City of Legends

In these last few weeks, visiting old haunts in Los Angeles and Central California, meeting with old friends and finding who amongst my new friends is more than a shadow…and, of course, falling in love, all these things have given me some perspective.

One of the key poems I got some angle on was my 1997 work "from out of the city", long considered something of a curiosity for its seeming precognizant statement regarding 9/11. A claim I have long dismissed and will drive a wooden stake the heart of now. I actually see with clearer eyes how intimate this work is to my life.

What follows is the poem, annotated (italics):

from out of the city

From out of the city came words. Small words.
("the city" is "the city of legends", my website…or perhaps even the entirety of my works. the "small words" are simplistic statements.)
Words like lead pellets, ringing on armour, stinging on flesh
and carrying a message of rage and honor defended.
(despite being "small words", they carry great power, due to their earnestness, and speak of rage and honor defended, when I stood up for love in following through on my oath to the panther.)

The prophet spoke in broken syntax, the facts spoke
for themselves in time and he was carried to the city square
to be stoned to death, in accordance with the law.
(My words were heavily stylized, and broken into hundreds of poems and poetic fragments. I was verbally assaulted and insulted for my actions by those who saw the impropriety of the situation as more important than my heart.)

Morning slid over the horizon as if on rails invisible,
and split the night like Trinity. Infinity seemed possible
except for the silence of the waking world, one eye open.
(When I realized that my lover had deserted me after I had walked away from my life, it was only a single moment of clarity the next morning that saved me from self-destruction, sort of a reverse "Nosferatu’s Dream".)

Mourn the night and rise. Rise to your feet and climb
the hill you always said you’d climb before the end of all things.
For it is upon you, even in the optimism of dawn.
(This is an exhortation to my conscious mind from my preconscious, to accept the loss and move forward, being aware of my losses even though I will, by my nature, seek the best of what has passed.)

Mourn the night and rise. Rise to your vision, rise!
The afterlife is not waiting for you, but you for it,
and the madness of martyrs may call it too soon.
(I continue the exhortation, and warn myself that even the actions of others or random events could end the path before my work is done.)

Mourn the night and rise. Spread your bastard wings
and catch the feral winds that come on the sun’s fire
to sweep away the night into small shadow piles in corners.
(Guess who? "The dragon" is back, a representation in my works for my superego. The past is consumed by light and heat and it is time to rise to the truth and get on my way.)

From out of the city came words. Final words.
Words like Eden. Gethsemane. Golgotha. And then.
And then. And then, the silence. The violence of indifference.
(The greatest danger, when pained, is to stop caring. Do not stop caring, I was warning myself. Do not die. Do not allow my words of the time to be "final words", as that silence would be a violence to the world.)

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Takes on a different flavour now, hm? I think so. It just took my all these years to realize I knew the answers, I knew the game and I was ready to continue, even then. The epiphanies of the last few weeks have been amazing, I feel like a child taking Catechism, learning mysteries never before considered. I am moving up a magnitude in the understanding of my own works.

I’ve got to buckle down and get some traction on my various book and CD projects this weekend…too much going on, and I have allowed myself to be distracted.

I am on the verge of a major announcement, one that will impact just about every corner of my life, including my writing and my web presence. It is funny that in order to achieve this I have had to walk through some of the places I have had to walk through, but I never said I didn’t have to learn some things the hard way.

No, I am not giving away cityoflegends.com to a real estate development, nor am I seceding from the United States, to create a government of, for and by the poets. I am not marrying at this time, nor am I acknowledging a child previous conceived out of wedlock (I pretty much know who my kids are and its all public). I am not reconciling with either ex-wife, signing a multi-zillion dollar deal to write supermarket-shelf soft-core porn, or starring in a big-budget remake of "Purple Rain" with an all-white cast.

I do not, to my knowledge, have a fatal disease other than being human (which has 100% mortality). I have not spoken with extra-terrestrials, discovered a cure for leprosy or decided to back Newt Gingrich for President (this would invoke the Nosferatu’s Dream).

Be patient.

The other day I was speaking to my autistic son, Dante, and asked him if he was happy. He paused, unfocused for a second, then snapped back and told me that he was. He smiled.

Just be patient. Love to all. Act Three, the curtain is about to rise.

I’m working on a new piece for release tomorrow, as well as a new podcast. Keep your eyes and ears open, the spirit is upon me.

Thanks again to everyone who was so patient when I was distracted. Special thanks to K and R, who helped me keep things sane. Your payment is in the mail.

I had a dream the other night, a sort of sequel to The Nosferatu’s Dream. As I recall, I once again faced that malevolence, and I heard a mocking voice inside my head say "You don’t know when to quit, do you?" and I replied, somewhat under my own breath,

"Yes. Once you accept the fact that I’ve won."

I’ve had some reverses in this life, made some bad choices, listened to the wrong voices and accepted people into my sphere I would’ve been better served calling the cops the first time they knocked on my door. But, on the whole, it has been and remains a good life. One of purpose, of love, of hope. One day I will die, but not by my own hand. One day I will stop loving, but that will be when the worms eat the very flesh from my bones and I am not of this life anymore, and I will be part of a different sphere, a different love.

That I have chosen, wisely or not, to lose my heart is a marvel to me, on the intellectual side of it all. It is an invitation to lies, betrayal, disillusionment and loss.

But it is also an evocation of hope, of truth, of faith and of completion of a them my life exists to demonstrate. I love my children, I love my friends and family, and I am quite capable of loving again a woman willing to step into my sphere when she feels the willingness to join me. This is not defeat. This is a victory. That I can believe in someone who is not yet ready to believe in themselves is a beautiful thing, for I am seeing them with eyes a bit wider and wiser than they have allowed themselves.

I hate dealing with press releases about my work or my books and CDs. My reasons are manifold. Including one related to that last sentence.

1) I hate being involved in my own promotion. The "champion" in me can only really engage all the gears if I am doing what I am doing for someone else (see "Muse"). Thus I have to struggle to not feel guilty.

2) Press releases invariably have to be ineloquent. Thus, words like "manifold", "ineloquent" and even "thus" are stripped from my considerable vocabulary.

3) I can’t read editors’ and publishers’ minds. If I am writing a poem to woo a woman and I see a change in her expression on a key concept, expression or word, I can adapt. I get little feedback from editors. The last press release that was put out under my approval, the local newspaper ran sections of it verbatim under the "People You Know" column, along with news of someone getting a new title at a local fast food restaurant. Hey, at least they used it, and in a timely fashion. I have seen them print press releases, verbatim, for events at the local Barnes and Noble a week after the event they were to be advertising..

4) Once it is out there, it is beyond your control. That is actually a good argument for paid advertising, for marketing. At least there you control the message when you are paying for dinner. Think of it like hiring a hooker, you can be pretty sure if you pay the money you have a sure thing on your hands.

5) Given the choice between being the pimp and being the prostitute, I’d rather kill myself, as I am too much the romantic to survive, emotionally, being the latter, and being the former would invoke my self-destruction clause under the Nosferatu’s Dream. I hate feeling like I am pimping myself every time I give a quote or an interview. Why can’t reporters do their own legwork and actually read a poem or two? Recent studies have shown that many of the quotes in movie advertisements were actually written by the movie studios, then given to the magazines and newspapers, who in a lazy effort to save time and reporter salaries, just reprint the studio fluff.

6) Press releases rarely get you laid. Let’s be honest and earnest. I like stuff that gets women riled up in a good way.

7) There are people much better than me at editing a press release. I’m secure in my poet. I know Larry Jaffe wasn’t kidding when he called me "the greatest living poet" a few years ago. I have the quotes. As a poet, I’m a "master", a "living legend", the "catalyst poet of the digital renaissance" and "the god of sex" (oops, that last one wasn’t about my poetry). As a press release editor I am some guy who doesn’t want to be bothered by it all, but too cheap and controlling to farm it all out and sit back and let others run with it.

I am staring at the first draft of the press release about the book and CD release party on the 14th of this month, knowing it needs to go out to the Daily Athenaeum, The Dominion Post, the Times-West Virginian, Graffiti and the local radio stations (who won’t read it anyway). And I am loathing seeing the final draft, loathing waiting to see if it appears in any of the local outlets, loathing the time I am spending writing about how much I loathe spending time thinking about how I loathe being involved with the publicity process.

I think I have issues with self-promotion. Which, if you are going to have issues with something, beats the living hell out of most aversions.

A recent note from someone let me know that there had been, once again, an identity issue surrounding me.

Let me clarify who I am (best Christopher Lambert impression, from "Highlander"):

I am William Francis DeVault. I am a poet. I have many sobriquets, but since I gave up on pseudonyms in the 1970’s, just one name. My monogram is "WFDV" and my family motto translates to "Humble only before God".

I am regarded by many as the "Romantic Poet of the Internet", a title originally given to me by Yahoo, in the mid-1990’s. Some consider me one of the fathers of the "Digital Renaissance". I have even been regarded as a possible reincarnation of a Holy Man, a notion I disregard and reject. I am me.

I have written thousands of poems, published several books, been in many publications, toured and presented my works from coast to coast in the United States, and known the love of some truly remarkable friends and lovers along this strange road.

I currently hang my ponytail in Morgantown, West Virginia, where I work as a trainer and coach for TeleTech and also moonlight as a teacher with Monongalia County’s Technical Education Center.

I used to write a comedy column for AOL’s Writers Club and used to write film reviews for AOL’s Roadside, USA hub. My favourite movie, all time, remains Bob Fosse’s "All That Jazz".

I am also called "The Amomancer", as one who "casts spells with words of love". It comes from the word "Amote", which I coined as both a contraction of the Latin for "I love you" and as meaning "To speak of love".

I have three wonderful children, all by my first wife: Perelandra (Peri), Elric and Dante. I have married and divorced, twice.

I host the podcast show "From Out of the City".

I graduated from Morgantown High School, in Morgantown, West Virginia, in 1973…a school that has never invited me to speak before even a single English class. I briefly enrolled at West Virginia University. I suppose attending classes would have helped, but I was off, in my own sphere, writing all the time.

I’ve survived gangrene and pneumonia, both in my younger days. At one of my last physicals, the doctor told me it would take kryptonite to kill me, but that I’d look better if I lost some weight. I have dropped almost 50 pounds since then.

Thanks in part to my relationships with psychologists and psychology students, I have taken just about every psychological test there is, and I know the results. Neurotic, bright and mercurial. I achieve emotional satisfaction from gratification of my very strong sex drive. In the absence of sex, I eat. I am conquering this as we speak, and to that I attribute this incredible run of productivity over the last three years. I have learned to sublimate to editing and writing and recording and painting and engineering and composing.

I am shy with women, my poetry being where the romantic can express himself.

But I am not psychotic and not pathological. Most lies I have told in this life (a bad habit for any cause) were told at the behest of others to cover their sins, not my own. I know my demons, I converse with them, and I keep them under an iron fist, but I keep them. I have sworn to fulfill the "Nosferatu’s Dream"…that if I ever see myself turn evil, I will destroy myself. I don’t hide from those who seek me, I don’t charge for good acts, I believe that any person who gets rich off of spiritually by making others pay to find their paths is a charlatan and a fraud. All truths are to be freely given, as is all love. Love = truth.

My favourite person is my father.

Perhaps the most famour quotations from me are: "A quote is just a tattoo on the tongue" and "The existence of a single atheist does not disprove the existence of God".

I am overly generous, sometimes taken advantage of for that. I have been an ennabler. I do recall the middle name of every woman I have ever been with. I am a natural flirt, something my daughter pointed out to me years ago, and I like bright, articulate, beautiful women. Despite my failings in my first marriage and some rather aggressive temptations, I did not cheat in my second marriage. I still haven’t taken a lover since then.

I was once given a tryout at Marvel Comics at the behest of Stan Lee. I didn’t make it.

I hosted the Mississippi Gathering of Poets in Bay St. Louis, three years ago. I headlined with the Southern Poets Reading Tour, twice, in 1997. I am featured in the Appalachian Education Initiative’s "Art & Soul" volume, celebrating arts education by honoring 50 "outstanding creative artists" from West Virginia. I was a featured in the Edinburgh International Internet Festival of the Arts. I have read in schools, churches, bars, coffee houses clubs and colleges across the United States.

I hosted the Writers Club Party at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City in September of 1995.

I have lived in South Carolina, Alaska, Washington, Colorado, Michigan, West Virginia, North Dakota, California, Maryland, Mississippi and Virginia. I have been homeless.

I have a tattoo. It is of a lion, on my right shoulder, mtching the lioness on my second ex-wife’s shoulder, as she requested. Duh.

I used to teach "Youth Alternatives to Violence" for Monterey County Probation in California and was the county coordinator for Monterey County for the California Friday Night LIve Partnership’s FNL program for young people. I was the Alcohol and Drug Resource Specialist for Harden Middle School in Salinas, California.

I have never eaten a live hamster. I love chicken livers. I do not like broccoli.

That is a picture, from 1974, of me on the cover of my book "The Morgantown Suite Poems". Those are pictures of my second wife on the cover of "from an unexpected corner" and "Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion".

A mystic once predicted that I would die a violent death. If so, I hope it is for a purpose and not just as a random target of random violence. I do not attend funerals, as I find them barbaric. Celebrate life, not death. Jesus said "Let the dead bury the dead".

I designed the cover of Daniel S. McTaggart’s book "Midnight Muse in a Convenience Store". I sometimes, in my spare time, edit books and design covers for other authors.

I don’t drink or do drugs, never have, never will. I believe sleeping with a person under the influence is rape.

I have made, in the past, a healthy salary as a manager of software development teams, a proposal writer and manager, and as a consultancy director.

I am an ordained minister. I have been admitted into both the Southern Baptist church and the Episcopal Church, but I count myself a Quaker (Society of Friends).

I prefer Macs to Windows platforms. My drink of choice is Diet Dr. Pepper, which is unfortunate as I do believe Splenda to be a much safer choice for artificial sweetener. I tend to wear black because it simplifies my life, I have bad taste in colour coordination. I love jasmine tea, as to me it tastes like a woman.

And, until proven otherwise, I am immortal.

At least spiritually and literally. Check in with me in 500 years to see how the physical side goes.