Monday, August 12, 2024

Ukraine is a Woman

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like an infinite field of sunflowers, brighter than the sun,
memory made and recollected, unexpected reflections
that glisten as you listen to the silence, the gentle violence
of history and mystery, ages past and runes cast at last
to predict the future and redefine the past,
echoes of Shevchenko off the mountains invoked.
predestiny as a mockery of the clockwork impatience
that drips blood and tear and sweat, wet with awakenings
that break the unmourned mornings that suggest the blessed
in tested testaments and the remnants of our invocations
paid as reparations for mad dictators and faithless lovers
that are only here for the hryvnia in the barters.
souls flying in the shadows lying when there is a multitude
of angels angling for the corners in the cathedrals of thought,
taught to the daughters left to weep in the aftermath of wars
fought for grain and territory, the Kiev-Chernigov, Galician,
and Volhynian edifices torn down to break wills and kill
the innocents to prove virtues of beasts over priests.
the feminine endures, as it must, the winged victory of hope
and resilience. the virulence of lies and the smell of sacrifice
does not purify, does not deny, no matter how hard we try
to rise above the arduous denials of the yesterdays, in glory
she resists and persists against every cruelty avenged, lessons
taught to the children to make mortar for the walls of cathedrals.

William F. DeVault. 2024. all rights reserved.

Sunday, March 15, 2020
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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.

Friday, February 21, 2020
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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.

Tuesday, February 04, 2020
0 observations

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.

Friday, January 24, 2020

Thetis had a Daughter

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(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.

Friday, September 28, 2018

in the movement of light

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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

Wednesday, January 04, 2017
0 observations

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.

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    You will note, gentle reader, that all works under this blog now display "tags" to help classify and assign the works for your review and enjoyment.

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