Radiant Tigers

If you've not yet listened to the arc called "Beasts of Legend" on the poet's "The Last Romantic Verb" CD, there's a miraculous moment about midway through the thirteen minute composition where the music builds, transforms, gives way to a single, throbbing drum...then returns with a vengeance to back these words, inspired by a comment that George Gordon, Lord Byron, made, regarding first draft poetry (which both he and William F. DeVault fiercely practiced) but packed to bursting with references to his own life, the good and the bad of it.

RadiantTigers

welcome to the land of radiant tigers.
bright eyes like coherent beaming ruby rods
fiercely piercing the fearjungle of life.
pouncing like Lord Byron on a first draft.

poets glide on the slip and slide emotions
whetted and wet with the potions of passion.
sweetmeats met in a feast of least persistence,
an insistence on the order of a random universe.

roadwork with the soda jerk mixology of words
that effervesce with a laugh in the daft draught
of expressions caught caterwauling to glance
off the silvered glass mirrors of albedo'd radiance.

welcome to the land of radiant tigers.
citrus stripes on cocoa black, warm as memory.
cold as calculations in an impatient ledger,
counting found funds, lost time, and three deep breaths.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.