Nocturnal 

Transmissions

I wake homesick 

for another world,

even as 
yet another world 

let itself in

via the t.v.

to taunt me,

both Trojan horse

and 

cave of shadows,

trotting out

it’s patter-song 

of brutal banalities.

I vow 

to make a pyre.

Outside, the cold 

clamors to get in

as I lie threatening

to push the bed 

up against the door

like a junked cradle 

that bringeth

no comfort.

After last night

I've become determined 

to ignore everything
that is not me

and give the memory

of you

my full attention.

But you 

fade so fast.

 How can I keep

you with me

when even my

own name is

no more than

a makeshift mask

barely concealing 

the sins

of the world

as my own, if 

only by osmosis.

I yearn to learn

the life-saving

 art of overlooking,

but out of

what troubling

necessity? 

Un-prepared to 

take on the burden

of too much 

reconciliation,

I wrest

and dis-own my own

 mercurial evidence.

I confess I

prefer my trials

under the cover 

of night 

where I can

 be blameless,

free from the bondage 

of belongings,

blissfully

unaware 

I am

the smoking gun

of my own longing.

By living a nightlife

made of

knee-jerk reactions,

a collective psyche 

is hardly a tyranny 

I can count on 

waking from.

After giving 

this morning

the ole’ college try, 

I end up crying

while doing crunches,

an un-arranged marriage

between my
weakness and strength.

No, this is how

I build the stamina

to see you again.

Had no angel

appeared last night
let alone

replete in a tattered 

wife beater

with the words 

WAKE UP

emblazoned across it’s chest,

(in white cotton

no less!),

I might never

 have known 
we were married.

By making love

with a phantom,

I’ve come to accept

my body’s weeping.

True, my mornings are

versed in mourning,
all because of our

reversed metamorphosis

by way of a dream; and

the inevitable evaporation 

of your wings.

Peter Valentyne

2020 in the year of Corona

Love in the Time of Corona

I woke up at 4:00 AM 

determined to make something. 

I got up because I had 

to give art it’s chance to heal. 

Though nothing I do is uncreative, 

it feels as though I am 

married to the world 

solely to love and be loved. 

Yet the world lies asleep in its bed. 

Or so it seems.

How do we go about our days 

sans business as usual? 

My habits feel like shadows 

without a source of light. 

And so I vow to change my ways. 

I am looking into how 

to make a flower from scratch. 

I am my own bit of earth. 

Must everything have a wretched fate? 

The artist always says no. 

I don’t want to get up, 

I want to rise.

 Am I interesting enough to be spared? 

I want to be worth living.  

I began this odyssey 

with a bout of spring cleaning...

unearthing several forgotten treasures. 

A photo of my mother 

as a pretty young girl. 

A nude self portrait in colored pencil. 

A blank unused journal.

My cat, keeps kneading the armchair 

as though desperate for milk. 

I too wish for milk from a chair. 

I’m struck by her dance 

in this strange trance state. 

What do I do like that? 

Where am I so unconscious and why? 

Familiarity breeds contempt, 

but I barely feel it. 

I want to wake up...

but in such a scary time. 

What a fine time to come to my senses! 

But I know waking will make a difference. 

Here in my home of carefully arranged junk

in hopes of becoming content and unafraid. 

My cat is my shepherd and I shall not want.

Our lives are without rules 

though full of laws, I think

this illness must mean something. 

But so far it is like a forest in a film, 

provocative even as it smells of nothing. 

The old ways no longer suffice. 

So now, every morning, 

I go in search of Easter 

to make my days worthwhile. 

Why then do I feel 

locked inside an unnatural history museum? 

I want to make a stunning new thing 

and call it “Today”. 

But first I have to reckon, 

no grapple, with the old ways as

they no longer work in the here and now. 

The usual balms have lost their salt. 

Is this room nothing more than a body 

held together by standing so still?

I want to trade in my television for a God. 

I want to go pagan in an unfurnished room 

where a potted plant

is a much needed nod to all that is wild.

I put the picture of my mother 

in a frame so she can’t desert me. 

The kitchen sink is a Walden’s pond 

I can barely make out my reflection in. 

So I start to write...

each line requiring an open heart surgery. 

My first and last hope is to recover. 

Can one get salt water from a tap? 

I must make something out of this nothing. 

A cake from homemade flour. 

I want to die by a river, not a faucet!  

I don’t want to get up...

I want to rise. 

I want an art that will 

save me with its urgency. 

And save us all as well.

Peter Valentyne

St. Patrick’s Day 2020