My Camera Obscura

 

At night asleep, I'm

neither here nor there,

but extend in all directions,

as much of me behind

as ahead.

 

To dream is to go 

in search 

of someone who

understands that blood

is not red

in rhe dark,

but instead, 

the hue of

one's own shadow.

Are those gargoyles or angels?

They’re too high up to tell.

 

Night is a darkroom

of undeveloped negatives.

Occasionally a chimera’s

double exposure appears;

a picture in an exhibition

of rapidly depreciating prints.

Only when awake

am I able to

hold my life up

to the light.

 

At dawn,

I find the city

erased by fog

as if I’d traded

one dream for another,

deserted in a dim room

after traversing the

parameters of another life,

with nothing left but

to cut my losses.

Isn't remembering

my way of developing?

But no, the child

so filled with feeling

that his loneliness

had become a

sun-scorched

flower cannot stay.

Where is that smile

that knew

no greater grief?

What wicked trick

is this…returning me

to my youth without

any evidence

save the pure joy

of a breaking,

though yet

unbroken heart?

 

Imagine my surprise

at seeing

my younger self again.

Not in some photo

or on film

but in all my

fresh aliveness,

adorned by a crown

of seashells

dancing knee deep

in the holy

waters of a hitherto

unformed self.

 

Here, now

in this room

of morning

I need no news.

With no sign

of a ghost, and

no trace of pictures

that might

qualify as proof,

I'm only this fading

memory of what never

happened

wanting for a form

as clear as day.

 

These aren’t dreams.

They are the compass-less

machinations of some

interior camera obscura.

If you use the word

dream, you miss.

Everyday words fail

truths too unsayable

to be spoken.

Can't you see

some spell

has been broken?

 

Outside the window  

a twin fog is lifting.

The city regains

its rigid logic even

with its concrete

walls still wet

from weeping.

 

My body arrives 

home again

in a room made

by brute hands.

Yet I am infirm,

soft even, barely

able to contain

the blood

holed up inside me.

Where have I been?

Who can tell?

In a place where

nothing

and everything

was all my own.

Why end here

in the midst of

only half the world

when something

as simple as

a poem may

offer an answer?

  

4/17/23

 

Faith

 

A bruise dissipates slowly,

like a spider un-building a web.

A cut closes up in a matter of days

without the slightest planning ahead.

Snip off the head of a flower, and

a new one explodes in its place.

A salamander grows back its tail,

unlike a nose despite one’s own face.

Rain evaporates back into clouds,

as an arrow’s origin’s are a quiver.

A liver can slowly regenerate itself

the way a finger pushes out a sliver.

Cells die every second or so

only to be promptly replaced.

A tree repeats its branches though

its roots down below go untraced.

Take note of the healing that happens

without effort, meddling, or intent.

The only vacuum that nature abhors

is the lack of faith in what to expect.

 

Peter Valentyne 

 

From the Lives of Giants

 

In any given room

our elbows poke

from windows

as our feet push

through floors,

bewildered at having

grown so large.

when all we really

want is to fit in.

 

But how can we

when our heads

butt against

every ceiling

as if we were

live oaks

growing alongside

mummified furniture?

 

Unable to see

all of ourselves

in a mirror,

nor others

take in our

entirety,

our bellies

full of

waste or treasure

and no longer in danger

of being loved

we quietly grapple

with the consequences

of all we've been

taught to want.

 

Night makes it possible

to dream some

spiritual leader

has died.

Unable to view

the body

we are forced

to take others

at their word,

leaving little

more than

a deep despair

at the disappearance

of something so

vital to

our meaning.

 

Now, everywhere

we turn

is unrelenting loss.

We become

little more

than soft machines;

gleaners of surfaces.

A cup of green tea

merely a begging bowl

to move the bowels.

 

Having reached

the age

where we leave

a trail of particles

in the places we

spend the most time,

and now that

our great loves

can only be seen

through a telescope,

we’re left hoping

the distant light

of constellations

will finally make

its way to us.

The alternative 

may well be

petrified minds

of stone.

 

But memories can

return unbidden

like acorns dropped

from a height,

falling to the floor

via a gust of wind

as invisible as

they are

unshakable,

each plunk

in the dark

a dance

between sound

and listener,

as if stars

were being plucked

out of the night sky

or cherry pits spat

from a careless mouth

to land and trundle

as lifeless

as pebbles

left for dead.

 

Who wouldn’t wish

one’s heart

open as a flower

or a choir boy’s mouth

singing Haydn’s Creation

with youthful abandon.

But in fact

we wrestle with

leaving any

door open

as other acorns

hit the planks;

closing the circle

between beginning

and end.

 

Our past; islands

we never tire

of exploring,

a place where trees

are named after

our father, where

we can only marvel

at the natural harmony

that rounds

each of us

entwined or not,

dead or not,

each single leaf

a love letter

written

in green ink.

 

One thought

will persist:

Which of us

will stay behind

to sing our last

thanks to God?

 

7/24/23

 

~A Circle of Two~

“Get out of your own way so the angels can fly through you.”

-Paul Vanderhoven

 

This poem is a séance

and I am its medium.

Come in spirit,

do you read me?

Rap twice for yes.

No need for no.

 

This is not

about the dead.

It’s about communing

with that which

makes life

worth living.

 

If nothing fully felt

ever really

passes away,

then why

shouldn’t it be

retrievable for

further parlay?

 

My first poem

was fashioned

out of simple

rope & cedar;

a go-cart made

from a child’s coffin,

its buggy wheels

pried off a pram,

the rope connecting

its front axial

were the reins

for gripping

in my hand

enabling me

to steer, as

childhood sped by

automatically

in first gear.

 

Each poem was

a polaroid

tucked in a book

for safe keeping,

a naked figure

in a window

not caring a hoot

who’s peeping.

 

If memories

could live apart

from the body,

then there’s

our proof

of having been.

So why not

offer them

sanctuary

by calling them

back again?

 

As in dreams

the soul defies

its coordinates;

a kite tugging

at a taut thread

in wind,

while between

madness and resolve

is as fine a line

as the space

between now

and again.

 

Think about it.

If a television can

so easily beam

people into a room,

how hard can it be

to coax a spirit

from its tomb?

As usual, an answer

lies in the lap

of our youth,

between two cans

and a heartstring;

a direct channel

to truth.

 

07/11/23

 

 

 

 The following two poems were read at the Gay Pride Celebration 

in the Ellington Room on June 23rd 2023. 

Confessions of a Town Crier

 

I was 6 the first time I cried at the cinema. 

I wept so hard the sobbing impaired my vision, 

so hard that my poor mother leaned over 

and asked if we should leave.

She thought I was unhappy, but I wasn’t.

Not at all. 

The minute the movie was over 

I wanted to feel whatever that was 

all over again.

 

So began my love affair with 

crying amongst strangers in the dark. 

I don’t mean being reduced to tears,

because that’s no reduction.

Crying for art is an honor. 

It’s applause with mucus and salt. 

I suppose it falls to the actors themselves

to guide us away from any awkwardness

we might harbor over  their

dissolving us into tears.

The willingness to be vulnerable before the world:

a kind of ritual sacrifice.

Tears as holy water.

I’m thinking of that lone tear that Denzel Washington

releases as he’s whipped in “Glory”;

two centuries of exploitation in a rivulet 

of vicarious mortification.

  

Less and less we are attending

the cathedrals of crying. 

Instead, I fear we’re numbing ourselves. 

Even our lacrimal surrogates in Hollywood 

have been turning their backs on us

towards age-defying procedures that 

culminate in faces that can no longer 

approximate our sorrow. 

I see a crisis of deadening being passed down…

Why are we running from ourselves?

Evading the inevitability of emotional difficulty?

What if my mother had yanked us up that day

at “E.T.” and insisted that a boy inconsolably weeping

was somehow inappropriate? 

What other beauty would I have become dead to? 

What truths?

 

When my dog died I cried so loud 

I worried my neighbors might call the police: 

It’s a peculiar experience, crying that way: 

undammed, with your entire self, 

with everything in you, roaring out. 

If crying distinguishes us from the animals,

it also arouses the animal IN us. 

I didn’t know such a creature, 

a werewolf in my case, 

resided in there. 

Not a hulk but a hurt. 

You won’t find it on your “to do” list.

In other words you don’t access it. 

The wolf finds you. 

It proceeds to drag immense sorrow

through the tiny openings

of your nostrils, eyes, and mouth. 

Its release as healing as any peel of laughter.

Think of all that’s happened to us

in the last few years.

 

I think it’s the animal inside us that needs to speak now…to cry out.

IT’S waiting, ready for a mass howling. 

I know I’m ready, what about you?

 Never Give a Cat a Woman’s Name

 (for Clementyne)

My cat and I have agreed not to love each other.

It’s better that way. No really.

The very touch of her fur disturbs my equilibrium,

nothing should feel that soft 

and abruptly walk away. 

Eyes that seem to stare through you 

can hardly be trusted.

She’s got a face like a sarcastic Mona Lisa, 

there’s no telling what she’s thinking

at any given moment.

She whines about everything 

yet couldn’t care less what’s troubling me.

She doesn’t consciously overlook my problems, 

she ignores them. 

I bet Selfishness is her religion, 

the hell with all that’s holy.

She probably prays to her water dish.

She’s above wearing jewelry 

as she is her own accessory.

She sticks every landing like a gymnast 

executing a heist. 

She licks herself as if her whole body were an open wound.

The look in her eyes says: You did this to me.

Frankly I’m tired of putting her on a pedestal

because she always lets me know she couldn’t care less. 

I suspect she has many Gods, 

but I’m sure I’m not one of them.

God of sunlight on the floor. God of the insides of shoes.

God of sideways Trader Joe bags.

God of dark spaces. God of the red laser dot.

My GOD.

She wakes me every morning 

with an agitated call to arms.

I might as well have joined the army.

Bugles are more delicate than her barking orders.

So then why…WHY does my heart melt at the mere thought of her name.

My darling Clementyne.

 

                                        ~painting by Banksy                                     

My Own

Private

Alcatraz

(For Eric Moreland R.I.P.) 

i

My body is an island.

My skin, a stretch of sand.

My hair a tangled grass in wind.

My eyes, in search of land.

 

My nose, a trained cadaver dog.

My mouth, an unlocked door.

My lips conceal their teeth

like bones beneath a floor.

 

My tongue, a saltwater eel.

My throat, a secret tunnel.

My hands can sink or swim

while my fist can form a muscle.

 

My feet, good for standing ground.

My toes, the first to go.

My mind the next to follow

what my heart already knows.

 

ii

My body is a vessel.

My skin is watertight.

My hair, a signal flare.

My eyes, a glass for sight.

 

My nose keeps its own diary.

My mouth conceals what’s valuable.

My lips remember other smiles

since my own has long grown fallible.

 

My teeth are left to untie knots,

my tongue for tasting brine.

My throat’s now sore from crying out.

My hands best make a sign.

           

My fingers are for letting go.

My feet for flapping foam.

My toes for dipping into water

before braving the sea for home.

 

iii

My body is a lifeboat.

My skin, a watertight hull.

My hair a waving seaweed

reflected in the eye of a gull.

 

My nose reads this world

like a book my mouth recites

with lips wrapped round each word

so as to guide me to new heights.

 

My tongue has now a taste

for a solitude I’d never known.

My hands now ease into their prayers

though I know not where they go.

 

My soul was made for dreaming

with the intention of escape.

The fact that I‘m no longer prisoner  

leaves me free to reshape my fate.

 

5/2/23