True Confessions

of an Imaginary

Child Star

“It’s gratifying that I can always

wake up before dying.”

                     ~In Praise of Dreams 

                                 by Wistawa Szymborska

Some days my aging feels like

watching Shirley Temple turn into

Humphrey Bogart in the mirror,

a magic act that I’m forced to enact

for reasons never made clear.

All this before one’s very eyes.

Only slowly and without the curls,

the broken promise that youth abides

to boys as vulnerable as girls.

“Here’s the floor

and there’s the steeple.

Open the door

and see all the people.”

Like Shirley, I too prayed by moonlight.

It’s an irrefutable fact.

Surely aging out of the business

 wasn’t meant to be our final act.

One night my thinking took a turn.

I grit my teeth and asked:

Which thought fills me with more concern?

The one that compares me

to a summer’s day, or the one

that re-jiggers my mask?

True, I’d spent the last 20 years

trying not to panic,

to keep my pretty little head intact;

to best save face and not get frantic.

Why should I look like a holy ruin

if I haven’t got a prayer?

Would they still love me

a wise old elder man

sitting cross-legged in the hills

far above the village

like a Gandhi without the frills?

What could he know 

about starlight dimmed

after so easily

curbing his every whim?

Lately my stem has begun

to grow stern.

My back seems always up,

what with all my bridges burned

and my innocence vaguely corrupt.

How could I not help but impose

my own unreasonable standards

on others as if all my lessons

were nothing but animal crackers!

Better I should sort a drawer

than dress down another neighbor,

let alone fans I’d once adored

who’d made me this shop-worn fable.

Won’t someone meet me 

on the stairs

and dance me back to the stars,

instead of climbing Jacob’s ladder

and ending up on Mars.

Plagued by constant sour thoughts.

Do you really think you’re not

all orphans in the end

the same as I in every teary story

I was ever in?

At one point I went to a medium

hoping for some sage advice.

Hatching my plan the moment

I heard her say:

“If you’re there…tap on the table twice.”

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake

I pray my Lord my soul to take.”

And so I vow to wake myself up

by an itty bitty pinch to the thigh,

that way I’ll assure I won’t be cross

when I cross over to the other side.

“Row row row your boat

gently down the stream,

merrily merrily merrily merrily

Was life just a lovely dream?”

What better way to greet

the new morn than by tapping

my way back from the brink?

Not going gently into that good night

but with moves I learned with my feet.

May 11, 2021

 

Two Versions

of a Single

Truth

Who named this country

"morning"? How apropos

to begin each day 

with a departure;

the puppet no longer

threaded to the puppeteer.

What if bewilderment 

is the only assurance

our feelings 

remain intact?

We're kidding

ourselves

if we think our

feelings are ever

in consideration.

Dreams are

a melodrama.

Why else

would we be

left stranded

amid their

shoddy stagecraft

in broad daylight?

What was oak

now plywood. 

If night is theatre,

the gist of days

happens backstage

behind the flats.

Psyche

as performance art.

Abduction by sleep

 is night's

dirty little secret,

its catechism

of randomness

defies logic.

Did I mention

melodrama?

Think about it.

You’re blindfolded,

often drugged.

Two pills 

to make you sleep

admittedly, by 

your own hand.

Better to

play your part

like a blind man

more self-assured

than the sighted

at navigating their

own darkness.

Every evening 

you enter

the play, off book,

yet promptly forget

your lines. 

Still

the body is

resigned to

hitting its marks. 

What actor doesn’t

hide behind

the part he plays

on stage,

even if the role

itself remain

un-named 

he is ready

to awaken 

a truer self

under the

lights.

One may die here,

though the promise

of an after-life

keeps things playful.

Some 

have tools

in their arsenals

trained to

remember 

its just a play. 

Funny then, that

every evening's

performance 

is nothing but

a dress rehearsal.

Mornings are 

 ouroboric;

the end comes

round to begin

again.

If we 

swallow the tale

by retracing our steps,

recalling the sounds

we heard along

the way:

the churning

of a windmill,

the exultations

of a public street,

horses snorting

in a stable...

we shall arrive

at the place

we started. 

Two versions

of a single truth.

April 26th, 2021

 

READERS ON:

“The Art of Being Able”

“It is as if you read my mind. Sometimes what you write is exactly how I am feeling. 

I have had questions in my mind most recently about belonging nowhere.

I love this, between two places - here and there. 

Not only do I adore your poetry and how it is written but as well - 

how it makes me feel. Your poetry is my companion.” 

 ~Melanie Futorian Film Maker & Choreographer

“A beauty of a piece with an amazing riff on the word “belonging”.  Belonging is interpreted as included, or part of. but longing is the desire for something, someone, need!!!!  Once again your brilliance is a marvel!!!!” 

~Barnet Shindlman 

“Excellent. Seemingly simple, but ever so profound!!”

 ~Marion Darby

“I totally see myself in this poem. A beautiful piece of work. So well done!”

 ~David Garfield

 

                                                          Painting by Konrad Biro

The Art of Being Able

I survive by belonging nowhere.

If family is a quaint theory 

for the under-privileged,

then why should I care?

I survive by 

belonging nowhere.

I will be land;

not region or country,

not city or town.

I will be land, sky-bound,

I swear.

I survive by 

belonging nowhere.

I’ll live in two places,

both here and there.

That way no one

will pin me down,

nor bother to care.

I survive by

belonging nowhere.

I am all eyes 

descending a stare.

How else am I to fare?

If you were a snowman

formed out of thin air,

you too would survive by 

belonging nowhere.

With no such thing

as endurance in time, 

made no less true 

by becoming aware,

I prefer the floor over a chair.

Still I survive

belonging nowhere.

I learned to love

in increments of loss,

not knowing that grief

was the price 

of the cost.

In that I expect I’m not so rare.

I will survive by 

belonging nowhere.

April 22nd, 2021

 

The Man Who Could

Shed His Skin

He, for reasons of anonymity,

must remain a fiction.

A mermaid once 

got hold of him

by the wrist,

pulling him down 

to the depths

as he gasped 

for breath.

In order to escape 

he managed to 

change himself into water,

slipping through fingers

with the mutability

of an acorn 

on its way

to an oak. 

From then on,

for him,

to love or be loved

was a brush with death.

He turned up in Sausalito 

with a new name 

and a cobbled backstory.

For all anyone knew

 he’d washed up on the shore

beneath the Golden Gate bridge

uncertain of how else

to begin another life

as every name 

and job he took

was a cover.

Seven names

in forty years 

because he couldn’t stay

put when he became 

too involved. 

Why did he always leave

something behind

for someone who might

care to trace his steps

and find his typewriter

buried in the desert outside Vegas,

a sweater he’d seen on a movie star

abandoned on the backseat of a bus, 

a cell phone hurled into the Hudson,

a plate of food half eaten,

the fork and spoon missing?

Even though like anybody else

he needed to be cared about,

he’d come to believe

there was no way to stay

without changing.

After two years in Los Angeles 

he bought a motor bike

and rode up the coast to Bodega Bay

where Hitchcock filmed The Birds.

He took polaroids of the school house

where Tippi sat on a bench

 in front of the monkey bars,

dark birds casually amassing.

Later he would draw the birds in

on the photos with a black magic marker 

invigorated to feel a part 

of an apocalypse.

Nature understood him,

but no one else could.

Next time he was sure 

to cover his tracks.

Perhaps by taking a job 

in public service

his heart might serve

something other than itself.

That way he could easily

be lost in the fray;

anonymity as a 

survival tactic.

You barely noticed him as he 

passed you on the promenade

in faded jeans and hay-colored hair

swigging on a diet soda

as if he’d other plans despite

your obvious mutual attraction. 

He had to be somewhere

or you’d have shared 

a lifetime together.

One time he made the mistake 

of sheltering a stray dog

which culminated in being

waylaid for 15 years

because in an animal

it became possible

to care for himself.

Still, his mind couldn’t let go

of the notion that puppies

were born adorable merely

to assure survival,

and so 

on it’s death, 

he left.

More and more it was crucial

to make good use of oneself.

It’s no wonder 

he wound up in New York City.

He loved nothing

more than to dance

but avoided the clubs 

for fear of where dancing 

might lead.

When he danced 

it became clear 

every person is 

indistinguishable

from the vibration 

that creates all things. 

His goal was innocence,

no matter how many lives 

he would lead

or how many people 

might possess him. 

He’d begun to ask himself, 

how other than by pain

could God gain his attention?

Now he will need to be vulnerable.

He is older and as life dictates,

less shall want him.

Peter Valentyne

April 12th, 2021