William F. DeVault, often called the “Romantic Poet of the Internet,” is known for his passionate, lyrical, and deeply emotional poetry. His works explore love, desire, intimacy, and the complexities of human relationships with striking honesty and intensity. Blending classic romantic traditions with modern sensibilities, DeVault’s voice is both bold and tender, often weaving sensuality with spirituality. His poems frequently celebrate the beauty of longing, the ache of forbidden attraction, and the transformative power of passion. Through vivid imagery and musical language, he creates a timeless body of work that resonates with readers seeking love’s fire and vulnerability.
Hephaestus to Aphrodite
You are beautiful.
I, deformed.
A god, no doubt, but not one
that they burn fragrant oils
to gather the favour of.
I am unworthy of you,
unworthy of your love.
It burns within me, this passion,
and yet it burns before me
that for all bonds and bindings
you will never really love me.
Just the idea of me.
The lame god, in the forge of souls,
hammering shape to metals
I have drawn out of lifeless stone.
You are beautiful.
I, deformed.
Cyrano suffered thus, and ultimately
it cost him the woman he loved,
who would have loved him back,
I suspect (ask Apollo, he would know).
But he was man and she, woman,
we burn at a higher degree,
our passions set fire to the skies
and people run and scream and dream
that their hearts could survive such heat.
But they are not that sturdy.
You seek balance in my malformations.
You laugh and smile and feign passions
beyond the novelty of my hideous countenance.
You are beautiful.
I, deformed.
For all your beautiful words and soft touches,
I know what and who I am. I know the smell
of burning sulphur under my nails and know
that my kisses are that of a brute, a thing.
Not a god, which is what you deserve.
I am twisted and I know my place.
Those things which I craft, that is what is sought
by those who follow the twisting labyrinth
into the hot bowels of the Earth to find me.
Lovely ornaments of silver and alloys I alone
can make and master, for I am Hephaestus.
But that does not make me beautiful.
That does not make me worthy of a goddess.
(from Selected Poems and Passions: 1972 – 2011)
Resurrect
laying down a beating where I’d been eating crow.
the blows are soft flesh on shattered sapphire.
too many business cards from timid MFAs,
mediocrities polluting Apollonian streams of consciousness.
I am sorry that your husband died.
I acknowledge that you loved him,
and he, you, and I am grateful you found joy
to your own side of the Pillars of Heracles.
the fates did not hate us
but allowed us to stumble in blind bindings
until we crumbled under the weight of our best pretensions.
cornbread corners to the hollow plates of desire.
I was unaware of the demon I found and bound
only with your persistent assistance. born of dragons
and chained in cinnabar and pitchblende. pitchfork tongue
and the dung of desecration, left in the garden.
he calls for you from within his cell, where I starve him
with distractions and abstractions while awaiting the resurrection
in a reinvented
winter that comes for us all
calling us liars as the fires fade
and we are paid up beyond the end of the stay
we had envisioned when we bought the condoms.
the halls and walls are as I envisioned them
described in the romantique’s whispers
using words unheard in the most ancient places
where the Greek girl said I would find redemption.
she was wrong, but drunk at the time,
and I do not lay with the mysteries of Dionysius.
fire fire fire inspire desire conspire with the smaller mind
blinded by a scent of honeysuckle and night blooming jasmine.
reeling at the feeling of a greater death, of self, beyond logic
and the toxic remembrances that are mangled and tangled.
I gave up science and the truth of numbers
when I found that I would be always bound
by lesser minds, finding no freedom to discover
to uncover the essence of this transient life.
(from Tachyon)
Forty-nine degrees in LA
Four twenty five in the morning.
Santa Monica boulevard
looks like the rapture hit last night
and all the painted saints went to heaven.
The pavement wet and dark
like the scar tissue of my soul
that you don't seem to really mind.
You should be here. You belong here
with the fading Gypsies and seven foot trannies.
Construction blocks my ramp to the 405
but I can always count on Lincoln
to snake me south to the airport
my rental car silent with radio off
because the music of my city is all I need to hear.
You should be here. You belong here
with the Promenade cellist and the vampire boys
who walk Ventura, never knowing I can see them.
I am their king, scouting a return from exile.
Forty nine degrees in LA.
Boiling point for transfiguration.
Got to get the alchemists lined up.
Got to get the alchemists lined up.
I'm coming home, even if alone.
I'm coming home.
(from Kintsugi)
Amazon I: The measure of epic legerdemain
The measure of epic legerdemain.
Mesmeric and the heretic just smiles
at the thought of ascending the domain
of the senses until, hours and miles
behind us, we are insensate, content
and wondering where the time and world went
when we were focused on thoughts more urgent
(if thought was what you could call firmament
falling away in glissando sighs and
prehensile touch of tongue and fingertips
when the sheets no longer provide, for hand,
opportunity to hold on as slips
the vines of war and love and your flytrap
from toe to hip to let slip and to wrap.)
(from liaison)
William F. DeVault has been crowned the Romantic Poet of the Internet, as well as the US National Beat Poet Emeritus, and most recently named New Generation Beat Poet Laureate, a lifetime appointment. Author of a catalog numbering in the tens of thousands of poems, and having published, to date more than 20 chapbooks and more than a dozen full-length volumes of his poems, he has read his works from Boston to New Orleans, and from New York to Los Angeles. DeVault considers poetry his religion, the means through which he connects with the universe and speaks truth, as expressed in his 2024 book Qoheleth. His poetry often reflects a profound spirituality as well a an intense romantic, even erotic, side. The father of three grown children, he also serves as CEO for Venetian Spider Press.
