painting by Neil Kaplan

Viktor

I keep my sun in the shadows

which is not the same as

hiding my light beneath a bushel.

I am content with being

in the cellar 

amongst the gnarly armed, 

malformed potatoes.

Darkness has it’s uses.

Beauty must begin somewhere.

My work is my poetry.

Though, my goal is

to make a man:

chore-loving, 

shorn of vanity,

kind for no reason,

a man

with an effortless

un-self-conscious 

demeanor.

A poem of a man.

What I couldn't 

have foreseen
was that

we would be 

forever synonymous;

twin pages

marred by words

in some 

mysterious way

for better or worse.

This is how it begins.

The world drives me

from itself

into a barren room

where I find no respite,

the morning’s 

colorless fog

assuring me

that nothing is

 more fertile than

a cloud full of rain,

but for myself

willing you to live.

Finding my state

no longer reflected in the sky,

I search for new signifiers.

Where are you in all this sunlight?

Are you where I find myself?

Or am I like you,

a rapturous fugitive,

a creature sewn together

with a spider’s thread,

the grafted visage

of my own youth's tender ideals

like the borrowed breath

of a broken heart

sworn to do no harm.

You…
forever my great truth

begun in this
blessed blasphemy.

Peter Valentyne

April 10th, 2019