City of Legends

Thank you to everyone who took part in yesterday’s Guerrilla Poetry Day…do not think I am ungrateful.  I am personally disappointed in my failure to hit all of my marks, but next time…next time.

I will be posting by midweek, some news regarding the new book, loveaddict.  I think you will find it interesting.

blister, the new CD, is going well.  We’re actually a bit ahead of schedule on that, but we’ve been down for a few days since the cats got hold of my headphones and ate them.  I have witnesses.  This is their idea of revenge for all the time I’ve been playing Joan Osborne’s "Let’s Just Get Naked" at full volume.

Have word from a few friends overseas (and a few hardy souls who stayed up late enough last night to make it into this morning) of their exploits for Guerrilla Poetry Day.  Bravo and Brava, all around.

I headed out this morning, having made some last minute changes to my itinerary and splitting it into two "waves".

Read "couplet/passion" to the order-taker at the McDonalds in Sterling, Virginia.  I think she was confused.

Did "goblins in my attic" and "My Electric Lady" in front of the American Psychological Association building in Washington, DC.  A street person yelled at me, something about Jesus.

Then, made a ride up to Embassy Row to do "Queen Protea" in front of the South African Embassy.

Later today, more madness.  Madness?  This is Poetry!

Still pulling together the itinerary for Guerrilla Poetry Day, this Sunday…have added a puckish moment.  Won’t tell where I will pop up to read, but the poem is "Goblins in My Attic".

If you can figure out where in Washington, DC, I might read that…you have a chance to catch me on the move.  By the way, I plan to be carrying a backpack full of books.  If you catch me at a read and are the first to mention this blog entry, you get the pile…over $100.00 worth of my books.

I am working on so many things this weekend…I can tell you that I am nearing the final poetry breakdown for loveaddict.

By the way, was very gratified by some site visitors earlier today.  Very gratified.

In at least a half dozen countries, and perhaps a dozen states, there will be Guerrilla Poetry attacks next Sunday, July 5, 2009.

Just call me Che.

Just wanted to tie up neatly a few rumours and such regarding my current projects (no, not the euphemism referred to my love life…although that’s funny…)

Here’s the topics and the breakdown:

loveaddict:  Still on track for August 16th, 2009.  You;ve seent he cover and read more of the poems that will be in it than you realize, most likely.  I am having fun making this the crispest, strongest book I’ve done since…no, skip that.  Done, period.  I want this book to be "Holy Shit" good.

blister:  The CD progresses in fits and spurts and sparks.  Glad to have my voice back after last year.  I think you will find several major surprises on this disc.

Guerrilla Poetry Day:  I don’t care if one or one million poets take a few minutes that day to engage in a little guerrilla poetry.  I would like to hear stories about it and see photos and video, and will give them a place of honor.  As for me, I still am doing a multi-state series on July 5th, which will include a reading of one or more protest works, including "elegy for Neda" in Washington, DC.

Just thought I would check in…I have been so amazingly busy that I have not been very regular posting of late.

I am sitting here, doing a breakdown on an RFP (Request for Proposal) for a contract bid with the Army (I will say no more) and flipping between frames of reference.  I keep getting crude and suggestive text messages from an old friend.  I tell her it’s foreplay, she tells me I wish it was.  I laugh.

I check the news.  Falsely indignant political figures and airbrushed movie starlets still get more press than the brave men and women fighting and dying overseas.  That’s something I can get indignant about.

A few more people have contacted me to get involved with Guerrilla Poetry Day (GPD).  Yay!  Hold it.

Just had to answer another crude, sexually suggestive text message.  Some people need to get a life.  Ideally their own.

When I get home in about an hour, after stopping by the local 7-11 to see if the new Rolling Stone with Adam Lambert on the cover is out (not for me, but my ex has been looking for a copy and I don’t believe in treating people as poorly as they treat you.  Some guy a while back said something about do good even to those who do evil to you.  An attitude in short supply in this world, but still something I try to embrace.)  The kid has pipes, although he needs to pick his projects better than that marginally atrocious musical of the Ten Commandments with Val Kilmer as Moses.  I want to meet the lyricist in a dark alley.

Looking at the label of my SoBe LifeWater, I have to admit I did not know there was a daily requirement for chromium.  Hmm.  Maybe I need more of that.  Can you get it from eating old cars?

Whn I get home I am going to mow the lawn with the boys.  It is getting pretty Amazonian jungle due to the massive amounts of rain we’ve been getting.  Then I will collapse and work on some new project material for the CD, the book and GPD.  I may try and call my friend Alan, whom I can never get on the phone and who never makes long distance calls himself so I haven’t actually spoken to him since…er…since December of 2007.  I kid you not.  Last time I lost touch with him I didn’t reconnect for 32 years.  I kid you not.  I actually thought he was dead.

Okay, after what seems like almost a constant 24 hours in the studio (I promised mania, didn’t I?) I am relaxing by listening to music, right now Rod Stewart’s "Every Picture Tells a Story" (Damn you, Huerta/Jazz/Nightblooming, whatever your name is…).

I can confirm two completed tracks for the CD "blister"…"The Goad" and "into the grey".  We are working on others, including a rather rambunctious gospel-flavoured throwdown, but that’s all I will say right now.  I will say no more.

Ah, you know me better than that?  True.

Unlike the rather overwrought "Evangelist" and earnest "Truth", we’re going for something with a little more sense of fun with "blister".  And I think we are achieving it.

Hey, fellow poets, don’t forget Guerrilla Poetry Day on July 5th.

Van Morrison croons "Crazy Love" into my skull as I compose these words, these thoughts and noughts.  Let’s hear it for blip.fm, I am deriving great enjoyment from them.  Plus, a lot of my videos and recordings are bouncing around on there, getting international airplay.  No complaint.

Did some writing this weekend, but it was more of an experiential weekend.  Doing things…reading, going for walks, playing with the dog, discussing ten thousand points of wonder with the boys, making plans, agonizing over my reading lists for Guerrilla Poetry Day on July 5th (don’t get me started on the itinerary).  I even got my Brazilian phone connections to work and got to spend a few precious moments Liza Lorraine, with a friend down there (yes, the same one I have been writing poetry about…do your own math).

I am a fortunate soul.  I have seen things you wouldn’t believe and done things that would confound even me.  No ego to that, merely awareness of how complex and amazing of a life this is. 

My friend, Lupi Basil, surfaced on FaceBook.  Lupi, you may recall, is/was the publisher and editor of "Emotions" magazine, which has been very kind to me in the past.  Previously one of her sons did a breakdown of one of my CDs on this very blog…I’ll have to look it up again some time, it was wonderfully detailed and analytical. 

A few misplaced friends surfaced.  Some seemed to slip further into the dispassionate ether.  The suspected bone spur in my right heel is getting worse, but I am determined to intensify my training.  Pain is a state of mind.  I have developed, I find, an aversion to doctors for anything other than emergency surgery.  My limp is becoming pronounced as the pain intensifies.  Maybe Ann was right and I will end up in a wheelchair one day.

Oh, I am now ten days free of measurable caffeine in my diet.  The first several days were painful, but having seen the health risks, the damage already done and known so many people in my life over the years who have been bent and broken by their addictions, I am determined to identify and eliminate my own.

Okay, I could use a new addiction in my life.  Something in a new woman, perhaps…just a thought.

I am sorry for those of you who come here looking for fresh kill, in that I have been sort of adrift, creatively, these last several months.  I don’t think I have run out of steam, but rather have allowed myself to get sidetracked by minutae instead of the macro sense of the internet and my responsibility to my readers.

To this end I am going to try and make a few changes to make this place more fun and conversational, starting with either changing at least the colour scheme or fulfilling my year-long dream of converting the damn think back to a Blogger blog instead of a WordPress Frankensteinian nightmare.  Why did I change?  Go back and look at why…  Nothing like having the river guide dive out of the boat in mid-stream to give one a sense of one’s own failings at having not brought a map, a compass and a fresh set of oars.  I apologize, for the umpteenth time and promise that, in the future, I will keep my own counsel better (still subject to being ignored in the presence of long legs, pouty lips and an accent, of course).

If anyone knows a sane way to convert a WordPress blog back…please throw me a lifeline.

As I write this a violent thunderstorm rages outside my office window and I can see the bands of dark clouds moving West to East across the sky near Washington, DC.  It is an impressive sight.

I need to clean things up on here, maintain a regular update schedule and get more focused on such projects as Guerrilla Poetry Day, the new book, loveaddict, and the next CD…to be entitled…hmmm…let me see…what would be a good name fo rthe next CD?  I can’t ask anyone else’s counsel, as that would be hedging on a fresh promise and I have more than my fair share of hypocrisies already.

No, don’t say anything…I am thinking here.  The new CD will be called…

blister

Don’t ask, there is a logic to it.  Just, don’t ask.

Ook!  No, not that sort of "guerrilla".  The concept comes from a discussion that I and Dan "The Man" McTaggart had a few years ago about performing poetry in spontaneous settings.  I dubbed it "guerrilla poetry", he wrote a poem about it that appears in his book "Midnight Muse in a Convenience Store" as I recall.

A few days ago I resurrected the concept…not with Dan but on Twitter, and got some nibbles from like-minded poets around the world.  So, there it is, the genesis of a start of a concept of a prototype of a dream of a whim of a thought of an idea.

But, it looks like people are looking to me to take the lead (I hate leading, I find it gets in the way of getting to criticize people).  So, here it is…

I, William F. DeVault, poet, author, pretty decent human being and blogger superior, do hereby declare July 5th as "Guerrilla Poetry Day".

The concept is simple.  On July 5th, at some point, in public (in private is a little masturbatory, don’t ya think?) you will stand up and read or recite, aloud, 1 - 3 works.  More than three might be tedious, less than one may confuse people.  You will then just sit down as if nothing just happened, or depart.  If asked, you just tell them to look into Guerrilla Poetry Day on the web, or at our official blog at http://guerrillapoetryday.blogspot.com .

We will evolve more details and structures as time passes.  I hope to be able to report on efforts by others and even set up a place for people to report on July 5th as they complete their "attacks".  The time of day of your attack is not important…but do it during that day in your timezone.