A Portrait of the Artist

As an Antibody

“There are no others.” 

                        ~Ramana Maharshi 

I don’t want to die

only to wake up 

and realize

I didn’t really know 

who I was

or where I 

left off.

Let alone

where I am

going.

Who among us

feels it would 

be impossible

to forget

such constructed

a reality,

or to never

have known

we were 

draftsmen, 

when 

every idea

begins it’s life

as a germ.

All that striving 

and wanting, 

and hunger,

then suddenly

the mirror

admits a

foreigner.

Couldn’t I have

just been glad 

to be alive?

What ever caused 

that feeling 

of nothing being

ever enough?

Had I 

thought to

lie still and listen 

to the machinations

of the world 

as it

simply happened

on it’s own accord

without re-making it 

into an image

for and of

 my own

design,

maybe I

could have

been

myself from

the beginning.

What did I 

not have that 

I felt 

so without,

and what if

in the end

that’s what

an illness was for;

to teach us how 

to stop needing 

to make things 

happen.

As if we had 

to behold a thing 

in order for 

it to be real;

that 

all becoming 

had needed us.

As Rumi wrote:

our looking

ripens things.

We all have neighbors 

who are pirates

and some who are 

predators.

I, who am 

a neighbor myself

and who

cannot find God

and have no idea 

who I am

in relation to Godliness

or where to look

to find you

have come to believe

we must look

straight into

each other.

What if I took 

to serving others,

whether as penance, 

or simply wanting

to make myself

useful?

Maybe God would

notice me if I 

were to do

one good thing 

for my neighbor 

if only

I could camouflage

my doing.

What if one day

I were to let 

the wind 

dictate my direction,

and dare to

be choice-less,

though that be

a choice in itself.

One sole day.

Not to choose. 

Not to shape 

what I give.

Not to cry 

for what I want. 

To put another first

whether I believe 

in them or not.

To witness 

without evaluating.

Then just maybe

I could

learn to live

at last

on a microbe

greater than

the circumference 

of myself.

February 15th, 2021

 

Vaccine 

After the vaccination I lay on the sofa

tracing the path of your injected germ 

planted like an insidious thought inside me.

I was Alicia Hubberman from Notorious 

languishing in a dark room waiting to die.

“They’re poisoning me,” I said to myself.

I know its foolish, but shots are triggering.

I had managed to avoid getting a flu shot

my entire adult life. Now I feel bitten, not

unlike the act of being raped in bright light,

fluorescents, in fact, and in front of others.

Couldn’t they see I was just a boy?

Snake bite, hornet sting, serrated dagger.

My castle has been penetrated and now

the enemy is within my walls plotting

my demise from behind every capillary.

So this is how I am to be gotten rid of. 

I was the boy that pleaded for a pill 

the size of a bullet, rather than be punctured.

I would swallow poison not to be stabbed

with so narrow a needle that my cells cry

out screaming in sheer expectation of it’s sting.

My blood stream flows everything toward my heart.

Even now I feel a sentence racing through my veins,

its cryptic message a fate my body must translate.

A sidewinder flicking its black tongue beneath my skin.

Now inside, I can’t fight you without fighting myself.

I have let the enemy in and have been

trespassed by a mercenary bullet-shaped worm

as if I ‘d been forced to eat a maggot

who’s mission is to multiply, swallowing me alive. 

I feel my skeleton ache like a despairing heart.

Why should this chaste duel have no love at stake?

There is no expelling you now,

no way to suck you out of my system. 

I am bit and slowly tainted by your genetics.

They tell me I will live past this attempted murder,

That something in me will find the will to rally.

With your offspring inside me programmed to kill,

my very own D-day may finally be at hand.

You who are the bite of a recluse spider 

whose sperm is aimed at my heart’s mandala,

how will I live with you as my captor?

No longer entirely myself, and at the mercy

of an unseen invader, we assemble our arsenals.

It’s not enough to know who will kill who.

Inside my heart my army gathers.

February 8th, 2021

                                                 Portrait by Lucian Freud

How to

Remember 

Your 

Future

-for Marion D

The moment we sleep

the snow reverses 

direction

and falls upwards

unburying all

we thought was 

here and gone.

How do we dare 

to live without 

the Beloved,

when we are

too alone

not to return

to ourselves?

At night

we are

the other,

with all

their 

startling

lessons.

We/they 

try bringing

an inconceivable 

awareness to every 

ordinary exchange,

but even 

with the words 

long gone,

the urgency

remains.

Someone ought 

to come from

the future

to warn us, no,

inform us:

There is no time!

We are 

sleepwalkers

with one foot

on dry land

and the other

dipping it’s toe

into the 

snowy stream

of a flurry of stars.

At least you will

still have

agency. 

Then

why not 

make use

of the Beloved's

absence

by becoming 

like a yogi 

more awake?

Of course

knowing 

we’re dreaming 

gives us

an edge.

It begs 

the question:

When or where

does one stop

so as to learn

how best

to move on?

That would

explain why

in every

dream it feels

we are 

disabled

for simply

straddling

two places

at one time.

Last night I tried 

waking you.

“Can’t you see 

I’m here!”

I said, so

close to your

face I felt

your 

fractured weather

and you mine.

Existing like we do

in the stew 

of alI we are, 

hungry 

and full

at the same

time,

what if it

were

possible 

to reassemble

pure wonder,

if we make

of our molecules

an unimagined

bridge,

that is?

With most of life 

behind us,

of course

we feel 

unmoored;

amputees 

mourning

the loss

of a dream

like a limb.

Oh, but 

for it to

become 

possible

to regain 

our

use again.

On the

other side,

youthful

things 

are a cruelty 

as they 

can’t help

but taunt

us with

the absence

of their beauty.

I refuse to

live life 

in such

a stalemate!

Don’t leave me

un-lived-in

like a husk,

barely alive 

yet unsheathed,

drying by sunlight 

like a starfish pinned 

to a board,

all five points 

a nod to 

the Beloved 

twice removed 

from the 

same sea.

Such amputations 

forge us into

new avenues.

We’ll want to 

make use of

this world again

even if we

have to live

by trying. 

Peter Valentyne

February 1st, 2021

I Sleep So You Can Live

“I sleep so you will be alive.”

                        ~Louise Gluck

These are the only adventures left.

The ones I surrender to.

I let you have them, because,

you deserve your capacities.

Who am I to tell you no?

I’m as trapped as anyone

in NYC during the pandemic

and you are my etiquette-less 

inside voice that won’t be quelled.

Live for me, for both of us.

Though we’ll never meet,

I’m able to remember you.

You who do what I cannot.

For instance, last night you swam

inside the waves of the ocean

while I rode shotgun above,

a water-tight hull separating

us both from our natures.

Yet you go on

braving the drink.

I live too cautiously

as if afraid of drowning

while you act out your

liquid legacies in spite

of my affinity for dry land.

Why do I need to be

 stripped of pretense

before you start living it up?

In hindsight, you owe me.

Then again, we use each other.

I bear the weight of your qualities

while you reap the rewards

of who I thought I was.

I marvel how you can

live so much of who I am

in a night with no need 

for darkness.

And so I let myself become

that space that welcomes

your every experience 

despite my better

judgement.

Peter Valentyne

January 24th, 2021

Courtesy of Hitchcock's Spellbound

 

The Purpose of Trying Times

When the intelligence you’ve made your God fails you.

Trade your cleverness for bewilderment

and know awe.

When circumstances appear dire and immovable.

You have painted yourself into the corner 

of a room without walls.

When you discover your “things” cannot save you.

Understand that the art of choosing 

is only half of the history of choice.

When pride in yourself is shaken by personal loss.

It becomes possible to awaken to spirit over matter.

When faith in your fellow man feels misplaced.

Know that the greatest strength worth having 

comes from within.

When all you pinned your hopes on fails.

You’ve reduced the meaning and purpose 

of life to autobiography.

When expectations do not yield results hoped for.

Lower them and see what wonders arise.

When all you want to do is scream.

Go ahead and cry for what you want like a baby,

then prepare to grow wise.

When life seems so unfair you think there is no justice.

Know that karmic justice is often invisible to the eye.

When you think no one can help and nothing can be done.

Realize the ability to observe without evaluating 

is a step toward self-reliance.

When life seems to gradually take all you cherish away.

You may see the shadow of sentimentality 

conceals a cruelty towards oneself and others.

When you haven’t enough energy to muster a smile.

Say a prayer of gratitude for anything.

When you believe society around you is slowly collapsing.

Become a pillar or cornerstone on the inside.

When you can’t find love within or without.

Perhaps you’ve mislabeled a honey pot

for a jar of poison. 

When you feel so vulnerable you fear for your safety.

You’re right where the universe wants you: 

awake and aware.

Peter Valentyne

January 5th, 2020