The Carbuncle 

I haven’t told anybody but

I’ve had a carbuncle

ripening on the the back

of my head for weeks,

like a fetus poking

its finger through the skin

of a red balloon. 

I am that balloon

trying to pass a stone.

I guess I should be grateful

its not on my face for

the whole world to see.

I prefer my suffering

in silence,

hidden beneath my hair.

Besides, everyone would

sure to mistake it

for a wound,

when in fact

it is my art.

All my pain

has been coming

to a head.

At night

I use my bed pillow

as a compress

hoping for the Rorschach stain

to discharge

and leave its 

beautiful mark.

I feel

a ripening is coming

and I am 

running out of time.

My body strains to release

its mounting

sands

like grit to a pearl;

I am the hunchback

of my own private

Notre dame.

What will I do

if my sorrows

were to pass?

Who will or would I be?

My life is 

a sideways

hourglass,

clock without hands,

my heart steeped in prayer

inside a cathedral

of suspended animation.

Progress is now on foot

as I walk the desert sands

looking for something

tantamount to

a father

missing in action.

Every pearl begins

as just this sort of cyst,

pushing at the 4th wall

between night 

and the burgeoning

poem

of morning.

Today I woke up

weeping for the world.

What with this one’s death

and that one’s shame,

I put my art to use.

Peter Valentyne

July 19th, 2020

I Want My Art to Address 

the Mysteries of the Soul

I want my art to address the mysteries of the soul. When I say “my” art, I mean the art I resonate with, the cinema I watch, the books I read, the paintings I’m drawn to, the poetry I read and/or write. By “mystery” I’m referring to those things which are often demoted or promoted to the category of fantasy. The ghosts, the dreams, the poems, the simple acknowledgement of the meta-physicalities representing the greater scheme of life itself; the things we live on top of and take no notice or give much thought to until they act up and act out in a primal bid for our attention. Building our lives (houses and malls and highways) on the burial ground of ancient ways that occasionally bubble up through the cracks of “civilization” in sympathy ( and synchronicity) with the Gods. Psychologist James  Hillman reminds us that “soul enters only via symptoms, via outcast phenomena like the imagination of artists or alchemy or “primitives,” or of course, disguised as psychopathology.” That’s what Jung meant when he said the Gods have become diseases: the only way back for them in a Christian world is via the outcast.

I want an art that causes the invisible to overthrow my lazy reliance on the seen. I want insight! Eyes are not the only organs capable of seeing truth. The heart sees, the hands see, the nose sees, even the mind when toppled from its egoic throne is capable of seeing things it could not have foreseen. 

In our time we are living with an existential threat on a daily basis. Great swaths of the world are being infected by a global pandemic whose organic blueprint breeds without discrimination. Yes, some of us are more vulnerable than others. But the ones less vulnerable are being coopted as carriers (terrorists with a virus strapped to their breasts). The breath, which has long stood for the basis of life itself has been turned into the deliverer of disease and death. We live in a moment where the simple epithet “I can’t breathe” has taken on a plethora of meanings. None of them good. And I am encouraged to reach figuratively for higher ground. 

I offer that now is the time to ponder our human parameters in a new light. In other words, our chronic time-worn boundaries that may be keeping the once unthinkable, from becoming possible. If we were to know how much time we have, or the width of the island we find ourselves roaming, or the breadth of the dream we are invested in as if our bodies ended where the rest of the world began; would this not assist us in navigating our lives? I am not referring to any mundane measure of time but rather to a multi-dimensionality that we have hitherto excluded as being an invariable part of ourselves. Consider for a moment this maxim attributed to Plato: Do thy job and know thyself. I interpret this to mean that if we were to do our job we would surely see that our first priority is to know who we are and what is proper for us. Therefore it would be prudent for the knower of oneself to no longer take extraneous business for one’s own, but loving and cultivating oneself before anything else, refusing superfluous occupations and useless thoughts and projects. True folly would derive from getting what one wanted, yet never thinking one has obtained enough; so wisdom tells us we ought be always content with the present and never displeased with what is. This is not so much about closing doors, but about knowing a door when you see one. 

Where does my body end

and the world begin?

How is an island like a lifetime?

What vessel holds me

as if I were a flower?

Why is no souvenir 

of a dream possible?

If I hold a stone in my palm

all night, will I have

taken it with me? If so,

where will we have traveled?

What if my guardian angel

occupies the same space

as I do?

How shall I differentiate us?

POST UNDER CONSTRUCTION...

Amor Fati

(Love of One’s Fate)

I am an abalone diver.

If I don’t go down

to the depths,

I won’t come back

with anything.

Down there

I once found 

a dying man’s

treasure chest,

the kind

a child would

make out of 

a cigar box,

a blazing Phoenix

painted on it

no sea water

could extinguish.

What was inside

would surely

rock the world.

A scribbled note 

quoting Nietzsche’s 

last words:

“Mother, I am dumb.”

Dreams are how

I listen to myself.

One day I found

a stone and

took it to bed.

I woke up

on the floor

in mourning,

the mineral

still in my hand.

What have I

in common

with a stone,

that I should

live my life

married to

the earth

each night,

only to

part ways

at break

of day?

Peter Valentyne

July 6th, 2020

Gently Down the Dream

~for Robert H.

That morning I found myself

in my furniture’s way.

A fear of constellation

had gotten the better

of me, that and the call

from the social worker

telling me I’d better

come soon, so I set out

to make an otherwise

ordinary day 

my pilgrimage

to you.

That’s why I strapped 

an unfinished poem

to my chest

and headed north,

my heart veiled by

a preparatory web

of preyed upon words

no sheet of paper

was ready to hold.

Now that the hospice

allowed visitors 

I boarded the number 11

up to the rehab

only to find it

diminished in sheer style

by the abrupt magnificence

of a cathedral

ark-like

opposite it;

something breath-taking 

on an otherwise

humdrum avenue.

The hour threatened rain

and I felt content

to be umbrella-less.

I gladly welcomed

a torrent of tears

to sink into my 

weathered skin.

Inside the calm-colored walls

of Amsterdam House,

by the elevators

there was a picture

of a rowboat

abandoned on a shore,

it’s oars propped

sideways like

two flightless, if

beleaguered wings.

The doors slid 

unceremoniously open

and I entered

what felt like

a bright box

for arrousing

any and all visitor’s

trepidation. 

I pushed 7 

surprised to be

the sole occupant.

Symmetry shut

it’s doors

with an

indifferent sigh

causing my heart

to tremble 

inside my life vest.

I imagined myself

 already

on a ship

at the bottom

of the ocean

even while surfacing

to a faith-based promise 

of safety

in the sky.

Instead

the elevator opened

on the 7th floor

to a vacant,

rather pedestrian

hospital wing.

A delicate Asian woman 

was hovering 

over a pushcart stocked

with sterile items.

“Which way is room 112?”

I asked trying

to appear harmless

even as the poem 

ticked like a bomb

inside my chest.

She signaled me

to the last door

at the end of the hall

on the right

and I continued

forward as if

walking the plank

dreading

the inevitability

of my own splash.

Please know me

I thought to

myself

as I entered

the room

at the end

of another

man’s life.

You lay flat

but perpendicular

like a holy mural,

horizontal

and vertical

all at once.

Your body

a slip of a thing, 

the sole focus of

the vacant room,

composed as if

to prove 

every man

was destined

to die alone.

This tableau

is still

unforgettable

as it felt

infused with

the gentle peace

of dim light

intruding

from the window;

a Hopper

crossed with

a Magritte.

The room spoke

the language

of stillness,

 broken only by

the gentle 

determination

of your

tenacious

inner bellows,

as if life

were all

your body 

knew how

to do.

Your breathing

washing away 

it’s prints as

on a distant beach,

each exhalation

leaving no 

trace of

all your dreaming.

Standing at the foot

of your bed

I was awed

by the tenacity of

what appeared

a corpse

breathing

through

the shape of

a scream.

The white sheet

which hid your

wasted limbs

like birch branches

riddled with scars

for eyes.

You who had attended 

Yale Drama School.

You who had garnered raves

for your performances in The Times.

You who could be found

on a rowing machine

down at the Health Club

every morning at 9:00.

You who’s catheter put an end

to your swimming but

who’d show up

just to watch others 

enjoying the water.

You who had said

again and again

“I don’t belong in this world”.

You who spent entire days

alone in your well kemp studio,

who loved nothing more

than to be visited

by absolutely anyone.

You who leaned into a walker

like nobodies business.

What was this final stasis

meant to impart?

God, I thank you

for letting it be me

to sit at the foot

of your bed

even if

I drown in 

a sea of tears,

my body

an unlikely

but willing

 vessel

to hold

us both.

This is why 

I am here.

To assure you

your dream of life

was real

and to

insist that

the last words 

you hear

will be 

“I love you”.

Peter Valentyne

June 29th, 2020

Dispatches

from the Border

of Night and Day

This is where I always 

come to.

Just beyond the battle,

clutching my pillow

like an empty automatic

dissolving in my hands

as my drama

becomes

its gradual farce.

A scattering of stand-ins

make for the hills

as again I am

deserted and

left for dead.

Except I’m not dead

because I always

manage to crawl out,

if only

half alive.

So rather than be drafted

I learned to enlist.

Sometimes I fall in love

not knowing that at dawn

I will never see you again. 

Next life? But

a next life never comes.

Only the shadows

of those I thought 

were real.

What if we could live

without this rift

between us? 

Or at least I try

and imagine so.

Until none of it 

is or will ever

be true again.

I keep telling myself

the sun comes up

as the moon goes down.

But that isn’t right

because for a time

 both occupy

the same sky

like familiar strangers.

That makes more sense.

I need more light.

Again and again

I wake up

 dying

or am I

falling asleep

in order for 

another

to live?

Either way

we are twins

destined to

slowly forget

each other.

For instance, 

I forget I live

in a tower

and not the room

of a crying child.

Once I played

with soldiers

in a sandbox.

Now I’m digging

a trench on a beach

to bury his memory.

Its the only way

I know how to grow.

Even the stars 

pinprick my thin skin.

In the same way

mirrors never

make me feel

less alone.

Why don’t they?

But night has its uses

and so does sleep.

Every night I ask myself

who has passed down

this story of surrender?

And why is the protagonist

always killed off 

in mid-stream

like a thief

smuggling rations

to the front? 

Every night is a war

no one ever makes it out alive.

Or do they?

Now, here at the border

between night and day,

I am a twin separated

by the birth of

the other.

This poem,

my last letter

from the front.

Peter Valentyne

June 25th, 2020