Composed in 2007, just months before beginning his long-distance relationship with the totem-muse Aubergine, this poem expressed the poet's shaken but standing faith in romance.
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Where have I found constant and brave hearts,
willing to believe in things greater than the mediocrities,
the hypocrisies we face and trace and place front
and center as we seek to enter a heaven of our own design?
I am yet unconvinced of the futility of love,
but the utility of a brave and constant heart
seems lost on the failed experiments, incapable
of transcending the descending days into self-mutilation.
The singer sings of hearts of gold and I am sold
on the value of such a dream, but not as paperweight
to hold down our bills of wrath and hate and grief,
replacing belief with relief that we are yet undiscovered.
Buried deep, we sleep and never wake, the faded snake
in a mythology of temptation to be blamed by the lamed
when they cannot admit their history, their complicity
in all that has turned from gold to green to brown to black.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.