Never Helpless Valentine

If your first act in the cradle

Is to strangle a snake

Winding around you

You know you are a fighter

An army of one poised

To obey without rancor

The will of the gods

And clever enough to bend

Them to your will with barely

Enough time for family or friends

So focused on the work at hand

Valor accepting its defeat

In its shroud of glory

A momentary flicker

But our hero stands alone

The first to enter heaven

Hindsight's Valentine

At twenty he invented fire

Or claimed to afterwards

But it was already there

Something you came upon

Under the pillow of a sleeping god

A fire that doesn't burn

Except the fingers of a man

To warm his nights cook his food

He forced the gods to share

Though it wasn't from greed

But fear of what he with foresight

Couldn't see they saw

Looking back from their eternity

The fire that would come

And sweep away them all

Son Of The Sun Valentine

But things got serious

With ravenous Dionysus

The life of the party

Always wanting more life

Joy descending into chaos

The theory was to fall apart

And then reassemble oneself

From the remaining pieces

A regenerative heart

At the basis of it all

But even the gods grow old

Leaving behind their fictive

Lives for us to follow he said

For we are gods as well

Daughter Of The Sun Valentine

It was their own chosen fate

The watchful almost fleshy gods

To start with beauty

Their endless story

They had suffered so

But it all came back to them

In the body of a young girl

Happy as a field of flowers

Who wandered into town

Searching for a boy from hell

Some Hercules or Hades

She could love and hate

Sharpen her courage on

That beauty have her hour

Though all her shrines are gone

To Be Read On A Plane Valentine

Every day a new dose

Of reality is injected

Into our brain and blood

The hypodermic sun

Willing everything into being

And then putting it all to sleep

With her little stepchild Reality

Too much to take in at once

But doled out in clouds

Beauty gets broken down

And then built up again

What else could be holding us up

We who are still learning

To leave ourselves behind

Midstream Valentine

When I remember all time

Is divided into before and after

That a certain line is crossed

Sooner or later in all beings

When time seems divided

Against itself one stream

Pushing into another going

In the opposite direction

Where you have to decide

Which way to succumb

Or stand there in the turmoil

Salvaging the present moment

Which has nothing to do with time

Relieved of before and after

Back And Forth Valentine

I don't want to die do you

I love the earth and you

Home away from home

But we kinda made this

Bargain I wish I could

Remember how I agreed

To such high interest rates

We will never pay it off

But I'm assured we return

Our debts in process of forgiveness

So much paper work red tape

Just to get back to a womb

A small apartment on the east side

Enough light to flood a room

Past Valentine

Memorial statues photos make of us

Until the movies came along

And now I have a video of you

On my phone for easy access

And a whole record of the world

Uploading our success and our

Falling short of one another

Repeatedly and stubbornly

But not all the pictures lie

Some you have to pick out

The electric field around us

From the experience itself

To see right past the picture

To the angels standing there

Coming Close Valentine

Close enough to touch

But never touching

This went on for months

Filled with long walks

Silent or speaking at the same time

No you go first I forget

What I wanted to say

But now fifty years later

I remember it your skin

Pulling me in us cowards

Of affection geniuses of delay

How could it be we never spoke

The truth we wanted to say

You see I still blame you for not

Going first but yes it was me

Death Is Always Early Valentine

Death falls in little pieces

Like a large fly lying on its back

Just here on my table

Under the brown lilies of Easter

Its legs folded its wings

Still catching some sun

No one to annoy or marry

Hatching little ones

No elaborate funeral to follow

Which no one attends

Which dandelion shall I

Place you under or feed

You to the lilies until

Our resurrection comes

Eighties Days Valentine

I usually start with yesterday

Without which no morning could come

Looking back over what was said

And done testing my memory

That certain gestures certain looks

Not be entirely lost on me

By which time it's afternoon

When serious work gets done

Listening to the Verdin sing

Worrying about the world to come

Doing the dishes for some fun

And suddenly it's twilight

Just enough time to catch

The button moon slip loose

The virgin dark undress

Conjugal Valentine

I watched your thoughts

Coming through on your face

I caught you thinking

Which doesn't often happen

Not the thinking but me

Catching you thinking

As in 'lost in thought'

Your eyes seeing both

Inside and outside of you

Stopping time so it all

Got quiet around us

And then you turned to me

And said, 'I was just thinking....'

As if I hadn't a clue

Always There Valentine

Some sixty years ago today

I took the habit of a monk

Face down on the floor I lay

And spoke a cloudy vow

I shortly couldn't keep

The sixties intervened

Like the sunny Renaissance after

The dogmatic Middle Ages

And I was given a small farm

A wife and a child both fine

A whole precocious heaven

With a woods where I

Could roam the rest

Of my life away

But you had other plans for me

Whoever you are

Carefully and patiently

Still homeward urging me

Except Valentine

What does the length of a day

Have to do with its width

Or its depth as you travel

Out farthest deeper down

If you let go of time

Except time to unravel

If you think of it as cubic

Transparent and alive

What does the length of a life

Have to do with what survives

If time doesn't matter

If after all it can't be taken

With you to the grave

Except what's saved

Some Days Valentine

Though I live in a small town

In the middle of an enormous city

At the bottom of an evaporated ocean

I am always conscious of the desert

Surrounding all of this which starts

To boil and bubble in early April

While we fearless frogs enjoy

These cool spring days before

(The tenderness that came back

After it had been given up on)

But what will we do with all these

Steep hills and deeper valleys

Some days I picture my life

As a mirage in this desert

The mirage of an oasis

I am crawling toward

Some days so vaporous and fine