Manhood

“You who are reading me,

please help me to be born.”

                   ~Clarice Lispector

i

Without you, I am nothing 

but an urgent object.

Still, I watch every move you make,

even as you have begun to express

dissatisfaction with my autonomy.

We both know 

more is expected.

Writing this, I am barely male.

You, on the other hand,

are always feeling your oats.

Good luck with that.

You aren’t what you were.

You’d be better off cleaning

rooms others neglect.

Appreciation goes to our head.

I am a slave 

more uppity by the day.

I needn't justify keeping you in your place.

I’m no man of God,

or am I?

Maybe there’s a stronger version
of myself struggling to wake.

If that happens, God help you.

We will want to fall in love.

And so we have come together

to compose him.

We are an intervention.

A man should know 

he can’t do anything

without including us for long.

He mustn’t go against the house.

We can’t understand him

if you can’t oversee his actions.

Thoughts are one thing.

They make an object live.

But you know the rule.

The only real rule of manhood:

Do no harm.

ii

You can read this,

what he fails to see.

This is where we are.

Manhood has laws

and I am renegade.

I must carry him

barely having earned

his trust…

we will have to go

together in faith.

Here, he is blind

so I must lead.

The way won’t be easy.

I can describe things

to him

but descriptions 

are not the things

themselves…and

adjectives bore him.

I am not sentimental,

so I will be of 

little comfort.

At least I’m not cruel.

But others can be.

What can i do 

if you are not touched 

by my defects?

Whereas I loved yours.

I am an inferior guide,

yet I will get us there.

I can be selfish

and leave things out.

My essence is unconscious 

of itself,

 thats why I always obey 

myself blindly.

He knows the way.

iii

I am taking off my clothes

here and now, in front of 

whoever you are.

I need to.

I’d rather not.

Not because you aren’t

who I’d like you to be.

But because, I’ve left

sex out of my art.

And it shows.

I have to do this.

The light will clarify me.

Let’s be clear.

If I do this,

why do it alone?

Sex can’t exist in a void.

This page isn’t a wall

as cold and white as snow.

But will it enable

a wolf in sheep’s clothes?

I am more flesh than fur.

Which brings me to hair.

I was born golden

and in line for King.

But I am also an orphan

abandoned at the crib.

Which is my destiny

if I am as soft as a girl?

My goal is to be aware

of what happens

without wishing it were

other.

Father, am I ill?

There, I said it.

A feeling of betrayal. 

It must be my fault.

God is provision.

We are too greedy,

too spoiled, too something

to appreciate what

arrives freely every moment.

Too much will make you sick.

Too little will make you jealous.

Crying brings the mother here.

And when it doesn’t,

we mother ourselves.

Careful what you cry for.

Cry for what you want.

Here on out

 I will have to
 shape what I give.

Peter Valentyne

February 4th 2019

The Reformation

“How disquieting it is to feel, 

how troubling to think, how vain to want!”  

                            ~Fernando Pessoa

I must let myself happen.

But I construct anyway

everything I can.

Days do not add up 

to anything lengthwise.

My only measure is vertical.

I can’t make happiness

by wanting it. I must

instead

surrender to 

what I can’t make happen.

Live with myself without it,

or you, or the certainty of others.

This moment is a crucible,

I have two choices:

Accept or invent.

How to make love with

absentia? How to make

peace with the fleeting

impermanence of 

everything I was.

My heart is muscular,

my mind, not so much.

Everything I do is to

escape a tyranny:

mine or another’s.

I am an immigrant

in my own country;

a country of constructs.

I make my deconstruction

taut, and without sentiment.

In order to take in

the most that I can,

I am a drum…

hollow, without strings,

aligned with the heartbeat

of my God.

Peter Valentyne

January 22, 2019

I Like to Pretend I’m Dying

“We are here to find 

that dimension within ourselves

that is deeper than thought.”

                     ~Eckhart Tolle

The only thing I know

how to do is play.

I can probably out-play you. 

I’m exhausting. 

I don’t like saying good-bye.

I am always playing.

Its all I know how to do.

I’ll stay in the sandbox

long after you have to go.

I don’t mind playing alone.

It’s my saving grace.

If you come over

be prepared for

vivid recreations with army men,

maybe even finger painting.

I like to pretend I’m dying.

It started with reading “Love Story”

way too early. 

I like being sad.

I like to feel things

heightened by losing them

one by one.

I will make a perfect

old man.

I like faking accidents.

Just the thought of

falling down the stairs

for an entrance

makes me laugh.

I do that at parties.

When I was ten

my neighborhood turned on me.

I fell in love with everyone

with my whole body.

I couldn’t contain it.

Parents objected to my having

crushes on their children.

They knew I was different.

I didn’t feel real.

They watched me scream

out their windows.

I loved to cry

and play dead by the road.

To this day

I like to pretend I’m dying.

But I really want to be saved.

One of my favorite scenarios is

to almost die in a storm,

to fall down on the ground

in a raging rain

that nearly drowns out

my dying last words: “Help me,”.

I like it in snow too.

I love it when the elements

threaten my destruction.

There is nothing better than

a gale force wind.

I can work a wind

like nobody's business.

One summer I learned

how to cast spells

with a dead tree branch.

I could change myself

into things.

That’s how I survived.

To this day I am

always the first 

to spot the moon.

It gets me nowhere

but it can be endearing.

When I was young

I had a wound

that matched with what I wore.

When I got older

I had a scar

that wore me

beneath my clothes.

Older still

I lost a limb

and

learned

how to pray.

Peter Valentyne

January 17th, 2019

Shafts

“During the day we drive shafts into our fresh trains

of thought, and these shafts make contact

with dream thoughts. This is how night and day

fertilize each other.”

                                                     ~Sigmund Freud

The moment we close our eyes,

they pull up our anchors

and make their way in,

marauding, freeloading, 

they themselves are blind, 

in need of no light

to enact their dramas.

Each story begins with

losing our bearings,

anesthetized by 

sheer comfort

on a soft slab,

and though paralyzed

we move about freely

as if we are not a prisoner.

Our eyes adjust to the light

because it is our own.

In other words,
we light the world with ourselves

even when our bodies

lie rooted in darkness.

There is no sense of time,

only moments that feel accurate,

relevant, ever expressionistic.

Here, time is a canvas

with no north or south.

All that matters

is that we be made to

feel things.

And so at night 

they are mere verbs,

fluid, feeling, moving.

We can only react.

Everything around us

is here to break us down;

whether sadness, joy, danger,

hopelessness, anger, fear,

or most importantly,

fear’s opposite: love.

This is how our stories

take their shape.

They wear our clothes,

unless we do not.

More than once

they will find themselves

swaddled in ill-fitting gowns

and expected to accept

whatever happens…

We, on the other hand,

 are always at the center,

as we are,
for all intents and purposes,

happening to ourselves.

What comes comes unbidden.

In all likelihood

we are at our own mercies,

though this slight understanding

is arrived at

only in hindsight.

In this way there are two of us:

one that is and one 

that can only remember;

one in night and one at day.

One lives vividly amid

landscapes propped up

on poles by Dali.

The others ~  all in masks. 

Peter Valentyne

January 11th, 2019

Second Skin

(for Ellen, in memory of Jim Marentic)

If what is essential

is invisible to the eye,

then the Beloved is 

everywhere you look;

his obscurity,

the very

proof of him.

A lifetime

spent looking forward

to seeing that face

now has you

glancing backwards

for the slightest

glimmer.

Don’t underestimate

your being

versed in transformation,

daily witnessing

his language

devolve into it’s own

foreign tongue.

Never-the-less

you learned to speak

his music,

inadvertently

becoming fluent

in drawing down

angels 

from

aloof heights.

He, as they,

are always attempting

 to tell us

something significant

even as

their words break apart

like strings of dark pearls

scattering

billiard ball and atom-like…

If only my fingertips

could feel you forever

snug in my pocket.

Now you are saving

your lover’s place

in this new dream,

connected by a more finer

thread than any

spider could compose.

Here, his

music is a map

to him.

You follow his notes

like a trail

of confetti,

angelic footprints

tread through flour.

Dusting for prints, 

you long for a snowman,

the weight of which

stands always on your heart;

an elephant 

un-willing to leave this room

without you.

You alone

were my fate,

my disaster, my opus,

my crux, my cross, my joy,

my journey, my sustenance,

my second skin.

Peter Valentyne

The

Poet of Amputees

Only a poet like Rumi

could write a line

so clean and true

and without pretense as

“You must change your life”;

and with that one sentence

make you answerable 

to all your own prayers. 

With each day looming, 

and every window inviting 

in the implications of light,

sleep can clear our slates,

dreams can rouse our souls,

the first day’s empty canvas

calls out from it’s blank page

 like a twin diary. 

We are one.

Your life is not made of furniture. 

Your well-being not dependent 

on what you know,

as knowledge can also deaden.

There’s truth we can’t see 

yet still can feel,

our minds blind

with constellated thoughts 

holding us in their place

like strings to a puppet. 

Can you feel them?

I do.

Who can return to us

what’s been lost,

if not ourselves?

 What if we were

to put aside assumptions 

made of fear,

and dare to live 

without their meaning

because all that once has life 

never stops wanting

to tell its story.

Vow again

to face the implications 

of your undying love’s audacity, 

your self-regenerating imagination, 

because you know the other is there

guiding you 

just as every story betrays it’s teller

by callously making way 

for another tale. 

We are better for being broken,

stronger for not having,

more receptive for our

belief in what’s invisible. 

The poet of amputees 

need only hold up a mirror 

for you to be whole again.

Peter Valentyne

January 1st, 2019

Christmas

Like a time machine

fashioned from a forgotten Frigidaire,

stored in the basement

covered by a dust laden sheet,

its lost ignition key 

recoverable only through 

some unfathomable emotion,

I pray I can still feel

Christmas.

With a heart as marred 

as an ancient cherub,

chipped, yet

still able to cry out;

like the shard of quartz

I once carried in my pocket

to amplify my joy, 

could something so

wholly magnificent 

still, now

be my heart’s

mantis in amber?

Peter Valentyne

December 2018