Dissolution

I align myself with the morning,

where everything is possible.

My dissolution always arrives

at night where nakedness 

assumes another meaning.

For the most part, nights

are for suffering indignations.

Stripped of my philosophy, 

equations and ephemera,

I am always prodigal.

I think of dreams

as photographic negatives;

what transpires arrives 

always after the fact,

 pushed out by the antibody

of my inner light.

Messages arrive via acquiescence

so that impressions

are merely remnants

felt through loss. 

Perhaps that’s why

afterwards, I am

pure amnesia.

I have lost touch with my misery.

Not because I’ve been spared,

not because my suffering 

has bred resilience,

but because during the day

I maintain an imaginary center

that holds both worlds 

in the same space. 

My foolishness has it’s own integrity.

For most, sticking to their story

is all they know how to do,

as if identity were a defiantly creative act

in service of a fallacious sense of certainty.

For me, I develop prints.

Consider the saddest person imaginable;

everything they love beyond their reach.

I assure you

there is still the possibility

for utter happiness.

Something beautiful happens when you die;

all your fears take leave, lift. 

Burdens dissolve, 

and it becomes possible

to discover every judgement 

you ever made

was borne from misunderstanding.

The very life you fashioned;

a sin of un-individuated vanity.

What right had we

to compare ourselves to each other?

And so for me,

things fall apart at night

so that I can be whole.

All is lost, yet you have agency.

You’ve woken.

Now how will you live?

Peter Valentyne

September 6th, 2019