A distressed naked man makes his way into a room through a door only to find himself in an open field where at the center stands a scarecrow on a makeshift cross made of barren branches. He approaches the totem, his eyes fixed on the unexpected sight of a full set of clothes.

SCARECROW
Who approaches...are ye a crow?

The MAN looks startled and vaguely frightened.

MAN
Who spoke?

SCARECROW
It is I, Lord of the field.
What be your name, stranger?

MAN
What? How??

SCARECROW
Fear is my reason for being.
Not my fear, but your own.
Name yourself and thy needn't
be afraid.

MAN

(confused)

Who....my name?

SCARECROW

Those that had a mother
are sure to be named.

MAN
(casting eyes all around)

Where is this place? I can't...I don't…

SCARECROW
Your tongue is as tied in knots
as mine. Though mine be
woven of wheat.

MAN

Do...you know where my
clothes are? Did you...

SCARECROW
I may be made of hand-me-downs
but I'm no thief!

MAN
 It's just that I'm not accustomed
to roaming fields...in my all-
together.

SCARECROW

Clothes make the man.
I do know that. 

MAN

But you’re not a man.
Though someone went to the trouble
of making you.

SCARECROW

Me thinks I could say
the same for you.
You still haven't told me
your name. I know mine.

MAN

I can't think straight...
Why should anyone
name you?

SCARECROW

As a matter of fact, 

three days ago I was
christened Cornflake by

a child both playful and

pure of heart.

MAN

No child made you.

SCARECROW/CORNFLAKE

You’re right, it's true. It was the father

who made me.

MAN

These must be

his clothes then.

CORNFLAKE

It matters little
to me. I exist on my
own all the same. My heart
is a hematite stone held in
place by a mulch of
violet, thistle, and honeysuckle.
Mine is a history of cedar
and straw.
What be your
history?

MAN
I can't think about it now.

CORNFLAKE
It stands to reason
you may just have

been stripped naked and

robbed. Anyone could see that
goose egg on your head
from a mile away.

MAN

I only remember

falling asleep...

CORNFLAKE

What mean you…

remember?

MAN

   What do you mean?

CORNFLAKE

I was remembered
into being.

MAN

I can't say...
I've no clue.

CORNFLAKE

Well, then it doesn’t

really matter, does it?

A sudden gust of wind blows the scarecrow’s hat off and onto the ground.

CORNFLAKE

Say, would you mind?

The naked man goes and picks up the hat, then tries it on his own head.

MAN

It just fits.        

CORNFLAKE

You mean like a glove. Like my

two hands…two gloves

filled with stale straw.             

MAN
I feel more human already.

CORNFLAKE
I know what you mean. A hat is very
definite. There are some men on
whom the impossibility of being
someone from the Middle Ages
weighs on them like a curse.
There are others who find
the very act of shaking hands
hopelessly venial.
What manner of man are you?

The MAN takes the hat off and examines it carefully. He turns it over and peers carefully inside.

MAN
There's something written here.

CORNFLAKE
Where?

MAN
On the inside of the brim.

CORNFLAKE
I should like my hat back now.

MAN
(squints as he reads)
P-E-N-D-L-E-T-O-N
Ring any bells?
Your father perhaps?

CORNFLAKE
Who can say?

MAN
I can't believe I just ask a
scarecrow who his father was.

CORNFLAKE
At this moment I consider you the
greater mystery.

MAN
I'm finding it rather difficult
to contemplate myself
in the slightest.

CORNFLAKE
What is contemplate?

MAN
I keep forgetting you're
only made of straw. What am I
saying? You can talk can't you...
so you can surely think!

CORNFLAKE
I don't think. I just know.
I don't live, I just am.
I enjoy nothing more than seeing
things illuminated by the sun.
I gaze upon everything in
my radius with utter
fondness.

MAN
Then you enjoy being stranded
in the middle of nowhere
waiting to disintegrate.

CORNFLAKE
I dare say I do enjoy the
thought of my own
nothingness. In some
tangled way this very field
is part of my blood. I was
not meant for reality.
It was life that sought me out,
not the other way around.

MAN
But wouldn't you like to tear away
from that pole and walk about awhile?

CORNFLAKE
I never thought about it.

MAN
What good are having legs if not
for walking?

CORNFLAKE
Where would I go? For what
purpose would I go there?

MAN
You could expand your horizons.

CORNFLAKE
I've all I want right here, thank you.

MAN
(commences to removing the scarecrow's trousers)
Then you certainly won't be needing
these pants.

CORNFLAKE
Hey, what are you doing?? Stop that!

MAN
Don't worry, I'll leave you intact.

MAN puts on the confiscated trousers
one leg at a time. 

CORNFLAKE
Well, was that really called for?
I never took you for a brute. I
see now I was wrong.

MAN

Don't worry...I plan to wear them

in good health. You're sure
to go to heaven for this.

MAN zips up.

MAN

They fit as if they were
meant to be.

CORNFLAKE
Yes, meant to be mine.

MAN
I'm beginning to make
sense of myself.

CORNFLAKE
That makes one of us.

MAN
What did they call you...
Cornflake? Hey, wait a minute,
this isn't even a corn field. What's
a scarecrow propped up in a
damn wheat field for?

CORNFLAKE
For you.

MAN
Huh?

CORNFLAKE
You might as well have
my shirt, don't you think?

MAN
Much obliged.

The MAN removes the SCARECROW'S shirt and puts it on himself.

MAN
There...how do I look?

CORNFLAKE
Like a perfect thief
with nothing left to steal.

MAN
So.

CORNFLAKE
When we are not loved into
being....God sends out a crow.

A potent wind suddenly picks up. We hear the cawing of crows. CORNFLAKE slips from his bondage and reaches out toward the MAN. The two seem to struggle. Then as though by a mysterious osmosis the two change places. The MAN is now fixed upon the cross of barren branches. The naked straw MAN kneels before the SCARECROW.

MAN
I will call you....EM.

LIGHTS OUT

Daze of
Radical Melancholy

(for Jim Kelly)

Sunday mornings are

for staring into space.

Days now feel

derived from the dreams

of an unreliable narrator.

Nights, less fatalistic.

An autistic friend

says that Tuesday’s full moon

should slow down

the death rate from the virus.

When I ask where he’d heard that,

he said “it was on the news”.

Maybe autism is

the new magical thinking.

These days
I can no longer attribute 

what I say or think 

as coming from

inside myself.

I'm letting the virus
change me.
I'm letting go

of my fear of being the fool.

Truth is, I only want to be true.

In my short play “STRAW”

a scarecrow pleads with a man

to trade places with him

because the very thought 

of a windswept field

makes him want to weep.

Like him I live with a memory 

of inaccessible beauty,

a holy thing

that cannot be erased.

Tormented by the things

I find beautiful,

I put on the ragged

hand-me-downs of fate.

This morning, the discovery of

 a tear stain on the mirror

has convinced me 

of the sadness 

of my own reflection,

regardless whether
they are mine or his.
Apart from our living
in identical rooms,
my life is still my own.

On Palm Sunday

the line to enter the local Walmart

was two blocks long at 7:15 AM.

Everyone wore face masks,
a winding haphazard caravan
of empty shopping carts,

the shoppers palms
anxiously clutching 

the chilly metal bars
as they wound past
the $9.95 flower pots
with their purple promise
of early Easter.

Even as the deaths
are now reported

only by the numbers

as if dying were

a grotesque calamity,

the less said the better,

I say death is beautiful

no matter how it arrives,

sacred like anything

one of a kind;

the one true thing

one can own.

And then you died
helping another neighbor
and my broken heart
sprouted the first
true crocus
of everlasting Spring.

Peter Valentyne

April 2020 in the time of Corona

The Quiet Part Out Loud

The world as we knew it 

stopped today 

as though after

always having turned right,

it now turns the other way.

Things that grew by light

now evolve in shadow.

The flowers have agreed

 to grow regardless, 

glad of our absence. 

From now on

the dogs will feed us

in lieu of our tricks

both bacchanal

and banal,

but for a bone

rather than sticks.

I take up painting stones

to pass the time away,

as clocks are no longer

in need of my service.

Left to our own devices,

we’re allowed to be right

only twice a day.

I should have known

my nightmares 

were in preparation

for emotions 

I never thought I’d feel.

I’m like a bird

caught in a room.

I keep flying

into the mirror

as if it’s space 

were real.

I should never have

taken my twin 

for granted

as now he’s 

up and foresaking me

and recanted

along with any pre-natural 

penchant for rhyme,

without me he’d hardly know 

what to do with his time.

They say we all have it

whether we know it or not.

Even if we don’t know we have it

we can still give it to others…a lot.

Maybe this is after all…

all from a bump on the head.

If hindsight is twenty twenty,

why couldn’t we have contracted

joy instead?

I recently read a piece

on the poet Keats.

It said he aspired

to what he called

negative capability.

When one is

capable of being

in uncertainties,

mysteries, doubts,

without any 

irritable reaching

after facts and reason;

perhaps this is, afterall,

that preeminent season.

Peter Valentyne

April 2020 in the time of Corona

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