City of Legends

After one of my sons (who will remain nameless) managed to mangle my headphones the other day (the sixth set to be lost to teenage son abuse in the past year) I went out and bought another.  Not much of a choice, really.  I don’t buy the high-end stuff…it breaks just about as easily as the cheap stuff and then it starts getting really expensive.

I like the new headphones, although the cats have gone into perpetual hiding.  When I can crank up Blood Sweat & Tears‘ "Redemption" so loud I start sneezing during the horn bridge between verses and can feel my ear wax liquify, I am a happy camper.  It’s like when I lived in LA the first time and would go to the club called simply "The Rock" at the corner of Topanga and Sherman Way and be legally deaf for a few days afterwards.  I like music so loud that it causes change on a cellular level and could theoretically be employed as a remote detonation system for IEDs in Afghanistan.

Wrote some more this evening.  High speed stream of consciousness stuff.  Highly romantic.  Some of it pretty erotic.  Yeah, I;ve got it bad, again.  Dig a hole and keep the shovels ready, we all know how these things end.  I have a sense of humour about the doom, but I acknowledge it.  Larry Jaffe says its because I expect more out of people than they are really capable of.  Dan McTaggart thinks I’m certifiable insane, but a noble warrior in the cause of love. 

Noble madman?  Wouldn’t be the first.  Sometimes I feel like Stephanie Hodge in her classic "Jungle Fucking" comedy routine, when, after describing an impossibly intense and perfect sexual encounter pauses and asks "Is that too much to ask?"

Ah…I recall the poet saying he would pay "twice the price of Odin for the wisdom to know the truth".  Odin gave up an eye for wisdom.  To be able to see through the bullshit of those for whom love is but a slipcover, a veil, a pretense…that would be worth never seeing light again.

 Yes, inspired by Robert Oppenheimer’s personal translation of the Bhagavad Gita on the occasion of the Trinity test of the first Atom bomb.  We do not need guns and bombs and tanks and napalm and poisons and weaponized diseases to kill.  Only lies.  When we turn Words, with a capital "W" into just "words", we diminish more than a single letter.  We diminish ourselves.  This is dedicated to my friend and brother in poetry Larry Jaffe.

I am become man, the destroyer of Words.
I will bend your thoughts to my own purposes.
I will eat the soul of your dreams.
I will barter for what I want with what you need.
I will justify myself in flags and books and fire
that bleeds into the skies of poorer peoples
and their waters and their lands, that I might prosper.
I will lie to you when there is no need to.
I will fall upon you when peace is the only way.
to resolve the conflict of ideologies and theologies.
I am become man, the destroyer of Words,
who mocks the purposes of a benign God
who takes many forms and facets to teach us
to reach us with the sanity that, in our vanity,
escapes us, rapes us of the innocence of peace.
I strike from the corners and the shadows,
proud of my conceits and deceits, my heart beats
with a black and bitter rhythm fashioned of bile and guile
that I will explain away as necessary to a higher purpose
that I lack the soul to recognize as I kill it with honed irony.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

Busy, busy day today.  Busy, busy weekend, as I took on a ton of irrelevant tasks for friends and business associates.  I am enjoying keeping busy.  It helps.  Twenty six hours and tfifteen minutes and I’ll be fine.  Really.  Old timers like Twist and Selke and Larry know me.  There comes a time when the hypergolic is essential to survival.  I don’t drink or do drugs or punch people, so I have to have my outlet.  Stand clear.  You’ve been warned.  Asbestos recommended.  Concrete bunkers advised.

I will be bringing up a podcast, the new City of Legends store and the new Radio City of Legends this weekend.  It looks like I’ll be doing my Tampa reading for the tour on or about August 23rd.  I will know more in a day or two.  Maybe I can get Larry Jaffe up on stage with me.  After all, he is 2glp (he understands).  We haven’t worked it together since ‘98.

Bear says I should take up the guitar.  I have enough trouble walking and talking at the same time.  I can see me trying to play something coherent while I am doing my poetry.  I need to focus, not diversify.  I ant that voice that cracks bones back with me.  Innes knows what I am talking about.

The schedule calls for the store, the radio and the new podcast to all be up tomorrow so I can work on the engineering for Evangelist.  Damn, this is taking me forever. 

I hate it when a song gets stuck in my head. Oh, yeah, certain songs are nice:

• Mondo Bongo by Joe Strummer
• I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston

But for the past day or so, Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley has been my constant companion. A brutal, cynical song about love, it can crush one’s soul if you listen to the lyrics (I always listen to lyrics. I’m a poet, dammit). I have spent a great deal of mental energy today, forcing the beam off track on that one…and finally my internal soundtrack skipped to Everybody Hurts by REM. Hmm. Needs work.

But I employed my Jedi Mind Tricks in full array and finally, just moments ago, it finally slipped closer to the center of the universe with Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes.

Not exactly Whitney, but we’re making progress. I’d go on meds, but Larry Jaffe would have me taken out and shot.

Well, that sucks. That means I’ll either be too tired for SNL tonight, or will need a nap…

Had nice notes from a model I’m talking to regarding using her image on the cover of "The Complete Panther Cycles". She captures the edginess and sensuality of the Panther…not just the actual Panther, who was pretty fantastic in her own right, but also the more abstract, pedestal-zone version. She seems excited by the project. Her portfolio is immense and edgy and shows a dedication to working that I hadn’t encountered much in my exposure to models.

Still mildly cranked off over the whole poetry-on-request bs from yesterday. In a talk with some friends yesterday I compared it to being a smoker…you walk into a place where smoking has not been forbidden, where you are comfortable being who you are (a poet, not a pervert) and the management says you can’t smoke there anymore. They have the right to set the rules, I have no problem with that…but you aren’t going back there, as that would mean denying yourself something that is part of you. There are many places where the mere act of creative expression is not grounds for a rap on the knuckles…regardless of what the real background is (two people I discussed the matter with suggested alternate politicalities that might be part of the whole pastiche) I would no longer feel at home.

That someone would feel more threatened by my writing poetry than a room full of drunks is baffling, but I guess the establishment in question doesn’t make money off of my poetry, they do make money selling alcohol.

I know what Larry Jaffe would say to this all…and he’d be right. But, having demonstrated my Quixotic streak, I am still going to stick around here for a while…maybe a little walking into the wind is just what I need.

Mac and I are going to do a little guerilla poetry in Fairmont later today…I could use the outlet.