Day for Night

We suffer from syndromes.

My own is all-encompassing.

It’s symptom is an artificial

boundary between

night and day:

day for night.

I live

in suspended animation;
I am

the belief in a dream,
an encrypted light in darkness.

I am a cinema.

Every night 

a triple feature.

I’m not joking.

I watch life unfold

in dream time
via dream logic

and I’m not

the only one.

My dreams have

taught me

we are all living

double lives;

both

dreamers and dreamt.
Did you know
that the first film screen
was inspired by
the surface
of the moon,
followed
(in close second)
by the proverbial
bed sheet?

Humanity is our sole art form,

whether one knows it or not.

I’m grateful I know it.

It allows a certain freedom.

To believe or not to believe.

I am a constant Hamlet

musing on not two

but one question

with twin answers.

Your life and mine

are conjoined.

I am Hitchcockian

because my mind

generates
round the clock
 suspense.

I am the thinking man’s McGuffin.

My death is dynamite

taped beneath the dinner table,

a bomb strapped to my chest.

I’m no explosives expert,

but it’s going to go off.

But who can tell me when?

To sleep

or to know you are asleep;

those are the choices.

I am grateful

I've been given this
one up on.

You can too.
Why not
do what I do?

Practice every night,

and at morning

weigh your illusions

against the stuff of dreams.

Be careful not to lose track

of which is which

or it's you

who'll be lost
in the mix.

There have been men

who lived life awake,

but they are few.

Jesus, Buddha, Edison,
the Lumiere brothers,
etc.

What I want

is a muscular life,
more than crepuscular,

a bodybuilder

of understanding,

even if what I understand

reveals my weakness.

Oh, but let me be strong.

The older I get

the less I know for certain.

Yet, my surrender is sound,

taught as it is

each night

by

rebounding starlight.

In fact, only the stars
know how this thing will end.
Spoiler alert: Castor and Pollux
aren't merely supporting players.
If anything,
they are the very subtext of night.
Only they know why
and they're not talking.

Can we ever fully know

why anyone does anything?

Any story proves that.

A single story is
nothing more than
an angular ray of light.

You never know

what’s being
left in the dark.

Not to mention

most of us 

aren't off or on script

(even when

making it up

as we go along.)

The great religions all say

we are asleep.

What would it mean to wake?

To live awake in a world

of sleepers

is my recurring nightmare.

To second guess every clock.

To love for the sake of loving

never sure of the integrity

of what you are placing 

your faith in. 

I am a cinema.

An evening’s shadowy noir.

I reflect on moon beams,

a life of countless projections 

and richocheting narratives.

I can only hope

mine might compliment your’s.

Sometimes light collides with light

bent on our 

mingling in the dust.

I dream for a living.

My strength is in surrender.

I keep my love alive

by knowing nothing

save this:

There is no film

to be found

in the camera of our consciousness,

 only a shimmering chimera.

We are holographic;

a single dream

containing

the whole world.

Peter Valentyne

April 21, 2019