sorry for my absence, between touring and writing and editing, my attention has been pulled like taffy.

I hope you are all well.  I am continuing to tour, and will continue to tour.

be safe, be well, and I'll fill you in on my schedule later this week.

On tour last week, I read at the Monongalia Arts Center (MAC), for the first time publicly, the crown of sonnets from QUINTESSENCE known as "The Sonnets of Grace":

The Sonnets of Grace:  I

Than any spring of deep earth! Beauty sure!

You are the nature of passion and peace,

argent angel made manifest to cure

the sorrows of my brittle soul, to cease

my greytint memories and bring colour:

Fields of bright blossoms to the horizon!

Fed by the cold mineral water, pure

as a virgin’s first kiss, a kind reason

to shield the light of brisant meander

that draws our eyes from the prize of real joy

to find kindred soul to inspire wonder

and break open my heart as an envoy

of fantastic land of dreams envisioned.

I shall surrender worlds unimagined!

The Sonnets of Grace:  II

I shall surrender worlds unimagined,

to pale the Duke’s gift to his courtesan.

You are more than flesh and fantasy, sinned

and again, altar for my desire, plan

of a seduction to the royal line.

Temptress arcane and alabaster, heat

meets a sweet defeat in your fire divine.

Your flesh is as soft as angel’s kiss, sweet

and otherworldly.  Penetrative promise

and the persuasion of your innocence,

oil and water heated to precipice

with the true language of romance, defense

I tear aside the lace and silk, false skins,

abdicate my throne and atone my sins

The Sonnets of Grace:  III

Abdicate my throne and atone my sins,

ruling in façade, fallen force majeure

to make request to test the truth of skins

in contact to merge, sacred and impure,

lightning in your mouth, your lips are prophets

in the desert of all false lovers’ dreams,

the blasphemy of chalk oaths, epithets,

the shadow of panthers and curdled creams.

Ruling from the boudoir, iron scepter

and velvet throne.  Lesser immolation

to sheathe heat against the pagan specter

that makes mockery of subjugation.

I would lay aside my red cassock, sinned

to be within your grace, to be the wind.

The Sonnets of Grace:  IIII

To be within your grace, to be the wind

that passes through you, leaving trace eddies

that empower and deflower your heart, spinned

dust devils riding out the decades breeze

and cyclone, hurricane and zephyr blown

from the clouds of your beauty to summon

all manner of mischief and legend known

to future generations as some one

who inspired poetry and envy, lust

and worship of pale divinity brought

to life and placed among us to entrust

us with the secrets of the holy, taught

in emancipated flesh, feral skins,

in a desert of barren bones that pins.

The Sonnets of Grace:  V

In a desert of barren bones that pins

you to the ground.  The sound of the sorrows

of failed lovers, timid tale of the sins

of inadequate passions, tomorrows

cast away for the moment, yet unmoved

by the logic of the heart or the touch

of hands and glands that had not planned unproved

strategies, dependent on blind luck such

that even the gods laugh derisively.

You drew me here to make my sacrifice

on your pale flesh, the spill of white wine, free

of constraints that might taint the boatman’s price,

shackled by lips that kiss and hearts that pound

the bravest and the boldest to the ground.

The Sonnets of Grace:  VI

The bravest and the boldest to the ground,

bound and tormented, rebellion fomented

in the name of a goddess, an unsound

faith based on predisposed and demented

oaths of belief, grief for lost years and tears

shed red in crevices of memory.

Cinnabar sins, we are yet crippled by fears

that grind us down like harpy’s emery,

sharpening the poignant poniard that will

penetrate more than willing hips, the rush,

the crush, the flush of release, little kill

and faint awareness of endorphin push

through to paramour of the romanesque,

we are flesh and blood and the arabesque.

The Sonnets of Grace:  VII

We are flesh and blood and the arabesque.

Inconsistency, our consistent trait,

our beauty and grace conquers the grotesque

remnants of our sod-bound uprising, fate

and the sound of dripping wax as time burns.

But your soul is, itself, beautiful.

Time may mark its passage in twists and turns

that lay tracks around your eyes, terrible

demolitions of our bodies and minds,

cursing us our mortality and more.

Even stilled and cold, I would hold the binds

of ancient oaths to your flesh and heart, lore

of my mythos, passion will not unbound

in visions from Poe and Lovecraft, each sound.

The Sonnets of Grace:  VIII

In visions from Poe and Lovecraft, each sound,

darkness lingers, stingers in the green fields

where lovers would lay, only to be struck, bound

by dark forces, where hope to madness yields.

I seek a deeper prick than mere nettles,

a transient insanity of blood heated

on and in your altar of where settles

only the red blood and white wine, meted

injustice for the soft to the savage,

a passion play of hungry religion

taking communion in forms that ravage

one another, the merging division

decreed by design, heroes picaresque

echoing in chilled depths of souls, grotesque.

The Sonnets of Grace:  VIIII

Echoing in chilled depths of souls, grotesque

though our feral entanglement may seem,

it is not quanta or the picturesque

pretense of an ardent virgin’s wet dream,

filled with illusions, misapprehensions

about how it is all supposed to work

when we merge to purge solitude, tensions

uncoiled then soiled in a three-ring cirque

of your surrender and your demands, made

and unmade, the linen, immolative,

consume, itself in shame for what was said

in the ancient tongues of lovers, suasive

in both silence and in eloquence due,

with the malformations we are heir to.

The Sonnets of Grace:  X

With the malformations we are heir to

it is miracle that we comprehend

the frailest of our failings, hearts passed through

the baptism of our saddest times, defend

our cynicism with doubt and the cold

calculus of our barnacled souls, hard

as Pharaoh’s damnation, denying bold

prophecy and the word of God, long scarred

by our own illusions that we are fit

to pit wits against the fates themselves, mad

with our own pain and gaining no acquit

in insanity pleas, lost hearts that had

fair hope to re-enter the grand circuit:

affection and desire, the live wire.

The Sonnets of Grace:  XI

Affection and desire, the live wire,

funeral pyre, the spire of the temple

we throw down from, fulfilling the desire

to both give and take the waking, simple

in the equation, but the prayers are long

and complicated, speaking in the tongues

old before mortals messed it all up, song

of Solomon and Kama Sutra, rungs

of Jacob’s ladder, electrocuting

inadequate supplicants on their quest,

their pilgrimage, purging the polluting

perfume of forgotten blossoms to test

purest of scalds; skalds speak our legend, true,

that grounds us to the beauty we are due.

The Sonnets of Grace:  XII

That grounds us to the beauty we are due,

and this finds our paths a laughing torment.

between the poles and pages we wage new

dogmas:  Who we are and deserve, torment

of our inner selves and shelves of scribblings

of mad philosophies of God and love

that burn away and give to the nibblings

of the vermin that infest us, above

the marquee moments we aspire to,

demanding our due and paying our dues

in currency of colding kisses, true

to our pretensions, our hearts we will bruise

before bursting into eloquent fire,

letting slip flip platitudes of desire.

The Sonnets of Grace:  XIII

Letting slip flip platitudes of desire.

More on my lips than words, your sweet essence

drips in sated statement of rutting gyre

as you cry out to prove that my presence

meets your criteria for further feasts.

I make no command, no barter demand

of treasure for treasure, for heated beasts

do their natures and I will gladly stand

glad to enter whatever covenant

you offer me, patience is the virtue

of the lover.  Reticence resident

shall vacate to make room for me, anew.

Here is proof of my inspiration, sure.

There is truth in my eloquence, more pure.

The Sonnets of Grace:  XIIII

There is truth in my eloquence, more pure

than any tantalus flood, a spring struck

by a prophet to demonstrate the cure

of despair is hope and prayer, beyond luck

in the toss of the dice, the price of fools.

Luck is but persistence in random

models of chaos theory, dreary rules

describing a universe near awesome

as the peace of your presence, evidence

of something grander than science, the glim

of the less dim options over the fence

into infinite plains of daisies, rim

of oceans we swim to, more sweet and pure

than any spring of deep earth! Beauty sure!

The Sonnets of Grace:  Diadem

I shall surrender worlds unimagined.

Abdicate my throne and atone my sins

to be within your grace, to be the wind

in a desert of barren bones that pins

the bravest and the boldest to the ground.

We are flesh and blood and the arabesque

in visions from Poe and Lovecraft, each sound

echoing in chilled depths of souls, grotesque

with the malformations we are heir to.

Affection and desire, the live wire

that grounds us to the beauty we are due,

letting slip flip platitudes of desire.

There is truth in my eloquence, more pure

than any spring of deep earth! Beauty sure!

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

playing the hard Abelard in the game of hearts

I.

I fold, cold, cards rough to my fingers.
the bitter and brittle fear rising like vomit
in my throat, coating me in a mist of mysteries.
histories echoing with every doubt, case out.
road kill in the still morning air, food for fortune.
instinct blinking out with final thready heartbeats.

II.

at a distance puppets dance mad and sad,
our taint restrains tensions tested to wrest
incidental assumptions now made mad
as they burrow deeper to at length best
well-wrought defense, made of memories won
in games of chance with cards cut from our flesh
to bear barter for hearts in grimmest fun
mocking our marks, wagers we can refresh
from the seeming endless Tantalus purses
we hide, inside, to bide time for the tell
presumed in eyes that lie out of curses
ancient as an holy scripture, God’s spell
cast in castrations of divinity
as we take hemlock from necessity.

III.

the shadows dance because the fire does
and so do we
and our chaotic nature does not permit us
vision of all elements at once
so we play the dunce
understanding that control is an illusion

IIII.

the lion holds his wrath
because, somehow, he feels
that it is not the antelope’s fault
that it was born without claws
or jaws enough to make a worthy prey

V.

the Apollonian balance blanches at the excesses
of demons chained and near starved in old stone.
encrypted like the black words they spit
in a tongue I alone know the Rosetta stone.
hard and near permanent, illuminated
scripture to a mad God’s religion, sacrifices
proving only desperation and not worthiness.
I spit blood then split atoms, then start again,
the formula for the ritual not yet perfected.

VI.

the invitation is given.
no one accepts.
the temple is emptied
and the cycle begins again.
the religion is in the teachings.
but a God without worshippers
will slowly fade to legend.
then, into nothingness.

VII.

upon fresh stones and the attar of roses
I contemplate my cithara
then seek a new pluck of the strings
to bring perhaps a new magic
a summoning of something new
something
something less uncertain
still, in my stubbornness
refusing to surrender to doubt
in the eventual outcome
the elegance of sacrifice
the beauty of love
in a world of fragile, shattered prayers


William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

Thetis had a Daughter

(to a poet of my acquaintance)

So clever and tender Thetis had a daughter
hidden behind a man's name...
as pure and sorrowful as her mother,
smothering her sadness
beneath her studies with Erato.
Obscurant to those who see only with eyes or,
in the case of Polyphemus, eye,
yet can see the truth and sings her songs
of gossamer beauty with vigor and eloquence
enough
to wake a slumbering Amomancer
to take up his song and, having seen her
and discovered her true nature,
lady of sorrows, borrowing the bard's cards
to shelter her from the colding winds,
lifts his aged voice to thunder her praise.
The tapestries begin anew their weavings,
mysteries in the histories yet unveiled.


William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

in the movement of light

writ here, and now, and under the movement of the spirit as sure as if painted in sainted kisses on the shoulders of a paramour...

as the season of apple harvest draws to a close, there are amomancies in the air. the scent of jasmine and roses. the slightest breath against the softest hairs. the clarity of the charity of the heart, light made white then bright until radiance dances on the very edge of the event horizon of time sublime. the soundless scream of understanding and acceptance as the dance begins again, the pirouette of memory and the frail blasphemy bound and found in the religion of a kiss.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
September 28, 2018

cross of cards

a cross of cards regards

and speaks in pantomime

the colours fade unmade

by memory and time

the shadows dance askance

suspicious of your whim

indifference suspense

illusions gone to grim

there’s no dharma karma

kisses in the distance

your path of least persistence.

mango

like a mango

my heart is not a freestone 

and you will find it complicated

to feed

to fill your need

but I bleed ambrosia and magic

in ink and photons

Poitiers

there is an intimacy beyond the mere intersecting flesh.

but no one is ready for it.  steady enough we bravado our ways

through our days for the sullen nights in languages preverbal

and conveniently hardwired from the ancient brain.

you were a lousy lover, as liars always are, too far from the truth

to be able to transmit the synesthetic delight on the oversight.

the only person I lie to is myself, not wanting to have wasted

the years and faux passions like a hungry man eating dirt

when that is all he finds at the bottom of the pit he is chained in

by his own expectations and insurrections against the beauty of life.

expatriate

exile and the inclusive banishment

vanishment behind a cloud of magician’s prestidigitation

and the puff of smoke and fire

like a bullwhip made of dreams and broken glass

invocation.  coronation.  theocricide.

Tempered glass that passes for the lens of the eye of God

I do not recall in perfect clarity the taste of a woman’s lips.

the currency of seduction.  the toll into the palace of Aphrodite.

for I have lived my appropriate years in the desert where slips

the shards of self-delusion out, away and the darkness so bright we

conceal ourselves that we cannot burn away to the crust

we have folded within to guard and ward as we conceal

the resplendent truth that is evident by the ashes and dust

that coat our feet and fingertips as we crawl to the well to kneel

in confession to the love gods of forgotten religions, with my psalter.

praying they will forgive us, for that is their principle of redemption,

that everyone deserves a second chance to dance before the altar

and proclaim their faith in tongues of flame and the fool’s exemption.

love is too feeble a word for the transcendence of pyre and desire

I have seen through the eyes of stained glass and fire.

idolatry

the argent sergeant gave the order

and we followed in our line

over the cliff

for no purpose 

other than evidence of faith

ripping the stitches

don’t move too soon, too much, or you’ll tear the wound

open again

and again

sedentary goes from temporary to the way of the nosferatu

just slowly

but inexorably

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

for the right set of lips (with Cristina Otero)