The Sex Life
of Flowers
That Bloom
Solely After
Dark

“There is nothing you can see

 that is not a flower; there is

 nothing you can think that isn’t the moon”

                                              ~Basho

i

Lost, without money,

night coming on,

I look for you

in the rain.

Finding my way 

to a hotel lobby,

there’s a call for me.

My heart quickens.

Could it really be you?

How would you find me?

How could anyone

know where I was?

I pick up the phone
surprised to hear

a pre-recorded message.
Heart stricken, tearful,

and damp thru and thru,
I re-cradle the receiver.

I ask a smiling woman 

with a dachshund 

on a leash,

“Are you an angel?”

ii

To dream

is to have

intercourse

with a flower.

It’s exacting;

an artful 

insemination,

a transfer 

of pollen

via the stamen

to the carpel,

an indelicate

fertilization

between

heart and mind.

Dreams

make 
us all

female.

I live 

half my life 

in a state

of abject

fecundity.

In this half-life

all things are 

possible.

Why take

such a thing
for granted?

Dreams 

with their
inside 
information,

both symptomatic 

and significant
cause me 
to ask
how

I can be

their only
vector?

ii

Each night

I experience

an involuntary

flowering

of my being, 

yet each 

resultant 
poem

is barely
an adverb

of emotion
in an 
amber
vase.

What better 

vehicle

for the illogical

when logic

threatens to 

make us ill?

So here I am
contemplating

the sex life

of flowers

that bloom

solely after

dark.

At night,

inside the

dream

we are

our own

light source.
It's here
I can

approach 

God

through 

the coitus

between

dark and 

day.

I am
my own
terrarium.

Why would

I settle

for a

hand-

me-

down 

God

merely
to lay 

my seeds

at the feet 

of a stone

sentence

whose nouns

are unknowable?

Instead,
I have 

cultivated a

first-hand 

knowledge

from the
botany
of a
broken 
heart. 

And so

I buzz 

about

in search

of sacred

pollen,

like a

church

busybody

syphoning

off 

gossip 
about

the gardener's

love life.

My prayers

know no

shame

nor are they

disbelieving,

as my mind

only knows

how to
bloom

and is

un-adept 

in any
other
courtship.

My dreams 

are incorruptible,

fanning out

from center

to circumference

like a wilder
version of

Lady Windermere’s

fan,

their delicate

fragrance

devised to 

encourage
only
random 
petals
of recall.

My dreams

occur 

un-beckoned;

a reckoning

from the

other side.

They sprout 

mysteriously,

uncontrived, 

mandala-like

patterns,

both holy 

and wholly

on their 

terms,

bearing gifts

extricated for

well being

like a compress

for drawing

toxins.

Because I 

am alive

and 

subject to shadows,

I meet

divinities

face to face 

behind the
sheltered
perimeter
of sleep's

veiled mirror.

Night is 
a soil
and

if God

is a planter

of dreams,

then

sleep is a

garden.

Who can say

which humus

is more real?

The one I 

build upon
by day,

or the one

that decomposes

by night,

floating

my fears

upward
like a 
lotus?

Peter Valentyne

May 2nd, 2019

It All Started When

I Left Myself Behind

I would wake up exhausted.

Every morning

the same start.

Without realizing it 

I’d grown used 

to being in pain.

I didn’t expect joy

in the morning.

That said, I functioned.

My days were defined

by a series of duties.

I made myself useful

to my neighbors needs.

And my own.

I wanted to.

My feet hurt 

when I walked.

I needed to tell someone.

My doctor asked me if I

felt depressed.

I said no.

I really did’nt.

And so I began to let go.

How many were days left?

There was no way to know.

But I was more alive

than ever before.

Now.

I am love.

I am supernatural.

I am a sky

without clouds.

I have messages.

My nature is beauty.

My cinema is poetry,

a soil for flowering.

I have something

for everyone I meet.

Life out of dying.

Please take it.

It’s yours.

At last I am human.

So long in coming.

Life was a misunderstanding.

I thought it was for me.

When in fact,

it was for leaving

myself behind.

Peter Valentyne

An April of flowering, the 25th, 2019

Day for Night

We suffer from syndromes.

My own is all-encompassing.

It’s symptom is an artificial

boundary between

night and day:

day for night.

I live

in suspended animation;
I am

the belief in a dream,
an encrypted light in darkness.

I am a cinema.

Every night 

a triple feature.

I’m not joking.

I watch life unfold

in dream time
via dream logic

and I’m not

the only one.

My dreams have

taught me

we are all living

double lives;

both

dreamers and dreamt.
Did you know
that the first film screen
was inspired by
the surface
of the moon,
followed
(in close second)
by the proverbial
bed sheet?

Humanity is our sole art form,

whether one knows it or not.

I’m grateful I know it.

It allows a certain freedom.

To believe or not to believe.

I am a constant Hamlet

musing on not two

but one question

with twin answers.

Your life and mine

are conjoined.

I am Hitchcockian

because my mind

generates
round the clock
 suspense.

I am the thinking man’s McGuffin.

My death is dynamite

taped beneath the dinner table,

a bomb strapped to my chest.

I’m no explosives expert,

but it’s going to go off.

But who can tell me when?

To sleep

or to know you are asleep;

those are the choices.

I am grateful

I've been given this
one up on.

You can too.
Why not
do what I do?

Practice every night,

and at morning

weigh your illusions

against the stuff of dreams.

Be careful not to lose track

of which is which

or it's you

who'll be lost
in the mix.

There have been men

who lived life awake,

but they are few.

Jesus, Buddha, Edison,
the Lumiere brothers,
etc.

What I want

is a muscular life,
more than crepuscular,

a bodybuilder

of understanding,

even if what I understand

reveals my weakness.

Oh, but let me be strong.

The older I get

the less I know for certain.

Yet, my surrender is sound,

taught as it is

each night

by

rebounding starlight.

In fact, only the stars
know how this thing will end.
Spoiler alert: Castor and Pollux
aren't merely supporting players.
If anything,
they are the very subtext of night.
Only they know why
and they're not talking.

Can we ever fully know

why anyone does anything?

Any story proves that.

A single story is
nothing more than
an angular ray of light.

You never know

what’s being
left in the dark.

Not to mention

most of us 

aren't off or on script

(even when

making it up

as we go along.)

The great religions all say

we are asleep.

What would it mean to wake?

To live awake in a world

of sleepers

is my recurring nightmare.

To second guess every clock.

To love for the sake of loving

never sure of the integrity

of what you are placing 

your faith in. 

I am a cinema.

An evening’s shadowy noir.

I reflect on moon beams,

a life of countless projections 

and richocheting narratives.

I can only hope

mine might compliment your’s.

Sometimes light collides with light

bent on our 

mingling in the dust.

I dream for a living.

My strength is in surrender.

I keep my love alive

by knowing nothing

save this:

There is no film

to be found

in the camera of our consciousness,

 only a shimmering chimera.

We are holographic;

a single dream

containing

the whole world.

Peter Valentyne

April 21, 2019

The Art of Overlooking 

Unpleasant Manifestations

“It’s a sin to fry a rainbow.”

                            ~Stanley Moss

First, take this quiz.

Is life pleasant all the time? 

Are people pleasant all the time? 

Should people be pleasant all the time? 

What is actually occurring when we are being baited by another?

What is the proper response to an insult, inadvertent or otherwise? 

Does chronic behavior signal unconsciousness?

As we age, are we meant to become more like ourselves?

What about those who think it best not to?

What about those who live to evolve according to their highest values?

Is it foolish to want to live up to another?

What is the proper measure of being?

If the thought of comparing ourselves feels like a blatant absurdity, 

are the very nature of sports a proclivity toward sin?

At what point does chronic behavior signal mental illness?

If disease is dis-ease, how soon do telling symptoms arise?

Does our urge to control life control us?

Can people behave other than they are? 

What is more important, being true to oneself, or true to others?

Are there times when we cannot be both?

Is overcoming the self a form of self denial?

Is an affinity for affliction the ego’s way of insisting on self-importance?

Is it ever appropriate to hold up a mirror to another in a social setting?

Does the consequence of recognizing a thing

outweigh the consequence of not recognizing it?

Is it ever appropriate to resent others

for not knowing what we know?

When we realize another’s selfishness,

will we be made aware of the selfishness in ourselves, 

and vice versa?

Is the price of achieving no illusions

the tendency towards seeing others in a harsher light?

If people know not what they do, and it is a fool’s errand

to attempt to change them, 

perhaps the best way to forgive is to overlook

without disparity.

The rigor with which I muse on myself

needed tempering when the same

light fell on others.

Peter Valentyne

April 19th, 2019

I Make My Own Joy

I make my own joy

even as I know

it’s un-manufacturable.

Listen anyway;

joy is gratitude

independent 

of circumstance,

a key in the hand

of a mouth

in prayer,

a shielding frond,

a harvest

of pollen,

a sun shower,

a still thing

that inspires

more stillness.

I make my own joy

because night

can be so full

of betrayals,

hurts and incapacity.

Every morning with

my head full 

of temporary terrors

that never happened,

my dreams 

disregard the facts,

which means

it’s possible

for facts to forgo

their dreamer.

Such nights make 

even death ridiculous.

I make my own joy

because I rise

every morning

from my burial plot

to see my name

engraved on a decaying 

granite of days.

And so

my spirit resolves

it’s gloom via

a preposterous

graveside picnic.

From my blanket

I thumb my nose

at the dead.

Not me,

not yet!

I’m still

in bed!

I make my own joy

when and if

by chance

it’s taken away.

As failures fertilize

a flower bed,

and pollen 

draws down

the bees 

to keep

them fed,

and tears

do really make

the roses red,

so why can’t

sorrow be

an eco-system

instead?

I make my own joy

because I can’t leave 

a thing like joy

to chance.

If grace can make

a planet sustainable,

why wouldn’t I wish

to maintain

my own 

atmosphere?

Think of misery

and passion

as twin flames

and our candles

will grow younger

by wax and wane.

I make my own joy

because morning 

is for resurrection

and a ritual of basics:

watering plants,

clearing surfaces,

washing dishes.

A life of repetition

needn’t be tedious.

To be alive

is not predictable

and never obedient.

Even as I do 

the same chores,

mull the same miseries,

stroke the same cat,

I am never the same 

man twice.

I make my own joy

because the alternative

feels unimaginable.

I conceive my joys

like a God who never

dealt in facts

but only in faith.

Facts cut my feet

and my soul needs 

it’s nightmares:

grist as they are

for my spirit

to flower.

I, myself, 

an inquisitive bee

hovers over 

dung and daisies

in a single hour.

My spirit is a crocus

and every morning

an inexorable Easter.

I’m too emotional

to be exact.

Poetry is remembering,

with the feelings intact.

I make my own joy

because there is no certainty

in the staunchest of conclusions;

my soil is full

of soul stuff

towards a concious end.

Last night I dreamt 

I roamed a ruin

on an uninhabitable planet.

and woke up

as it’s hapless historian.

I make my own joy

because joy is an arrow

in a magician’s arsenal

and because only my heart 

can hold it’s quiver.

Joy is not a fact,

nor is night’s

trials of the soul.

Repetition can

bring the change

we seek

if we can learn

to see the angel 

in the compost heap.

I make my own joy

because joy does not

arise from experiences,

but attitude.

My faith is not in facts.

I have grown used

to being a poet 

in a literal world, 

so I see poems

as holy worm holes.

I make my own joy

like a snake

that swallows it’s tail,

meeting myself

as a friend

on a circular path

without an end.

One of us,

the poet,

holds up a mirror

to signal

from sun to moon

and neither of us

need really know 

who’s light is who’s.

Peter Valentyne

April 14th, 2019

painting by Neil Kaplan

Viktor

I keep my sun in the shadows

which is not the same as

hiding my light beneath a bushel.

I am content with being

in the cellar 

amongst the gnarly armed, 

malformed potatoes.

Darkness has it’s uses.

Beauty must begin somewhere.

My work is my poetry.

Though, my goal is

to make a man:

chore-loving, 

shorn of vanity,

kind for no reason,

a man

with an effortless

un-self-conscious 

demeanor.

A poem of a man.

What I couldn't 

have foreseen
was that

we would be 

forever synonymous;

twin pages

marred by words

in some 

mysterious way

for better or worse.

This is how it begins.

The world drives me

from itself

into a barren room

where I find no respite,

the morning’s 

colorless fog

assuring me

that nothing is

 more fertile than

a cloud full of rain,

but for myself

willing you to live.

Finding my state

no longer reflected in the sky,

I search for new signifiers.

Where are you in all this sunlight?

Are you where I find myself?

Or am I like you,

a rapturous fugitive,

a creature sewn together

with a spider’s thread,

the grafted visage

of my own youth's tender ideals

like the borrowed breath

of a broken heart

sworn to do no harm.

You…
forever my great truth

begun in this
blessed blasphemy.

Peter Valentyne

April 10th, 2019