A Cinema for

Desperate Times

I need a cinema

that brings

me to my senses.

Because it has

that power.

A cinema

that wakes me

inside itself

and reminds me

I am so much more

than I thought I was.

A cinema

that aligns my feelings

with the miracle of

the least significant

moment.

A cinema

that lets me go in

and come out…

a wide-eyed boy 

in love

with life’s pleasures

as well

as its hardships.

We need a cinema

that lets us

borrow a beautiful

face only to realize

we have our own.

A cinema

that returns me

to the world

with my love of life

and its possibilities

restored.

A cinema

that reminds us

that our suffering

is for recalibrating

our consciousness

in order to

make us whole.

I need a cinema

that atunes me

with that which is finer

because it has

merged me 

with its light.

A cinema

that causes us

to more fully accept

what we may

have once feared.

A cinema

that shows me that

if I persist in my folly

I will eventually

become wise.

A cinema

which allows us

to embrace

our own narrative

even as we know

we can step out

from under its

construction

to experience another.

We need now

more than ever

a cinema

which creates

compassion

for the other.

A cinema

for desperate times.

Peter Valentyne

January 2017

How to Clean

This is my work:

making love visible.

If released into a

ravenous beast’s

littered lair

I would rest

it’s wound

in my lap.

That takes 

experience.

If I could devise

my own desire, it would be 

to exist without coveting.

It takes

muscularity of both 

mind and body

to polish

such 

sentimental bones.

I am a caretaker

for the un-cared for.

Making order

out of chaos

is how my heart

expresses 

it’s intelligence.

Others collect artifacts

that gather like

thoughts over time.

But I am no jumble.

My heart has no

need for artifacts,

rather a

fortitude that restores

this world.

That is what try to do:

Go on loving the things

that are desirable

only until they are owned.

My care

can make them

 new again.

Peter Valentyne

January 2018

 March 13, 2018 8:37 AM

Outside my window the snow is signaling me to surrender.

Outside my window, the snow furiously signals its surrender.

Outside the window, a snow fearlessly fulfills its nature, mocking mine.

Behind a boundary of glass, the snow challenges my artful nature.

On the other side of the glass, snow mocks our man-made world.

Outside, the falling snow insists upon its memory of molecules.

Here, behind glass, the snow’s morose code fails to reach me.

At the window I see only this silent snow that cannot make contact.

Behind this glass, the snow is slowly erasing the world.

Standing at the window, I know the snow cannot find me.

With a mind made of snow, I re-think the snowman.

Outside a window, snow is falling.

Peter Valentyne

March 2018

The Curators

Perhaps because we insist 

on curating our lives

so thoroughly, the gods 

take

mischievous glee

in having their way with us nightly.

Ever unprepared for inert travels

and

chockfull of unchosen companions,

if not accomplices, 

referendums of former follies

are foisted on us

via a tideless flotsam.

Insisting on realities equal to our 

own 

labored, yet effortless 

manipulation of days, 

twin equilibriums

cannot, will not

be kept at bay.

No doubt our desiring

a good death

is cause to agree 

to such adventures

in which we are thrust

into elliptical episodes

we’ve no business

being apart from.

Since finding a way

to speak for all of us

through nights of reckless poetry,

perhaps these poems are pulpits

for redressing 

the many gods

we ignored

by failing to hoard.

Peter Valentyne

November 2018

God of Poetry

(for James B. Nicola)

I have never reached 

for a book of poems

without reaching for 

my salvation.

I have

always suspected

the best poets

are lame goats

who could lead

us to the promise

land.

After all

 a single well-made

line is the bell

tied round the neck

of a God.

I must

follow it’s lead.

Dare we ask

how many journeys

we can sustain

without our instruments

trained on 

beauty?

At what price

are we making sense

of things?

We need a remedy 

for this unrest.

Perhaps each poem

is meant to

remind us of who

we were before

we misinterpreted Him

as missing

and left to find

Him again

for ourselves.

What if instead,

we turned on the radio?

“To be alive now

and on-line

is to feel

at once

incensed,

stultified by the onrush

of information,

helpless against

the rising tide 

of bad news

and worse opinions.

Nobody understands anything.

Not the global economy

governed by the unknowable

whims of algorithms,

not our increasingly

volatile and fragile

political systems,

not the implications

of the impending

climate catastrophe

that forms 

the backdrop

of it all.

Having created a world

that defies our

capacity to understand it…”

I turn back to my poem

for the sake of all

that is holy…

to see

the world cracked open

like an egg.

To find

myself the one 

emerging with wings.

Peter Valentyne

November 2018

The Caretaker

of Octobers

(for Peggie)

Her lamp-filled house 

can make you cry

as easily as trees

lose their leaves.

Here in her heart’s museum

where everything she loves

has a place graced by light.

Only our dreams are

as vivid as her memories,

while our love 

must live at night,

content with tatters.

By contrast,

we live facing backward

surrendered 

in a compartment 

on a train hurtling 

toward the end 

of the line.

By virtue of being 

borne in this car

we persist by rushing 

toward 

what is behind us

through mercurial landscapes 

with no room for who we were.

Holding onto furniture

in the dark is how

her mind has kept its place.

Our dreamscape scenery 

makes its own

sense of beauty.

Her desire to keep

everything that touches her

is how our passing

will bring no emptiness

we’ve not already allowed.

Lately, every hour

gathers

our habitual stories

like belongings for disposal.

The ones that placed

us at the center

seem already out of reach. 

Whereas

her last desire

is a caretaker’s desire:

to be here and now

and at the same time

in love

with going away.

Peter Valentyne

October 2018

A Remedy for Happiness

I was murdered by my first love

at the un-ripe age of seventeen.

As far as I know, 

he’s still out there

unaware that my slow death

was not an end in itself.

Memories of early happiness

still stalk me, arriving unannounced

and unwanted often when

I’m engaged in small tasks

like chopping carrots or 

retrieving the mail.

That’s when I hide.

This has been my story,

a story I never meant to stick with.

The fact that I am still here

is testament to how I managed

to jump my narrative tracks.

I had to do something

because being dead is no way to live.

I did everything but change my name

though I might as well have.

You’ll find my palette lacks a color

I will never go back to.

Though when I see it

and its everywhere in nature,

there is no escaping 

it’s unassuming violence.

But few take time to notice

my absence of green.

One time happiness rushed 

up on me in Central Park

as if hiding behind a tree.

It threw me to the ground

and pushed my face 

against grass and stones.

It left a mark for days.

There is nowhere it can’t find me.

Are we all being so

tracked and snared?

I can’t be the only one.

Let’s face it,

if I had and wanted it,

or even let it,

I couldn’t have written this

to warn you.

Peter Valentyne

August 2018