My Funny Valentine (Almost a Sestina)

In mid-February I will sit down and dabble in catharsis quite
comically. This action, or abreaction, will fail, as one whose first
experiments in smiling are based on the gestures of the Arnolfini,
who are, in their way, laughable in the way solemnity so often is.
So hands hold onto solace, an art, (strange circuitry of emotion
that interlocks like Mdm. Chenany’s braided hair): surpassing
recognition of Roman fame or Greek.

Eurydice can hear the marble ring with echoes of songs sung in
Greek. It’s Orpheus, pieced together beyond the grave, come to
read the Sunday comics: I’ve only one life to live let me live it
blonde! (Yes, brown is the color of our hair), and “Isn’t it against
the law to be the Valentine of two different girls?” Billy asks
smiling. He thought joining the circus a reactionary polemic, a
statement of protest but artful, like Clio nursing Hyacinth: it’s a
privilege to mix comfortable company with laughter.

Postpone the hoisting of a flag, black or white, and fill my mouth
with candied laughs since only kings and pirates need gold.
“Museums befit your beauty, perhaps Greek, perhaps American,
or singular in your way. Your house of mirrors houses art,” I say
with some reluctance, for ardor is almost always melodramatic
and comic (though girls must certainly enjoy laughter above pity,
so I hope you’ll smile). Why not? Life and love bring bigger
worries: “How’s my hair?”

Ridiculous, I’ll admit, to worry about love and life, though I am
conscious of my hair and wonder when it will gray. I sense this
measure of time is fabricated, laughable, an essence of something
real: you, who will never grow old or want for smiles because
you, singular you, will not tolerate the everyday or pandemic
(from the Greek, of all the people). “But they wouldn’t do.” It
had to be you, plural you, comedic escape from all others who
know nothing of what it means to be plural and singular art.

Let’s visit museums in the spring, when the world is warm and
rightly lit for art, and when even the sun can’t help but project
some gold into your hair, I’ll show to you the intimations that
preceded your birth, (tragic or comic, thou writ’st the play). We
will count the strays in every Titian (tediously laughable) and
determine who among our friends is in The Burial of Count
Orgasz by El Greco, I’ll notice you pointing out something I
can’t understand, so I’ll look up and smile.

And you, who may find yourself alone in April or June, as I am
now, will smile, insulated by frozen memories, patches of ice on
the street, which might be art if we’d stop avoiding them and
give them a chance to slip us up. But this idea is Greek, a
transient thing, like flowers. We must give each thing time to
bloom, cut our hair, re-give, re-cut. One cannot live on memories
alone, even if we forever laugh and never grow old, we must
eternally return to revel in life’s everyday comedy.

-- Cody Carvel

It's real now: the air isn't going to get any warmer for a good long time. The beginning of the cold is Living in Clip in earphones, eating late at night with ambiguous sentences and fingers.

I will see this in Washington, D.C.