song stuck in my head
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Abstra, Brigit, Poetry, Psyche, music, the Leopard, the Selke
I think this is the first time this has ever happened to me. A song is wedge in my head, playing soundtrack to the hours I am spending here, at the computer, editing some technical documents and writing a proposal for a client. Hairy-scary proposal, too. You don’t want to know which branch of the US Armed Forces it is for or what they do with our services if we win.
But back to the song. Wow. It is one of my own. One of the ones off of my CDs. I can’t recall it happening to me before. But the taste, which is the musical version of the taste of remembrance, is doing its thing in my brain, and I am enjoying it. I am rediscovering me.
Not a bad thing, I think. I am happy.
The poem, itself, is something of a miracle. Clearly an Abstra work (one written about not a single person, but an abstraction) I still called upon specific memories of specific women at different moments as I wrote it and later recorded it. The slow, malevolent and mournful guitar was my vision.
I conjoured the Leopard, the Selke, Brigit and Psyche to fuel the work.
chasing Abstra
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Journal, Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion, Memoir, Muses
Originally posted at Author’s Den, this examination of my greatest muse is as relevant today as ever. Originally written in 2005, I haven’t changed a word. I guess I’ve pretty much been on this wavelength for some time.
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I was down at my favourite hang out, the "Black Bear Burrito," working on a summary of my book "Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion" when a whim struck me.
Being the "Romantic Poet of the Internet" and all, people often pay a lot of attention to whom my poems are written, sometimes misleadingly (i.e., "Arachne and Red Lace" is not about drug addiction, it is to a former lover who told me she was buying that red lingerie for my delight, not that of some other lover I did not yet know about) but with some passion.
I started charting the 87 poems in that book, gridding them out to whom I know the poems were written. I have to admit, I’m a fraud.
Of those 87 poems in the book, published in 2002, only four. Yes, four. Only four were written to my wife at the time (the cover model). That’s just under five percent. Pretty lame.
At this point you are scrambling for your copy to try and figure out who the other 82 were about. Relax, it gets complicated and you are going to need your wits about you.
Fourteen were earlier pieces, written to my first great love. Five. Yes, five. Five were written to my first wife, whom I have had a less than amicable relationship over the intervening years (she once said, publicly, that she would never have me killed because it would ruin her chance to make my life a living hell.)
Thirteen were of an aspect that they were not of or about any woman or relationsip.
But twenty five. Yes, twenty five. Twenty five of the poems in "Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion" were written to an abstract romantic figure I will now give the name "Abstra". She seems to be my most common muse.
Indeed, a painstaking review of my catalog of about 9,000 poems shows that, even if you credit all of the "Panther Cycles" to "the Panther" (many are patently not about her, as they describe aspects of her that I already knew were absent) she comes in at 7.1% of my total recorded output.
Abstra has around 11.4%. Sounds like a can of whup-muse if ever I heard one.
Who is this Abstra? That makes it interesting, even further. Certainly my view of her has evolved over the years.
In her earliest days she was an amalgam of the women I desired, Psyche and Alabaster and others. But as time went on, she began to take on those characteristics I was not finding in my lovers.
Most of my relationships have been terribly one-sided affairs, with me doing the heavy lifting, emotionally and financially.
Abstra is an equal partner who takes care of me when I am sick and calls me sometimes just to check on me, not just when she wants a favour or to borrow some money (the stories I could tell…)
Abstra is passionate, publicly affectionate, and isn’t afraid to tell me when I am screwing up. But before I actually make the mistake, rather than waiting until the dust clears then telling me a resounding "I knew that would fail."
She has her own space, her own identity, her own goals and dreams and achievements, which I celebrate with her. And she is proud of me when I succeed, not envious.
She has my back. She likes to snuggle. And doesn’t mind being with a man who, while extremely monogamistic, has the appetites of a teenager.
She has a spiritual side, but knows we live in the real world and that needs taken care of, too.
She likes animals, but doesn’t consider them more important than people.
Big one here. She’s not a liar. She doesn’t lie to me. She doesn’t expect me to lie for her, or to take the blame for her mistakes. She doesn’t lie about me when it suits her manuevering.
Gee. Now that I think of it, I have known a few women like her, but so long ago they have passed from my sphere. Known in times before I knew what was of value, what was of need.
I don’t think it is time to raise my standards, but to hold to my standards. To embrace and accept them for an integral part of me, and my artistic vision.
But enough about me. I salute you, Abstra. Through many years you have kept this heart beating, as did Glatisant with King Pellinore, as I keep my lonely quest for you.
And I shall, as is my duty to you, and to love.
an update on the new book
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Abstra, As such
Put this in your pipe and smoke it:
I am working on the manuscript for my next book of verse:
"As such…love poems of a new life"
and I started collecting together the best poems I have written of or for Candy since I first started actually writing of or to her (for you trivia buffs, the poem was "Above room temperature" written on September 1, 2007…and I don’t think the lady herself knew it was about her at the time. It was a complicated time and I ran a poor second for more than a lap or two.) and I encountered a problem.
Too many poems. Way too many for the modest volume I had envisioned.
So…tough luck. This will not be the juggernaut that was "The Compleat Panther Cycles" but many of those poems were not to the Panther but to an ideal and an abstraction, and they were written over a year and a half, not 4 months. We are looking at about 170-200 poems at this time (a very thick volume). Thicker than "from an unexpected quarter", thrice the thickness of "Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite".
Candy, thank you for the inspiration, really…but sheesh! A guy has to sleep and eat. How bad is it going to be when we’re together in the same room?
Heh. Heh. Heh. That’s a different kind of poetry.
staring through the glare, she is there. and she shines.
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Abstra, Poetry
The title line is a poetic fragment.
It is driving me crazy. The fragments of poetry flitting in and out of my awareness as my preconscious processes and propagates the phrase "she shines".
Who is "she"? What does it mean "shines"? Is she an abstraction, an amalgam, a prophecy or a singular woman from my past or present? Elements of the poems that are whispering themselves to me bear elements of any of several ex-lovers: Nancy’s brilliance and grace, Jan’s intellect and sense of humour, Ann’s beauty and fragility, Brigit’s charisma and cunning, Karla’s vulnerability and talent. All goddesses, all. All shone (shined? did shine?) and shine on.
Perhaps I am just flashing on the whole. Or perhaps, perhaps I am extracting an archetypal menu for my next all-consuming passion.
Perhaps. Perhaps. But, regardless of what it means or how well I express it, she shines.
Whoever the hell "she" is.
poem - To an Unknown Goddess
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Affirmation, Muses
I wrote this poem over a year ago, realizing that the dangled reconciliations of a fallen relationship were merely attempts to get me to pledge additional financial support. It draws its essence from the sermon preached by St. Paul in which he spoke of seeing a statue erected "to an unknown god" by cautious polytheists who thought they might have missed someone…
I have, in time, learned that much of what I write is not to Ann or Lauri or Alisha, but to a deified, rarefied abstraction of womanhood. One that, while some have lived up to parts of, no one will live up to the all (although, if anyone wants to try, I reserve the right to be delighted to be proven wrong…)
to an unknown goddess
I will start spinning your veil, today,
even though we are probably yet unmet.
I will catch moments, like snowflakes that fall,
to remember them to you someday when we speak.
I will not offer to show you the scars
but speak only of the healing and hope.
I will prepare you a place to lay down
near the fire, near the window, in my heart.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved. wrongs to be ignored and forgiven.
I remain the romantique, the quixotic fool who firmly believes that love is possible, if not inevitable.
I’ve had moments of it. Nancy, once we had worked out out differences, but before I screwed things up. Jan, for all too short a season…largely my fault. The Panther? No. Shadows and incense. Brigit? I like to think so, maybe she can answer better than I. The Mad Gypsy? I would have said yes, once, but now am uncertain. Ann? It would be easier to forgive her trespasses if I thought not, and I am into forgiving people, not wishing that baggage. So I will consider what we had to be a ruse on her part so that, in the end, betrayal is not so much a colour of the palette she is painted in.
So, what is to be made of what is observed from a safe temporal distance? I wish I knew. Right now I am emotionally withdrawn. Capable fo touching those emotions within me, but not able to fully embrace them. There is too much pain in them, and though I have been healing at a good clip from my estrangement from some whom I have cherished, both lovers and family, I am far from yet myself.
Perhaps in this time of catharsis I will find a cure for my conditions. My willingness to allow myself to be reshaped so readily. I have seen in myself a tendency to do what I think is necessary to save a relartionship, even if I know it to be wrong. I have been asked so many times to lie for or about another’s failings, taking them on myself, that I have been accused of showing a martyr complex. Actually, I think it has been more of a chameleon’s disease.
I’ve had to live so many lies just to get through the day with past liaisons, is it any wonder that the rainbow became shuffled and confused? I sought out the Quaker faith because of their demand of truth, and found it placed me in precarous position with so many people in my life. How easily people, even some who have damned me for deception, ask me to lie for them, to cover for them, to help them maintain their facades and their deceits.
I have earned better treatment than that. Perhaps not from God, who is perfect, but certainly from the people whose asses I have hauled out of hell everytime they had the whim to do something stupid. Superman (another of my complexes?) is tired of saving the Lois of the week after she wanders into the alien hideout.
I have a friend, Thomas, who has been writing me massive letters explaining his view of my "problem with women". He believes that my problem is I see women as good, divine and wondrous creatures, superior to men and worthy of respect…when in truth they are deceitful, petty tyrants. I don’t embrace his worldview, which has undoubtably been shaped by his own discourse with women, but I understand it. If I had to base my worldview purely on the experiences I have been handed, I would have to concede much of his point.
But I don’t…and I won’t. So, to any out there who have taken the opportunity to, purposefully or inadvertently, bring me hurt or harm, or put me in the impossible situation of having to be your Wormtongue, I’m going to do two things.
1) I am going to promise to try harder to do better and
2) I am going to forgive you.
As of this moment, all past grievances are settled. Pick up your beds and walk. The other way, please. Forgiving is one thing - trusting again…not so much,
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