Outlasting

Beauty

i

If we come to find

something wrong

with every fellow 

man we meet,

what are we

to ask ourselves?

What constitutes

disappointment

turned so 

inside-out?

It seems to me

there are

two kinds of wrong.

One endearing,

and the other 

defeating.

I’ve sifted through

myself for

which is which.

The endearing wrong

is rooted in experience,

misfortune, origin.

It is beyond

one’s control.

The defeating wrong,

I’m afraid,

is a confluence 

of ego, mind,

and

unconsciousness;

a refusal

of responsibility

for one’s own 

vibration,

an imbalance

that in breaking

the circle

consequentially 

maims the flower.

How could a daisy

love you not?

If a circle 

made of

spirit

can summon

the dead,

then

mine is a beauty

fashioned from

heartbreak.

And so I’ve begun 

to notice things

that weep,

or appear to weep.

Acacia trees letting go

of their pink petals,

the condensation 

from a steel pipe,

a sky too full

of rain.

What if

I 

no longer

need to be

loved?

Would I

finally 

be free?

With a youthful body

beyond my reach

I’m no longer 

baited

by beauty;

a standard

I can’t meet.

Happiness is

a grace

after all.

No longer

a target,

too nuanced

for arrows;

I am more 

mandala. 

Tuned,

circular,

self-sustaining,

with a sun

at it’s center.

ii

“My son had a breakdown,”

said the woman

with a bee keeper-like

sun bonnet.

She hovered over 

my deck chair

where I’d come 

with my book of poetry

so as not to appear

simply sun-seeking.

Her shadow 

superseded me

as she came closer

and added tentatively,

“But he’s better now.”

Her absence

of self assurance

unsettled me.

I immediately wanted

to know more

but contained my

curiosity,

tinged by a purple

aberrant 

half smile.

I always feel 

more than I show.

My son had a breakdown.

But he’s better now.

Her words rang in my brain

 a broken cathedral bell.

How am I better now?

I wondered.

What is this

miraculous recuperation 

one sentence away from

my own 

asymmetric harrow?

iii

I outlasted beauty.

Now

I am an abstract 

painting on the wall

in a museum 

depicting someone

who loved

another

more than himself;

once

stolen by Nazis,

recovered

and displayed

as proof

of my heart’s

progress.

Peter Valentyne

May 29th, 2019

The Crawling Eye

(A Fifties Monster)

Fear is it’s arsenal.

It wants to take your place.

It’s planet is Mercury.

It needs a history.

It does not know itself;

Save through you.

It’s country is a shadow

in the space

in which all things happen.

It arrives in a blanket

of fog to disable

your defenses. 

It has no politics

or religion,

no belief system.

It need only

feed off your memories

to amuse itself. 

It has stars in it’s eyes.

It wants you to make

wishes. 

It likes you lonely

because it is lonely.

It collects.

It obeys no logic.

It will do anything 

for you.

It wants to appear good.

It is always acting.

When it isn’t acting,

it can wait indefinitely.

If you resist,

it can be patient.

It can’t live on it’s own.

Your death gives it wings.

It wants you crippled,

anesthetized on a table.

Reacting won’t give it

what it needs.

It wants response.

This is how it measures you.

You must do more

than connect it’s dots;

it will produce your enemies

to better understand you.

It is insidious.

It lives by lulling

so it can study you,

where you are vulnerable,

it becomes vulnerable too.

But it is not vulnerable.

It likes to cry

and craves your tears.

It is extremely sentimental.

It sings when it is hurt;

a song of celebration 

and mourning.

It wants to know more,

yet there is no end

to it’s knowing.

It wants to know 

what you know.

It hates itself. 

Otherwise,

it would not need you.

It likes to comfort you

but it cannot comfort.

It’s comforting is all for show.

It wants you to need it.

It will do anything for you;

even die beside you.

You cannot get away from it

even by killing yourself.

It will go with you.

It feeds on your fear.

Fear draws it to you.

It cannot love itself.

It loves to trade 

it’s talents

gladly for yours.

It admires 

what you can do.

It wants your story.

It is endlessly curious

and all-seeing.

It wants in for a look around.

Once in

it goes through your things.

Nothing is missed.

But it leaves droppings.

That’s how you know.

It wants you to want.

It’s outlook is pessimistic.

It shows you darkness

but pretends to bring light;

two darks don’t make a light.

It finds out your sins

one by one;

this is how it eats.

It is never without hunger.

It loves everything you do.

It wants to do them with you

for twice the fun.

But make no mistake:

It gives only to take.

It has no transcendence.

It knows only wanting

and it’s emptiness 

must be filled.

It has tried to meditate

but it gets nothing.

And nothing won’t do.

If you are lonely

you may not resist.

If you have fortitude,

It will try and break in.

It doesn’t lose interest,

easily entertaining itself

while it waits.

Through your resistance

it knows you.

Resistance makes a muscle.

Resistance draws it down.

Your muscle is it’s food.

Save yourself.

Peter Valentyne

May 25th, 2019

Psychology of 

an Aching Body

Your mind ought be 

an over-thrown dictatorship 

if you’re to be 

any good

to anyone.

Your heart must plot 

to re-establish

a more tender 

sovereignty. 

Your face wants 

a life of it’s own,

let’s face it.

Given to coercing 

the hands

to do a more

purposeful bidding, 

as hands can do 

everything

save live a life 

of their own.

Your face flies 

it’s tattered flag

declaring your 

countries intentions;

it’s betrayal of truth,

a hapless art.

Your legs craving travel

remain pale slaves

to the feet which

favor the lesser

gravities

of water,

as if reduced

to doves stunned

out of flight.

All the while

the mouth rehearses

its memories

of a kiss,

wanting yet another

chance to go slower;

the starving slug

of it’s own

nocturnal kingdom.

Addicted to confession

and connecting, 

the most loving

mouth leaves

a sticky trail 

of longing.

Your heart, a sacred cow

buried in an open field,

a carcass destined to

feed the hungry;

it’s brokenness 

gives all who

approach it

strength.

Your nose lives 

by remembering

the essence of daisies

and dung.

The great categorizer,

the nostrils operate

with aloof efficiency,

uncategorically aware 

that smells

are life itself.

The penis, reduced

to living 

under wraps,

generating it’s own

mythic mystique

like a Garbo 

continuously lured

from retirement,

cherished by 

so many for it’s 

way with weeping.

Your hair, if any;

an evidence 

of life after death,

dust from the scalp,

holographic by nature

resembling

a stretch of sand

certain angels 

have tread

in hopes of being

followed

home.

Peter Valentyne

May 26th, 2019

Everything Was Beautiful

Let me start by saying

my breakdown included swans.

Arched white cobras on a January lake

where I spent a week with Father Knowles,

acting landlord of my anguish 

within the white walls of his rustic cottage

where I wept every afternoon to Mahler

staring out at water refusing to freeze

at the height of my inner spring

as my heart bloomed so violently

it broke the vase of my body,

registering love as a fissure

that then and always after would

equate tenderness with sorrow. 

At seventeen I was both lovesick boy

and ailing white orchid on a sill.

I remember everyday

the ache in my heart felt

like a sore throat in my chest.

So full of gratitude and love was I

that the vessel of my adopted body

sprouted it’s first hairs and became

an unreliable narrator; an acned protagonist 

of a past I would return to again and again

in middle age to mine its quarry

of lost gold and youth and beauty

blighted by my own unworthiness.

That year I swore I’d become a monk

as my heart had been made spiritual

in God’s furnace of emotional agony.

Sadness became my go to emotion

angling to feel loss before loss felt me,

to taste the same grief even when

I had found future happiness.

Was it Mahler who taught me 

that sadness was beauty

and those seven days spent

tracing another boy’s name 

in the white snow

with no way to find my way back

to or from him?

So ill with first love,

and never to be the same again

after challenging the vows

of the pederastic priest;

huckster of empathy 

vs 

a love that would last

as long as I lived.

Peter Valentyne

May 13th, 2019

Grown Men Asleep

in Broad Daylight

At night, sleep does 

my living for me;

a form of surrender 

that takes no strength.

But I’m restless

and long to be more 

than merely alive.

Sleep is a shadow

advertising itself everywhere.

Faux faces made of airwaves

beckon and lull 

all while

night seeps into day.

Take the conductor on the Q line

who fell asleep at the switch

derailing the 3 train cars

and injuring dozens

including a Chicano nun and 3

small children on their way

to Coney Island.

The papers said the conductor 

had 3 times the recommended dosage

of NyQuil in his system.

Or did something inside him

just want to jump the tracks?

Asleep in our chronic patterns

like constellated stars

too tired to twinkle,

only in the morning

are we certain of our actuality,

as the juxtaposition of lying

horizontally on a bed

is so fresh in the memory

in comparison 

to what it ought to mean 

to be vertical.

I stop in my tracks. 

Am I that anonymous student 

I saw in college coming home 

from the cinema

who in a somnambulist state

was found standing in the Quad

asleep on his feet?

As a full grown man,

being awake is a daily struggle;

consciousness,

my last curriculum.

Exhaustion is everywhere,

a smoggy human freeway.

Detached from our vehicles

(which now drive themselves)

we need only look for signs,

though I feel culpable 

for recognizing this

and useless to affect a remedy.

So I have to ask myself:

What if I can’t see my own 

unconscious manifestations?

Like not being able to smell

my own bad breath.

Don’t let me be blind

to my own wretchedness.

I beg the mirror

to give back my life.

A glass of wine 

each night 

becalms my nerves,

quenching my desire

to be one 

with the moment,

even if I have 

to trick myself

into believing 

there’s nothing 

at stake.

I’m old enough not to care 

about stepping away 

from my ambitions.

I don’t want to be

driven.

I want being

to be enough.

And so

I live

in the fervor of a

blind man’s prayer.

I ask you.

What will happen

if we find 

ourselves disgusted 

by the whole 

human race?

What if our brother

really was our business

all along,

and transcendence 

the only sign

of having lived 

a good life?

Peter Valentyne

May 12th, 2019

From "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"