The Purification

For a long time
I was afraid

to be without desires.

After all, who would I be?

Who would I be

without my exquisite taste,

my opinions for and against?

A dying butterfly

drying in the sun;

Un-pin me

or turn up the flame.

In the end

I will be purified

by a new joy

hidden all along
within
a familiar grief.

Peter Valentyne

June 2010

My Sheikh is the Moon

“Don’t look for water, be thirsty.”

                        ~Rumi

 

One look into my eyes and he knew

I live on the furthest shores of love.

 

In my last three dreams

I dreamt of water.

A rogue wave washed over

our little house on the beach.

Rain filled me up like an empty cup.

Dead fish came to life.

I bowed so low, another lover’s

tears made their way to me.

 

Every day

he sees I am

growing more simple.

Soon I will be

no more than

a beautiful idiot

panting in the sun;

Being is the only beauty.

 

But for now

I lie awake

trying to unite

the mysteries of night

with the mathematics of day.

This shore,

like every shore,

is a path littered with

bric-a-brac from a conflicted sea

giving and taking successively.

 

Night is the water I swim in.

By day…. I float face up

while everyone else

appears to live

the other way round.

 

My sheikh is the moon.

He prickles my skin

with stray starlight;

a resolute rain.

He watches over me

for I am the water

his face reflects in.

We are that intimate.

 

Peter Valentyne

January 2011

 

A Cinema for

Desperate Times

I need a cinema

that brings

me to my senses.

Because it has

that power.

A cinema

that wakes me

inside itself

and reminds me

I am so much more

than I thought I was.

A cinema

that aligns my feelings

with the miracle of

the least significant

moment.

A cinema

that lets me go in

and come out…

a wide-eyed boy 

in love

with life’s pleasures

as well

as its hardships.

We need a cinema

that lets us

borrow a beautiful

face only to realize

we have our own.

A cinema

that returns me

to the world

with my love of life

and its possibilities

restored.

A cinema

that reminds us

that our suffering

is for recalibrating

our consciousness

in order to

make us whole.

I need a cinema

that atunes me

with that which is finer

because it has

merged me 

with its light.

A cinema

that causes us

to more fully accept

what we may

have once feared.

A cinema

that shows me that

if I persist in my folly

I will eventually

become wise.

A cinema

which allows us

to embrace

our own narrative

even as we know

we can step out

from under its

construction

to experience another.

We need now

more than ever

a cinema

which creates

compassion

for the other.

A cinema

for desperate times.

Peter Valentyne

January 2017

How to Clean

This is my work:

making love visible.

If released into a

ravenous beast’s

littered lair

I would rest

it’s wound

in my lap.

That takes 

experience.

If I could devise

my own desire, it would be 

to exist without coveting.

It takes

muscularity of both 

mind and body

to polish

such 

sentimental bones.

I am a caretaker

for the un-cared for.

Making order

out of chaos

is how my heart

expresses 

it’s intelligence.

Others collect artifacts

that gather like

thoughts over time.

But I am no jumble.

My heart has no

need for artifacts,

rather a

fortitude that restores

this world.

That is what try to do:

Go on loving the things

that are desirable

only until they are owned.

My care

can make them

 new again.

Peter Valentyne

January 2018

 March 13, 2018 8:37 AM

Outside my window the snow is signaling me to surrender.

Outside my window, the snow furiously signals its surrender.

Outside the window, a snow fearlessly fulfills its nature, mocking mine.

Behind a boundary of glass, the snow challenges my artful nature.

On the other side of the glass, snow mocks our man-made world.

Outside, the falling snow insists upon its memory of molecules.

Here, behind glass, the snow’s morose code fails to reach me.

At the window I see only this silent snow that cannot make contact.

Behind this glass, the snow is slowly erasing the world.

Standing at the window, I know the snow cannot find me.

With a mind made of snow, I re-think the snowman.

Outside a window, snow is falling.

Peter Valentyne

March 2018

The Curators

Perhaps because we insist 

on curating our lives

so thoroughly, the gods 

take

mischievous glee

in having their way with us nightly.

Ever unprepared for inert travels

and

chockfull of unchosen companions,

if not accomplices, 

referendums of former follies

are foisted on us

via a tideless flotsam.

Insisting on realities equal to our 

own 

labored, yet effortless 

manipulation of days, 

twin equilibriums

cannot, will not

be kept at bay.

No doubt our desiring

a good death

is cause to agree 

to such adventures

in which we are thrust

into elliptical episodes

we’ve no business

being apart from.

Since finding a way

to speak for all of us

through nights of reckless poetry,

perhaps these poems are pulpits

for redressing 

the many gods

we ignored

by failing to hoard.

Peter Valentyne

November 2018

God of Poetry

(for James B. Nicola)

I have never reached 

for a book of poems

without reaching for 

my salvation.

I have

always suspected

the best poets

are lame goats

who could lead

us to the promise

land.

After all

 a single well-made

line is the bell

tied round the neck

of a God.

I must

follow it’s lead.

Dare we ask

how many journeys

we can sustain

without our instruments

trained on 

beauty?

At what price

are we making sense

of things?

We need a remedy 

for this unrest.

Perhaps each poem

is meant to

remind us of who

we were before

we misinterpreted Him

as missing

and left to find

Him again

for ourselves.

What if instead,

we turned on the radio?

“To be alive now

and on-line

is to feel

at once

incensed,

stultified by the onrush

of information,

helpless against

the rising tide 

of bad news

and worse opinions.

Nobody understands anything.

Not the global economy

governed by the unknowable

whims of algorithms,

not our increasingly

volatile and fragile

political systems,

not the implications

of the impending

climate catastrophe

that forms 

the backdrop

of it all.

Having created a world

that defies our

capacity to understand it…”

I turn back to my poem

for the sake of all

that is holy…

to see

the world cracked open

like an egg.

To find

myself the one 

emerging with wings.

Peter Valentyne

November 2018