

home.

you alone will know where to find me
you alone I will not refuse

my padparadscha prison was smoothed by hand and sand
and now stands, neglected.  too long.  too long.
and I am not an agent of rebirth, my muscles
will be dust and rust before you find your way here.

home.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved. 

Delivered Elric to his new college at University of Hawaii at Hilo, Dante leaves for Old Dominion University in two days.

Still haven’t finished release of "Selected Poems and Passions"…don’t have the emotional stamina for it, with all else that’s going on.

Survived my birthday on the 16th…hundreds of well wishers, which still was not sufficient to overcome my funk for my Sunday Girl being out of touch.  I admit, wounding…but one embraces what one can and accepts the rest.

I have been writing, sporadically, but some good material.  I need to find a way to decouple my creative/emotional energies from the roller coaster ride of my lovelife…

My front license plate was stolen, right off my car, inconvenient.

Just staying busy, as best I can…feeling in a bit of a holding pattern.  Why is it that whenever I fall into the horse lattitudes that random women come out of the woodwork, seeking a position as new muse? 

Oddly enough, professionally and personally I am doing well…just feeling unmotivated to blog.

Elric and Dante both leave this month for college…I, personally, will be escorting Elric to the University of Hawaii at Hilo for orientation.  Poor kid, trapped for 4 years in paradise.

Dante is gearing up for Old Dominion University, he is majoring in Math with a minor in Physics.  He is giddy over getting into a true academic environment.

My relationship with the Sunday Girl remains strong, if complicated…in time I will tell you the tale and you will go "Huh?"

The delay in final release of the last book ( Selected Poems and Passions: 2004-2011 ) seem to be resolved, and it should ship in the next few weeks…

new poem.

struck enough, the crystal cracks and we are so fascinated
by the light that sparkles off the man-made flaws.  we forget
and stand too close.  the brisant report of the facets’ fail
and we are showered with the razor splinters of our folly.
jolly good fun to the observers.  but there is still a pulse,
deep within the core of this frame and I am not one given
to more than an acknowledgement of difficulties.  blood and pain
are not reason or season to turn tail and run to the horizon.
battered, yes.  bruised, yes.  but even when the tethers slip
my grip on the headboard where you bound me with a promise…
remains.  hurry home.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

There is a canard that states that the final muse is death.  I find this only true if the creative soul surrenders to it and accepts it as such.  No artist exists in a non-consensual relationship with their muse, they have accepted it and bound to it, like an acolyte to a Holy book. 

My final muse is not death. 

It is also not pain, or sorrow, regret or revenge.  It is not lost loves, found faith or discovered wealth. 

It is a woman. 

Of course.

I had, in the aftermath of the Aubergine relationship, lost faith.  The last three major relationships I had found myself in had fallen apart, in no small quarter due to duplicity and instability, and not my own.  Having been lied to, and perhaps more shockingly, lied about, I had lost my way, lost my core evidence of beauty and love.  It was a difficult time.

But then, ironically enough, I stumbled upon some poetry.  Lovely, dark, troubled.  Reflecting a path that could have, would have, should have shattered a human soul.  But the poet had emerged the other side battle-scarred and defiant.  She was beautiful.  And for once.  For once, I fell for the essence before the facade.  For once.

I wrote her poetry.  She responded.  I finally saw her face.  She was and is of a form that is beautiful.  Dark and human, full of fire and couer rage and doubt.  Had I been born a woman, I would have liked to grown up to be her.  Brilliant and passionate and complex.  Yes, complex.  I hate shallow vessels of life.

So, this woman is the muse that I call "White Sunday", whose essence has suffused my work for the last year or so.  She remains, for most of you, still in shadows, awaiting her time in the spotlight.  There are rational and irrational reasons enough for this although scarcely a week goes by but that a reader emails me to ask who she is. 

If you have read my works of and to her, and there are hundreds already scattered about the web, you will find a depth of commitment on my part and adoration for her that is unique.  Unique to me, and perhaps more than that.  My friend, the poet Lawrence Jaffe, predicted the failure of my relationship with the Panther, saying "She is incapable of loving as you love."  He was right.  No shame to that muse, but there was a great unbalancing act in our relationship.  As there was with the Leopard and Aubergine.  My time stepped away from my passions gave me the introspection I needed to see with my heart.

A dog kicked thrice has a hard time trusting, and it has been difficult to open myself up again.  I had to make a choice, whether to treat this affection as an idle flirtation, or to accept it as something deeper and more profound.  The final muse.  To make the commitment to make of her the rest of my life. 

I made my choice.  Those who do not respect it, I am sorry to lose you as readers and even as friends, but it is my choice, my life, my legacy.

White Sunday is my final muse.  Check back with me in 30 years and see the truth in those words.

am I finally making the crossover?  uncertain.  there are indications, based on my examination of my thought processes.

Interesting.  Have been writing fitfully.   Spending a tremendous amount of brain power trying to help White Sunday with some issues and projects.  When I sit back and look at the mass of my output over the last several weeks, even months, it is staggering.

Estimates place the current wordcount for the White Sunday poems at around 70,000 words.  That’s incredible, almost insane.

As soon as my editor completes the review of "Selected Poems and Passions:  2004-2011" I will lock in the ISBN and it will go live.  It is available now, if you know where to look, but wouldn’t you like a nice copy complete with ISBN and any final edits?

My moods are mercurial and intense.  I have been avoiding tampering with them, but may have to.

Has it really been more than a month since I last posted here?  Wow.  I have been so busy with the new books, my work at deviantArt.com and outside pursuits.

I have been bad. 

Make you a deal;  I’ll do better.  Let’s hear a poem.  This one is entitled "The Alchemy of Flesh"…
 

Faint scent of you remains, stamped in my soul.
The chemistry becomes magic and I
am but another crucible to roll
over the flames and melt base metal, my
contribution to arcane ritual
you make of me, take from me to merge
the frail shadows of souls we are, eventual
victims of desires, boiling to verge
on the moment of incandescent heat
into the alchemy of human hearts,
gold, platinum and silver slivers sweet
as arsenic, swallowed to follow parts
we vivisect ourselves for, mysteries
of futures hung upon our histories.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

A few months back the manuscript for my "next" book, Apokalypsis took a 176.25 degree turn when I decided to turn it into a full on love letter to the extraordinary woman I call "White Sunday".  No problem.

But then I kept writing more "White Sunday" poems and the book kept growing.  I asked a good friend, fellow poet Mary Katherine Brake, if she would be so kind as to take over the editing duties.  She agreed, but she also said that there was no logical end point for the book until either I stopped writing "White Sunday" poems (at this moment around two hundred and growing daily) or the relationship took such a dramatic turn that I had to change the muse’s "totem".

I agreed and handed off the project, realizing it could be months, even years, complicated by a complicated relationship the likes of which would make the most love-starved fan go "Phew!  I’m glad he’s not involved with me!"

So I decided I needed to do a different book in time for my Spring Tour.  Something different, something stunning.  Something so overladen with images and poetry that it would explode in your mind and eyes like artillery shells full of ecstasy and pain.  This was the book currently called "orphans", but it will undoubtably change names as now, thanks to the editorial tutelage of Ms. Brake, I have ample reason to postpone that book until mid-Summer 2011.  No problem.

I’ll do a third book, something powerful and romantic and poll my readers and find out…they want what?  Erotic?  Sheesh.  And at the very moment I am trying to demonstrate to that small piece of the universe that matters to me that I am not some overly-intense screaming Byronist.  Okay, I am, but I have other sides to me as well, really. 

Thus was born the need for a fourth book.  Something patoral, gentle, true but in the subtle whisper not the cataclysmic bombast.  I am right now working on the concept, but I think you will find it oddly refreshing.

So, here we go.  I was going to do a book in 2010.  Instead, no book in 2010.  Four books (maybe) in 2011.  Blame my editor.  I knew there was a reason I hated editors.

The good news?  I already have the covers to the first three designed. Really.  No, you can’t see them…yet.

At this time the White Sunday poems, both the titular ones and the dedicated ones, number nearly 200 works.  That’s a lot of poetry for less than a six month run.  I actually pity the poor editor who has made the decision to cull them down to a book sized manuscript.  I really do.

But that is what an editor is for.  Funny, I don’t much like editors, as a rule.  They get in the way of the pure creative drive, they alter what has been done and for good or for bad, that’s like some guy with a magic marker getting hands on the Mona Lisa.  To me, poetry is truth is god is love is art, and adulteration of that isn’t true.  But, I am learning.

The rest of the world looks alien to me, again.  I am lost in the poetry, lost in my affection and passion for my Sunday Girl, even though there are very real signs that her passion for me has run its course.  Maybe it is just the echoes of Aubergine and the Leopard that make me so dread the future, fearing that she, like they, was here for the anointing of immortality but doesn’t really want to hang on Olympus.  Dread, what an awkward word in my mouth.  I spend a portion of every day lost in it, the physiological symptoms growing stronger as the stress tears at me.

But many years ago, at the denouement of the Panther Debacle, I vowed I would not bend again, that before I would surrender to despair you would hear the bones crack and shattera s I stood my ground.  Such inflexibility does not always serve me well, and the frustrating complexity of my relationship with the Sunday Girl is an abattoir for my soul.  Every doubt, every apprehension, every misstep or miscue, I feel a thousand sharp and sinister electric shocks, scorching me.  But I have made my vow, and the vow was founded upon yes, nothing less than a love I would stand resolute in for the rest of my days…even when that epoch seems marked in seconds rather than decades.

I cannot write enough poetry to purge my soul of all these feelings.  There are not words in any language of man to express them.  I do what I can and try everything to control the pain.  It is, of course, in the end, a losing battle, but those are the only battles worth showing up for.  I hope this one rages for decades, that it is marked with some gains before the inevitable loss of death and separation, that there is truth in her.

In the meantime, enjoy the poetry.  You will not see anything else like it in your lifetime, that I can assure you.

For those of you who have read my poetry cycle "The Sacraments" know that the poem "matrimony" refers to "the time of apple harvest".  As a fierce advocate for my own mythos, that simple line bound me to a cycle in life.  Accordingly, I may only propose to my Sunday Girl during that time, which is generally read as between August 12th and October 20th.

Question asked and, as yet, unanswered.  Has she given indication of a positive response?  Yes, but I am not very presumptuous.  I gave her my gift for this year a few hours ago and now must hold my tongue for 296 days.

It may be a record of some sort, for me, but I will endure.  I am, if not more than a little disappointed, resolute.  I have seen many suns rise, many stars fall and all in all, I am still the argent sergeant of my own soul.

Who knows what tomorrow brings?  Not I.  But I will walk to the horizon, not ronin, but not yet bound (although she refers to us as "lovers", speaks of our "partnership" and you do not want to know the tongue-lashing I received one day when, inpeckish heartache, I took down my Facebook relationship status of "In a relationship".)

We shall see.  Cider, anyone?