City of Legends

I walk into a dark room, announce it is dark with my usual flourish and suddenly everyone thinks I am losing it. Get real, people, I have been writing from darker spaces than this for decades. Has my happy-happy-joy-joy love-in with Candy made it so you don’t respect or expect my right to feel lonely or morose (c’mon, people, the love of my life is 8000 miles away and tending to things other than my ego once in a while, get real! Do I love that? No! Do I accept that? Yes! Did I know what I was signing up for? Yep!)

If it will make you all happy, I will write something uplifting and life-affirming, okay?

waiting for your smile

I will hold you in arms carved from the earnest stone of hearts triuphant
that I might draw you to me, for my need for you is great and the weight of the world
is more than I can bear, now that I know you are in it.
I will pick you daisies to brighten your room when you are sad,
I will learn the proper alchemy of spices for your meals
I will remember your birthday, and those of your children,
and will never lose this love, even if sometimes it is
temporarily misplaced in a dark room, waiting for your smile.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Now, please, shut up and let me be grumpy.

It occurs to me that, for a poet, I have not been really forthcoming with poetry on this blog of late (check out Amomancer for the real fur), but I feel I owe you all one.

If I have been a bit…odd…of late, chalk it up to the intensity of my life at this time. I am totally, desperately in love, and there are complications enough to make a major mini-series out of it all. The bizarre part is, I am not fundamentally troubled by this, as I believe that sparks fly upwards and that, aside from God’s love, nothing in this life is truly free. I like having to work for it, it makes me feel a little less unworthy.

So let poetry reign for a bit…

lips as sweet as morning

taste lips as sweet as morning,
blessed and confessed in my heart
as more than adequate a proof of God
and evidence of light and life
found to confound my cynicism
if you will dance with me for a night
that stretches on past morning, into forever.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

for Candy. for ever.

A new poem, that literally came up in conversation with Candy.

I will not lose my love for you

I will not lose my love for you,
in this you can believe.
I will not lose my love for you,
I promise I won’t leave.
I will not be like other men
a counterfeit, a fraud,
I take this vow without regret
before you, all and God.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

If you hustle and make it to the new site www.peacat.com before 12 midnight, Monday, March 24th, 2008 (6 pm, edt on the 24th) you can download a free eBook edition of my upcoming new book "As such…romantic poetry of rebirth". This offer is being extended in honor of Candy’s birthday on the 24th, as well as to launch both the book and the new website, which is a collaborative coming together between myself and the inestimable Candy. Thank you all, and enjoy. The hardcopy edition will be out later this week and I will be giving you distribution information on that as it becomes relevant.

I will dream of you till morning

There are dreams that make you smile. Dreams that make you weep.
There are dreams that come in moments between nights when you sleep,
touching all the shallow hallows and the questions that lay deep
far beneath the linen layers that will catch us if we leap
from the precipice of discontent to seek a better day,
from the lies we prize and subsidize with silence, on the way
to the long deserted schoolyards where our avatars did play
on the road to where we’ve lost ourselves, mislaid our earnest clay
as we sought and fought and thought we caught a moment in our hands
that slipped away in light of day, exposed as others’ bands.
We are more than we remember, taking less than life demands
if we let our dreams just dance away, across the midnight sands.
I will dream of you till morning. Then dream of you till night.
I will dream of you till mourning. Then touch you at first light.

William F. Devault. all rights reserved.

No, this may very well be the most profound thing I’ve ever written.
Thank you, Candy.

journey’s end

There will be times when the sorrows overtake me
and even seem to be of a mind to break me.
Yet time has shown me not so fragile a soul
to crack and fall at the whims of fates’ control.

I am not stone. But I am not alone, not anymore
and I can roar my defiance at the skies as I soar
on wings of glass and gossamer, woven by you
to let me touch the blithe angels you bring, anew.

Beauty I had forgotten in the shadows of despair,
the taste of gentle jasmine on your skin and in your hair.
You’re the answer to all riddles I had at length perceived
to be of Gordian strands and bands, or so I had believed.

But you are brighter than the sun and softer than the wind,
a mentor to my mysteries, confessor where I’d sinned
against the God and gods of love and life I’d sworn
to follow without doubt or fail, to seek a birthright born.

My gratitude knows no limits, my desire knows no lack,
my passion is for all you are and all you’d give me back
for the caustious, earnest footsteps that I took up to your door
at the end of my life’s questing, to know love forevermore.

William F. Devault. all rights reserved.

I will go to ground and write poetry for a time, as that is what I do.

Thank you my most beloved Candy, for all the hard work you have put in to making my blog looking positively navigable. You are a miracle worker.

To those of you who are wondering what the hell all the pictures are that are in the new banner to this blog, here’s the breakdown (left to right):

The covers of my books
101 Great Love Poems. I designed the cover of this volume, still my only book available in both softcover and hardcover editions…

Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite is one of my few books I am truly happy with, the cover was designed by myself (I even took the photo) and it features my friend Sarah Chadwick, photographed in front of the cracked glass wall at Dorsey’s Knob, just outside of Morgantown, West Virginia…

Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion features a cover photo of my second wife, Ann, taken by the marvelous Stephanie Fenter, and contains some of my better works…

from an unexpected quarter also has a cover featuring my second wife, Ann (the original cover design was too provocative and for once I gave in to the publisher). It is a very uneven volume, some great individual works, but some filler as well…

The Compleat Panther Cycles is my massive coffee-table book of the 640+ poems that comprise the panther cycles. The cover and inside artwork features alt-rock model Jillian Ann and the book itself is huge (not to scale in picture)…

The Morgantown Suite Poems has a cover photo of me by noted news and feature photographer Ron Rittenhouse. The book is a pleasant diversion back to my roots…

me in a shot I call my "California headshot". The filtering made my hair look blonde (never!), and Candy insisted I use it here…

Amomancer (nightblooming), Nemicorn, The Naked Reads and The Last Romantic Verb (clockwise from upper left) are four of my CDs. I couldn’t leave them out…

Invocato is by a substantial margin the book I am most satisfied with. Don’t bother looking at your local bookstore, I chose to, at least for now, leave this "greatest works" volume an orphan the the ISBN distribution channels, although the clever amongst you can find it at lulu.com…

PanthEon was my first book, and thank you, Lauri, for convincing me to forget my prejudice against mainstream publishing and allow you to produce it. The cover is a self-portrait of the Panther (I should have known the relationship wasn’t going to last when she charged me to use the image…)

Candy, who is not only beautiful, but clever, competent and kind beyond words.

So there you have it…

A new piece, perhaps a lyric? Perhaps…

dedicated to Jazz, wo always seems to think I’m trying to get into her bed, when what I am really trying for is far, far more ambitious.

red and black

blossoms born of heat and quest
that place this suitor to his test
that I might dare, her passions, wrest
to bear with bright vermilion

meanings borne in things unsaid
that place me in her heart and head
no beggars bag for just a bed
I crave the full cotillion

black as blood in moonlight’s glare
she looks for me, she’ll find me there,
beneath the wreath of jasmine’d hair
that sparks a dark Bacchante

the petals settle in gentle breeze
to mock and stalk and please and tease
a cure to purity’s disease:
release the beast enchante.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

how new is this? I composed it live, right now, in this post create window. If there is a power outage in the next few seconds, it will be lost, forever. This is the nature of the truth.

I’m back.

in the strangest corners of memory

I will find you in the strangest corners of memory.
The way you took your drink and the pattern
of cool drops of sweat that formed on the glass
as we spoke of nothing as foreplay to
an inevitable union, moments in the future.

The texture of the skin on your back when…
when you were warm and full of life and me.
The way your hair fell in my face when I was
too busy with other things to notice, but remembered
later, and smiled a slow and gentle memory.

The scent of jasmine filtered through the oils
of your skin as you lay beside and beneath me
asking for nothing more than everything I had
and was and would ever be and I gave it all
in joy and hope and dreams and passion undismayed.

The texture of your kisses and the questions you asked
with hands and arms and lips and legs and sounds
that were not words but spoke infinite eloquences
that stole my heart and soul and memory of promises
I had made before I saw your eyes and lost the pain of life.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

This evening, for Jaz, I dedicate my poem…

Pellinore, watching across the room

had I the will these arms to fill
I would take you to me now.
inhaling the essence of your skin
as your hair brushes my face.
no trace of doubt, no fear of falling
in a lazy death spiral of fractured heart.
where do we start.
when do we part.
and with what shall we fill the lazy hours
and the impractical nights?
soft words leading to
soft touches leading to
harder words leading to
harder touches
and the moment where
the terminator line loses focus.
duality merged in kisses urged
to their necessary conclusion.

but I have lost the will
in the killing fields of memory
where I even now
search through battered shells
for the omens of hope
left cut
into my skin
where I fell
last time.
but not for the last time.
for I have the will
to find the will
to wake the legion
and reason enough
to rise to challenge
the mocking moon
in the nights of silence.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

G’night. You’ll hear me read this piece on “The Last Romantic Verb”, en route to you, as we speak.

I failed to post the archive.org page for “Centaur”, in case you want it in a higher resolution or variant format for listening or downloading:

William F. DeVault’s Centaur at archive.org