Knights of the 

New Middle Ages

The time is ripe for

seeing things anew.

Veils worn over visages

 and space to see through,

empty buses 

on uncrowded streets

every hour of the day,

fear scrawled like graffiti

across the face 

of a Monet.

An elderly neighbor

in need of rescue

from this bad dream

no waking will un-do.

Confined to bed in a rehab,

could he be in fact the lifeline 

to the father I never knew?

Perhaps the way to stop needing

is to become needed instead.

Unbeknownst to most,

a few floors away

someone’s doppleganger,

suffers in silence 

having contracted the plague.

Skeletal in his tub

receding beneath 

his delirium,

squirming like a fish

escaped from its aquarium.

When with holy urgency

a man-child

with Aspergers appears,

ill-equipped for metaphor

but absent of any fears,

who will never love a poem

or know what one is for,

is the last to hold 

his friend’s wet hand,

alas, forever more.

Outside my window

the Empire State building

(obelisk of our own Middle Ages)

pulsates like a broken heart

at the center of an Escher,

a lonely hoarder undone

by the vacancy of a room

ill lit by moonlight, or just

the epitome of gloom?

This Reformation has

a midnight sun

that throbs from a face

flushed of wit,

as blinkered as a red

then green neon sign

for a shuttered 

Broadway hit.

Meanwhile my cat crawls 

into the Trader Joe’s bag

on the kitchen floor

hoping to escape

more unforgiving boards

out to open sea.

I follow her

into her island cave

craving the promise

of novelty.

Its true, we’re both

at the mercy of 

the same containment,

both of us

 willing jesters

for the other’s

entertainment.

When my eyes spy

the round dining table

making a rolling

break for the woods,

determined to recant 

its tableau of words;

a signal for help,

with fresh kindling

for verbs!

It’s legs piled high and

contagious as sparks in air 

from a bon fire

made of

incendiary prayer. 

Braving my complex hallways, 

half-lit, lying

silent as a sunken ship

at the bottom

of a communal dream

I find

my neighbors have fled

further downstream.

The only sign of life 

is a dog digging its way

through a door;

man’s best friend

now a derelict wolf

preparing for a war. 

In the stairwell

I surprise the man

who collects all the cans,

negotiating the stairs

like an errant king

in fear of being poisoned,

by his way of absconding 

from his private castle

of abandoned bric-a-brac.

He meets my grateful eyes

with a misplaced alack.

I assure him he’s done well

to recycle and re-use,

we must change our ways

or it’s ourselves we will abuse.

I'm sure to wake listless

(a not entirely unpleasant

sensation)

as though

from a

version of life

I’d sooner nix;

vulnerable,

destroyed,

like an addict

with no hope

for a fix.

My cell phone dictates

a grail of constant convenience,

(as if an appliance

could save me from this

unplanned obsolescence) 

and I ask myself:

Why did it take

a plague

to show me

the error of my ways,

our lives 

of artificiality,

the triviality

of our days?

When what we

really longed for

was to remove

the armor 

from our knights,

to embrace

the other

without fear

and scale 

more inner

heights.

Peter Valentyne

April 19th 2020

One the Time of Corona