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…)

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.

the dream shifts.  the dreamer persists.
and all our free will illusions
bind us to what we find resists
our fatal, natal natures, sons
and daughters of the slaughter done
in the name of life, mockery
and memory, songs to a sun
too distant and luminous.  we
speak dark matter, undetected.
we dream variations, measured
in our allegiances respected
by the hypocrisy we cured
by curving the hyperbole
and finding what we bind is free.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

I have always found myself in extremely complicated relationships.  Unfortunately, under such stresses, sometimes the psyche overheats and misshapen evolutions occur.  The crucible goes white hot and I write straight from the preconscious in spurts and bursts of flame and debris.

in the last week I have been "melting" again and the result is a massive amount of poetry.  but, alas, it is almost all "black catalog*" works, that even my editor doesn’t get to see.  some very cool stuff.  but really not for human consumption.

*black catalog - those works of mine that I feel are so "bent" or diconcerting, I would rather not have to answer for them, so they are locked away until I die. 

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.

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.

The most important first:  To my Sunday Girl, I said something the other day I shouldn’t have.  I know you are angry, and you have every right to be.  I would make amends, but what happens next will be a measure of your will and heart.  Be at peace with whatever you do.

Now to my readers.  I have been a sloppy writer of late.  Not from the writing, but from the organization and presentation, particularly here and at my other sites.  I am going to try and do better.  The whole decision to remake the City of Legends website nearly three years ago was a bad one, and I apologize for that.  I will try and clean things up around here and make things go a little better and with more frequent (and interesting) entries.

To a few people I pissed off via my single-minded focus on the Sunday Girl works.  I’m sorry, you know me, I write from the heart and I take full responsibility for my actions.  I am getting traction on my other writings and themes.  Hang on…acceleration being applied.

New book coming out in the new year "this diseased horizon".  "Apokalypsis" is still a live project, but some of the Faustian deals I have had to make for it to even be properly birthed could conceivably push it back for years.  Trust me, I am miserable, but I am bound by my word.

taking my own counsel, I have just determined that there is, at length, a vote to step out of the box I have sealed myself in over the last few months.  That doesn’t mean I am going to "break out", but it does mean my resolve has eroded.  Part of me is far more pragmatic than most of me would agree with, but I just have to deal with what I am given to work with.  Can’t build an airplane out of excrement, you know.

I can’t and won’t give details…that would hurt people whom I actually care about, but for me, I have to make survival-level decisions, and soon.  For now I have suspended poetry writing and gone internal.

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?

I was challenged by my friend Thomas to compare and contrast what is happening right now in regards to my writing to other muses, from my past.  This reminds me of a challenge a friend of mine once issued when he complained that Larry Bird was getting too much attention in the NBA.  We did a statistical breakdown on his play and found out he was the dominant player, by a major margin, at the time.

But, to mollify Thomas and put my current state of being in perspective, let’s use, as a yardstick, the following muses:  the Panther, the Leopard and Brigit.  I am selecting those as they are the benchmarks of my muses, in terms of number and quality of works, each having been involved with me over a span.

Let’s make it easy. 

Brigit was a factor in my life for approximately the same period of time that the Sunday Girl has been, so far.  During that time I wrote approximate 110 poems about her.  In a recent breakdown of my ten best works, none marked the list (sorry, love). 

The Leopard was a factor in my life for about 6-1/2 years, nearly twenty times the period of time of the Sunday Girl.  During that time I wrote approximately 150 poems about her.  Of those, one makes the all-time poems list.

The Panther was a factor on my life for a year and a half, about four times the period that the Sunday Girl has been in my life, so far.  I wrote to her approximately 800 poems.  Staggering.  In the base period, that period equivalent to my run so far with the Sunday Girl, I wrote 34 poems to the Panther.  Of the full 800, a single poem stands out in my all-time list.

The Sunday Girl.  Four months, more or less.  215 poems, as of a half hour ago.  6 of my top ten all time works come from that collection.  If I continue to create at this rate, by the time we reach the involvement duration I was with the Panther, we are talking nearly 1,000 poems, and already of a measurably higher quality and durability.

We’re not talking a distraction.  We are talking about major, profound and welcome change to the regime of the muses in my work. 

So, Thomas, does that answer your question?