for Mary

I want to feed your hunger
or, hungers, if you please.
I want to be your albatross,
your habit, your disease.

I want to make you smile a while,
if nothing else is to gain
but the knowledge I have done so,
having bartered for your pain.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

A brief annotation. I have come to realize that, owing at least in part to my tendency to be attracted to women who are somewhat wounded or damaged, at least temporarily, and that I draw my inspiration, the energy behind my poetry engine, from the emotions they stir in me, that perhaps I am not suited to be in a relationship at all. Rather, I am a trouvare, a troubadour, truly the amomancer, just here to help people heal and be on their way to the best of my ability as I continue my triage of the human heart. My affections are honest and earnest, but I tend to stumble into situations with people who are ill-equipped to return the feelings, and that by entering such situations with both eyes open and a respect for the past (mine and theirs) and the future, and boundaries that I must define (I have, in the past, allowed the women to set the boundaries, usually a critical flaw in the relationship, considering their fragile and over-reactive states) my sanity and their often-guilty consciences would be better served. This makes sense, psychologically, as it would feed into my champion mode, my need to serve a purpose that I perceive as nobler than self, to be able to write well.

Okay, maybe not brief an annotation. But perhaps, in some ways, the closest thing to a newly perceived absolute regarding myself that I have found.