A Circle of Two

(in memoriam for Bob Hock)

5/20/31 ~ 6/25/20

I remember thinking

What if this is

the last time I ever see him?

Bob had just come from the CVS

and was crossing 42nd street with

an un-customary grimace on his face

contorting into a crescent smile

the moment he saw

me closing in.

I could tell he was in pain

and he probably 

didn’t want me knowing it,

never wanting to draw attention

to his defects or what might

be ailing him

as he was trying so clumsily 

to be one of the living.

“Oh Bob,” he would scold himself

in the third person,

“Pull yourself together.”

But there we stood

on that perpetually windy corner,

Bob’s CVS bag bloated

with an addict’s spoils

and me gripping my backpack 

cross my shoulder,

chockfull of vague concern.

 “You’re the soul of determination”

I told him, trying to be

encouraging. 

I had heard he’d come round

in the last week

to Bingo and was looking much better.

They say he’d even been

seen gobbling down an ungainly sized

wedge of cake at the senior hour;

a grown man mimicking

a saucer-eyed child.

I can just see the theatrical face

he must have made, 

the actor in him 

ever ready to

return to the boards.

Bob would announce himself

with that funny gait of his,

a stride that, I felt sure, had been quite sexy

in youth, but now had evolved into

a kind of wounded affectation. I knew

he was in pain only because

we once spoke about 

the spaced out effects of pain pills

after an un-characteristic confession 

that his feet

had hurt him everyday

for a decade.

Still, he managed to smile.

“How are you feeling,” I asked.

“Oh, I’m soldiering on,” he said flippantly.

Bob would always leave room

for life to return to a comedia.

His own pratfalls had unfortunately 

become all too common.

Dressed in his plaid

flannel shirts and suspenders

and sporting Freud’s reading glasses

you’d be forgiven to think him

a sophisticated hayseed,

but of course, with an Ivy League education.

Bob’s quaintness was disarmingly

old school.

I once saw him talking

to a much younger man

that looked like the other end 

of himself.

I wondered whatever were

they telling each other.

Why is it so odd

to see the young interact with the old?

Maybe because there's only so many ways 

you can hide infirmity with a smile.

And yet, he was smiling.

“I keep to myself”, he once said. 

“Young people are from outer space.”

I laughed, convinced that it

was just his fatigue talking.

But who knows? Maybe we are

all only the stuff of stars

until we birth a soul.

My inner thoughts continued 

to square the circle.

What if we were cobbling

our souls together

all along

every time we dared to use

the imaginary tools

of childhood?

If that were true, 

what an arsenal

Bob had possessed.

I say “had” because

this gentle accomplished man

could no longer recall

his accomplishments.

If it comes to that,

maybe the truest thing

we can trust in

is the present moment

after all.

Bob had a fear of falling.

Life had become a balancing act,

each day passed in

a death-defying circus ring.

Of late, he’d taken to walking

around the block 

gripping tightly to his rollator,

daring someone

to meet his eyes.

More than that, he wanted

to be seen through 

to his very insides.

To meet that person

who could comprehend the

journey that was curling

around itself like a nucleus

at the heart of him,

as if recognition might

close the circle.

Was I that person?

  

In this last year Bob

had lived like a moon

ever on the wane,

slowly surrendering

it’s phases in the sky,

unable to remember

his life

in the spotlight,

his handsomeness

sunk beneath 

it's lunar surface, 

nevertheless he was

a man of an

astronomical inner beauty.

Now, here, amidst 

the unrelenting realism

of 10th and 43rd street,

a wind conspiring to 

blow us both away.

I hugged this 

tender comrade 

of a man

and for one 

indistinguishable moment

we were 

a circle of two.

Peter Valentyne

February 9th, 2019

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