Monday, November 30, 2015

Watching Otters Play Valentine

Animals are pictures of our souls
or were at one time of the moods
and woods of our souls possibly
entering too soon and made
dependent on us made to suffer
for us frightened presentations
of our feelings guiltless and free
having come with us and wanting
nothing more than to be thought of
which they could not do for themselves
and to be taken care of
for which they would give us
their countless bodies in return
one by one restore to us
the lost feelings of the world

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Thanksgiving Valentine

A chosen selfishness
freely entered on
made me confess
where love has gone
to the yards of the moon
reflecting back their cleaned linen
while the sun shines from within
relinquishing brightness
not to be looked upon
but how restrain the children
who want to blow up the sun
in service to the moon
because we have forgotten
our life before the earth
our life after its death

Friday, November 20, 2015

Meditating on Meditating Valentine

Is it worth it
like sticking it
out in hard times
like a bad marriage
as if all marriages don’t lose
their moorings sometimes it’s
a matter of concentration
on a theme of not becoming
thoughtless but heartful even
when lost alone on deserted roads
remembering all these thoughts
and feelings will one day
be excavated by future
geologists of the mind
so try to leave not just manure
but something gem-like behind

Thursday, November 19, 2015

We’re All in Bubbles Valentine

At a certain point
the sun goes right
through my hands
I try not to move
while the light mountain
enters my brain
while the crystal hanging
in the window hurls
hundreds of tiny
rainbows around the room
imagine having a body
like that the way
they blend and merge
at a certain moment
we all become sun
then it all dances away
it all comes undone

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Shorter Days Valentine

Sunrise for our
hibiscus bloom
is noon for us
 
she sleeps late
for beauty’s sake
and is the oranger
 
for it so awake
the yard vibrates
for a single hour
 
narrow hallway
happily on fire
even in November
 
even if I told you
each flower lasts only one day
I couldn’t have been wronger

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Extraordinary Valentine

Sitting on the edge of the stars tonight
listening to the distant traffic’s hum
the music of the spheres I guess
I feel terrific thinking of you
I still wish we could run away
to Mexico as we once did
to the sea where I realized
you did not want me
as much as I pretended
but this time knowing that
relax and just enjoy our friendship
I will not patronize you
with good reasons
the point is I still walk
right past the most
extraordinary people
and only later seize
the sense of having glanced
at them before in you

Monday, November 16, 2015

Bad Dream Valentine

Somehow we forgot
about the rainbow
we'd gone after
and settled for the rain
which kept leaving
and returning slower
and then faster
nervously setting down
his keys on the lawn
and frantically searching
for them later
listening we forgot
who we were
he was in the middle
of a storm-dream someone
who was waiting for us
had just left town

Venus Square Pluto Valentine

Breathing in the infant god
and breathing out the risen
even the Buddha was spoiled and coddled
and headed for collision
but today it’s just a Monday
like the day after a death
or many deaths in the distance
which is appropriately gray
with advancing quickly clods
of rain-thickened clouds

lightening-stricken coffin clouds
of a heartless Monday
so you have a sense of what the sun
feels when the darkness pulls
it under and it wants to go

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Helicopter Valentine

Among the early broken
and who is not easily
a helicopter hung
above a ruin of lights
where once a childhood
could be cheaply had
the streets named after lost battles
too shy to sell apples
because the past wants to protect us
from the future like one
absent parent from another
we children who huddle
in the present tense
being torn asunder but still
trying to make it make sense

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

My Children’s Valentine

My children are three trees
and one long-haired beauty
some people are just roses
as she is one unlike her
tattered brothers who won’t ever
leave home the orange gatekeeper
the bruised pomegranate protecting
the birdbath with his ragged arms
and the purpled-panicled
bee-enraptured chaste tree
did you think our going would be
any easier than our coming
we are nearing a time
when a tree will be as valuable
as a child and no child
will ever be expendable 

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Rap Valentine

Rapture be respite
while innocent experience
stands chomping at the bit
where one learns wit
don’t make it
rapture come to shake it
rapture be capture
still don’t make it
we still have to wake
convinced the dream
out-reals the world
to become what’s fake
against the ground of truth
among its several raptures
only its thirst can slake

Vincent’s Valentine

All we have left are the colors
and the things they’re mounted on
with their accompanying noises
for those who have ears to hear
we become the things we see
so color was introduced carefully
the tragedies of light too bright
then the comedies of darkest night
and finally the long histories of vermilion
and honey-yellow ending in
his seething blacks and blues
which they keep trying to turn
into something decorative or insane
when all he had left were the colors
for his fiery spirit to contain

Monday, November 9, 2015

Wild Valentine

The wild oranges of November
are viridian green or is that
Hooker’s green or sap green
over lemon yellow that new
grass green one remembers
in fall that crocus green or
golden green of some sunsets
that sunlight green as known
among connoisseurs of color
while all the while the valor
of true orange waits within
readying its gamboge grin
its cadmium yellow gaze
with maybe a little brown
madder alizarin thrown in 

J's Valentine

I have given up
on intelligence
in our time
not as a friend
but as a lover
I have relinquished
security as untrustworthy
replaced it with wishing
during which I keep busy
practicing my indecisions
but if you always wait for others
like a watched pot of whatever
on the stove girl you never get done
but then one never does
get done with love
not what I’d call done

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Companions Valentine

Nearer the end
now I see how
I proved not to be
in many ways
the real thing
in my earlier days
and at this point
conclusively I can say
this will take many
runs up the mountain
before the peak is reached
from which we will only survey
you and you and you and me
the endless mountain ranges ahead
across the endless sea

Two Valentines

The same two sparrows
I wonder if they have
a cabin up north also
what is the shelf life
of a sparrow for ten
years now their kids
return to feather
my hole in the wall
the same two thoughts
I wonder in how many heads
they have spent a few nights
of longing
to be carried up
to be breathed by the gods

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Leaping Valentine

The character of reality
stands apart from
the evidence of experience
with a separate relevance
in appreciative silence
but will you handle it
between sleep and joy
to leap with welcome
expectant as if forewarned
counting on the concept
of the heart as text
capable of reading in itself
fathomable and
unfathomable worlds

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Darker Days Valentine

If I try to follow
the will of the sun
as it crosses
the little stage
of my patio
it’s like the passing
of something
both terrifying
and intimate
if you think
of light as thought
sent out into the depths
and heights of space
and yet today at least
caressing my face

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Retrospective Valentine

All day I was sick
of myself all week
all month all year
it was a decade and
then decades of despair
and still no cure
or else the cure was there
but when I’d bend
to drink the water
or reach to grasp the pear
it would disappear
or exceed my touch
and I’d again despair
pretend to surrender
pretend you weren’t there

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Restored Valentine

Fall restores a sense of definiteness
to things that had become oblique
a feeling of objectivity to all
grown somehow weak
which a hapless winter
might be tempted now to tweak
to the extreme of bitter weather
what cold intelligence can achieve
when it wears its icicles on its sleeve
while summer’s knowledge shivers
to the bone: it’s only love
if you get nothing back
yet what’s to get
if this one thing you lack
nothing I bet

Monday, November 2, 2015

Returning the Way We Came Valentine

These fallen leaves are my dead friends
swept by the wind across my patio
I pick them up by hand one by one
along with a blue feather and a few sticks
how could there have been so many
and carry them to the compost heap
where leaves vary in a way friends do not
disappoint me though I have them
in looking back one sees our mountain
ranges of ignorance and pain
sprinkled with valleys of sunlit rain
eventually you come to another ruin
that was our first trip overseas
but friends don’t last like temples
though one had the heart of a pantheon
and another the stature of a god

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Returned Valentine

To prove it’s not just
one thing repeating itself
one thing after another like spring
fall comes with its distinctions
sorting things out separating
one thing from another
into neat piles and packing
things away stamped
return to the invisible
from which you came
having merely pretended life
having masqueraded as beauty
having propped love up with things
and a narrow room where we met
to become one fall comes
to separate it all out
and settle the debt