Break-Up Sex Valentine

Don’t forget if you want to be around a man it means there’s still a woman inside you enjoying being there and if you want to be around a woman it means there’s still a woman inside you enjoying being there this is true regardless of your current gender because slowly we're all becoming women again though right now we go back and forth loving and hating our sex loving and hating the other sex as if we still haven't gotten over that first fight and break-up

Bathtub Valentine

Don’t forget when I kept dreaming all day that I would finally break down finally just surrender to helpless sobbing for ten hours or so and then sleep for two and a half days the accumulation of so much sadness from the world outside and in until drop by drop the bath overflows a continuous stream of blessings though some would not see it that way tears as a blessing in disguise but how can what’s disguised be good as a bathtub feels

Competitive Valentine

Don’t forget I got your back how you got my back when you got nothing to get my back with OK so I got your front the better half the one you keep up as if I didn’t guess sooner or later you would take off down the street in the middle of the conversation to inhale one or two leaving me to face the inescapably competitive nature of poetry alone which I loathe and understand whence the prizes like Justin Bieber asking to have his craft taken seriously thus bringing to that word a whole new focus ‘I am not a gimmick’ which reminded me of ‘I am not a crook’ except now the Watergate Hotel is the whole heart of America a heart which has always believed it’s being seriously burgled when it goes along with things

Whitsun Valentine

Don’t forget I’m actually afraid of writing which is why I do it every day I force myself to say something worthy of balloons or lovers to speak up even if only for the sake of the language itself which can only evolve further by wasting away into some new unspeakable language until by the end of time we’ll have as many languages as people living or having lived on the earth and after that there will be silence the final silence of incomprehension like the silence of a mosquito inserting its needle exact as a hurricane lovely as all power funny how the feast of flowers is also the feast of flames and the feast of screams

Debtor's Valentine

Don't forget the almost laughable unsustainability of human relations short term and still there is nothing else boat-like to sustain us with and for not that we haven’t worked with substitutionalist propaganda before as in Uganda once there rose up the harvest of a people as here in America more slowly we ate the natives and the natives ate the natives as they came upon them in their way but how can there still be this dreadful meanness in the world that wants other people to die for us if not each succeeding innocent-seeming generation until all the debts are paid

Don't Forget Valentine

Don’t forget Joe Brainard
fucked Joe LeSueur but
he was in love with Frank O’Hara
don’t forget how I have made it
so easy for you to be my slave
first of course by being terrific
so you would want to envy me
if you could but you’re too good
don’t forget I am like a beautiful lake
smashed by a highway
I will arrive and drive by
as in the body of a boy I did
craving those cattails when
the water still looked cold
and pure when the sky
took off its clothes
and slid its body in
don’t forget that incoherent meal
of malice and buttered leeks
thinking the only thing I trust

is my desire to get something done

don’t forget...

 

Jacob's Valentine

I had to climb a ladder
to get to where you fell
to where the vines
were going off the rail
so I said to my cock
no it’s not you it’s me
it’s entirely not your fault
innocent fleshy plumage
like another ear or extra hand
in the shape of one large finger
whether you were large or small 
had nothing to do with you
essentially blown up like a balloon
but what I want to know
is who does the blowing
that everything be subject
to desire and the vine
increase 

 

Leftover Valentine

Scrounged from old notebooks
a person of unending desire
like the rest of us fissile material
the way the future relies heavily
on the past to tell it this
is all yours these women
walking in the morning like
when you see your motives
standing up behind your feelings
or a map leading to
someone forgotten in
I can even tell what town
and all this interspersed
with words like these –
it’s not enough I get
the whole world
       but you as well
always so much
leftover
 

Doppelganger Valentine

I want Joseph Beuys
for my doppelganger
I watched the Queen
with the sound off
giving a speech
with her crown on
as if she was reading
a fairy tale to a dying child
it’s not only as above
so below but as before
so after we glimpse
the truth the past
shows up in the future
an uninvited guest or
the prodigal resumes
but how do you bring
your own clean hands
to the scenes of the crimes

 

 

Because Valentine

Because death is the only
real thing on earth
time is how the truth
is slowed down
is watered down enough
for us to taste it a little
at a time and learn to
tolerate its crushing
yet dissolving weight
like moths staring at the sun
but that’s because
we like to attribute
to ourselves capacities
manifesting through us
not yet our own

Why I Hate Dogs Valentine

My body’s already
dog enough for me
bathing it taking it
for walks feeding it
cleaning up after it
until I just want to
board it out or take
it to the pound or put
some of its pictures
on lamp-posts – free body
looking for a fresh start
friendly if lumpish
adapts easily to slight
changes in light with
a tendency to moan
upon awakening
won’t roam

Marjorie's Valentine

All these years poetry
having to struggle
under the heavy lash
of trying to make sense
while still keeping
musical time which
is speech-worthy
gregarious and prophetic
and now the conceptualists
the new nominalists
want to plant one half
of reality outside reality
to widen the gap
between rich and poor
is that a metaphor
or what to be the memory
of a people or a single
thing at the moment
of its conception
tongue of flame
if you would be
my steeple

Mistaken Valentine

He wasn’t who
we thought he was
he seldom is
and I wasn’t who
I thought I was
often emotionally
but without that
essential misperception
on all our parts
at any given moment
we’d have nothing
to become aware of
nothing to transform
the plot which is
clearly what
we’re good at

Ascension Valentine for David on his Birthday (talk about convergence)

Frankly I don’t believe
in revising even though
I do revise at times
I don’t hope to make
a perfect poem that can
be kept in books everyone
stares at reverentially
but no one reads
I want all my victories
small accommodating and
final in the sense
that that’s over now
and now is moving on
the poem is moving on
imperfect but with you

Worried Valentine

Sometimes I worry
about my death
how it will come
upon me how it
won’t find me
for a while in
another city how
it will search
the web its spider
as if for something
misplaced a page
among piles of files
how I will miss it
repeatedly in my sleep
how it will drag me
home from this
its temple

Annual's Valentine

They grew where
they fell in the
ovals of their
casting the arc
of a wave set
on its side as
everything gets
rounded off
at the swerve
of death’s different
direction its
refusal to keep
straight on
as hoped
as planned