Particular Valentine

The mind is a misperception
But not wholly and I can tell
Mine’s not far behind
 
We see the mountain differently
Though we look from common ground
You say let’s climb
 
While I stand back and admire
The cool shade that settles
Under some aspen trees
 
To this particular mountain
Young men rain across the desert
Centuries ago to break
 
A branch from the topmost tree
Returning to their villages
With the proof of destiny

Loopy Valentine

I stumbled around the yard again
Tied to the raving weed-trimmer
Raising dust where grass had been
 
Almost nicking the pale hibiscus
She of the lovely legs
All her blooms forgotten
 
And then the long raking into piles
I think of the Hadean fires
Where zircons hatched
 
The first legless animals
A yardful always
Standing up and starting over
 
I don’t know why this makes me so happy
This idea of time we’ve come up with
As yet so unsatisfied and dopey

Old/Rap Valentine

You must know something
You’re scratching your heads
If I didn’t know you better
I’d say you looked dead
Mother dead father
They said you was a nigga
Before they pulled the trigga
Bolting up out of bed
Catapulting down the stairs
Dead father dead mother
I woke up screaming bloody
I was living in a nigga’s body
I could feel you were a trap
Dead mother dead father
So I put you in a rap

Lone Valentine

The way a tree gets stuck
Between a river and a rock
After a flood in the muck
 
The way a tree gets fucked
Into flower by a gang
Of sunny days
 
The way it recovers
The one arm left
Sprouting suckers
 
The way it marries
Its trauma to its leaves
Settling into a new cleft
 
There in the middle of the river
Anchorite of a rock
The lone survivor

Be Beautiful and Grow Until You Glow Valentine

Morning thinks we can find
Our moods transfixed in nature
But the afternoon dump-truck disputes it
 
Of course it’s different for everyone
Which itself is amazing
Even if unconsciously
 
But it’s in the meeting of seasons
Where we come upon something
Really like us
 
When the trees are born or die
We find out what
A summer-winter our life is
 
Even in the city we can’t
Hide from it completely
A gear is turned

Returning Valentine

I overlooked everything first
And then came back
To read it all again
 
I was so ashamed
But it was raining here
So I went to get the big bucket
 
And soon so much resignation
Filled it to overflowing
I wanted to read it all again
 
All those accumulating epiphanies
And the symphonic mood
Of rising death
 
Like meringue or the foam
On a lover’s
Or beggar’s mouth

Complete Valentine

I don’t need to
Because I’m ready to roll
I have no idea what it wants
 
I don’t mean to be
A complete melancholic
But it is raining and we must go out
 
We remember the time it never stopped
There were hardly enough
Boats for us all
 
But today it’s falling gently
Like all the kisses
You missed and didn’t
 
A sweet rain and mist
With the occasional downpour
Every plot has its twist

I’s Valentine

I grow increasingly ungrounded
Then at midnight I cross over
Into the dreamed I
 
I find myself at a conference
Of all the I’s in some
Submerged cathedral
 
The debate will decide the dissolution
As far as I can tell
Of the very notion of an I
 
Versus some further development
In which the I becomes
Both father and everyone else
 
The hammered articles of a hope
That behind all its reflections
One real I must stand

Unblessed Valentine

We who are not yet blessed
Stay loyal to our hard brother
And our tender sister
 
Fearful of our own singularity
We retreat to blood-lines
And to clans and to no one
 
In particular like the idea
There isn’t room enough
For all of us on this planet
 
Like the five thousand
Sitting down at evening hungry
And weary for some bread
 
How those fishes must have tasted
And the long sleep afterwards
In the company of love

Beaded Valentine

In little baskets of beads
The truth comes out
These shiny things strung along
 
Which hold the light
From so far away
We want to go there
 
Bracelets of fiery creatures
Necklaces of those
Who immolated themselves
 
Entering annihilation
Their golden earrings jingling
As long as love was with them

Leaving us with this vague
Longing to follow them
Into merciful flame

When Valentine

Memory the mediator
Our stern editor
Of clouds
 
The art of subtitles
Where misspellings
Are allowed
 
A tiny book of short stories
With a long glossary
Of stars
 
Five stout archangels
And three tall girls
Deciding what we keep
 
What centuries to excise
When to fall down laughing
When to weep

Clandestine Valentine

Who wouldn’t like to call up
One of their former lives and arrange
A clandestine meeting
 
Even in one of those all-night places
Over coffee and guiltless cigarettes
Tell me why do we do these things
 
How can we name this relationship
So distant and so intimate I wonder
Where you will sleep tonight
 
But I know you’ll just sit there my sister
And stare at what you’ve become
As I choke you with endless questions
 
Just tell me if I took us forward
One step from your perspective
Or have I lost the thread

Pursuant Valentine

I find I live one day behind
Only tomorrow does today
Clarify its passage
 
I sit on the edge of my seat
And wait for its little package
Of odors and echoes and tastes
 
Nothing’s forgotten but
Some things stand out
As surprises and defeats
 
Every day I try to see
How yesterday was stolen
Replaced by new clues
 
How the through-line faltered
How those mysterious deaths led me on
In hot and cold pursuit

Overheard Valentine

So you’re fucking me
That I’m your fault
That I should have

Practiced you more

As if you were a sin
That I forgot to baptize
 
By fire and kisses that
I failed to cross the incline
Between in-kind and kin
 
That I am either deranged
Or incompetent in love
As I was starting to say
 
Right there on aisle three
So everyone could hear
You’ve got to be fucking me

Fabulous Valentine

Now I see time was the tortoise
And I was the hare in a country
Of cool goblins and rabid mice
 
A house hidden in a forest
I was furtively walking toward
My heart always running ahead
 
The clarity of evil and light
Chasing the bread crumbs of desire
The three wishes forgetting immortality
 
It all turned up tonight
All the Ah-ha’s of an infancy
I tried to prolong and set right
 
Let the tortoise come home
And the gasping ragged hare
Collapse beside him

Last Valentine

Season of melted butter and mosquitoes
Sweat even pouring from the flowers
A harvest of bites and elderberry wine
 
Drunk on the deck overlooking the sun rise
On unraveling fields and woods
On the farms of our brains
 
Season of rain falling like horses
With a few refrigerators thrown in
The lightening of a threadbare conscience
 
Washed clean as a fallen log
Waiting angrily in the yard
To be coaxed into fires and kindling
 
And that last romance
Of sunlight in the corner of the wall
As if it was the first so brilliant

Poor Things Valentine

I am not what my animal
Discerns about divinity
In her philosophy of signs
 
To her I’m just a symbolic being
The way we must be
To the angelic orders
 
The etymology of metaphors
They’re still working on
As if flowers weren’t enough
 
When we’re all just pieces of it
Searching for our places
In some shattered painting
 
I would not want to be an animal
Or even an angel poor things
If I could be a woman or a man

Not Exactly Valentine

She trusts me but she turns
Her back on me o no
Not another cat phyric victory
 
I was just trying to digest the world
But I keep throwing up
In my mouth a little
 
It’s not disgust exactly
Because I love this world
It’s just having to eat
 
Such rotten meat
To get to the dessert
Another swallow of wine
 
Another nibble of bread
Standing at some altar
Straining to hear what is said

Bodies Valentine

If all our illnesses are secrets
Buried in the body of the earth
Awaiting excavation
 
If all our secrets are illnesses
Floating in the ether of the earth
Awaiting confirmation
 
If we have stumbled upon a treasure
Confusing it with a stone
And just walked on
 
If the time has not yet come
For enough bodies
To comprehend incorruption
 
Then the planets will just have to run
Along their allotted lines
And the sun just dawn

Unlived Valentine

The blank page is a magnet to me
Even if it only catches iron filings
And the dust they carry
 
If our machines can see
The invisible why won’t we
On our own eventually
 
Be able to peer carefully
Into one another’s structures
With a botanist’s reserve
 
Our minds behold our souls
As in a clear mirror
Or scratches on a page
 
To be deciphered later
What must first
Be lived

What Must We Do Valentine

My cat and not-my-cat
Loves to sleep when I sit down
Between my planted feet
 
So when a mosquito comes
To stab my thigh I am not moved
To move me such is love
 
She sleeps so peacefully
But I must act or die
When that tiny werewolf flies
 
Slowly I reach down and snatch
The thing and crush it
So deftly she hardly stirs
 
Who knows what dreams
Her fealty unfolds
Who knows what daring ventures
 
Resting here in love unmoved
With my own bright blood
Slowly dying on my fingers

Momentary Valentine

As you said a painting
Distils things down in space
To just one moment

So we are left to imagine it
The moment before
And the moment after

As it is with sculpture
And the photographs
Of our memories

We must make them move
By walking around them
Getting closer and further away

To see the pieces of debris
Hacked out and left
In piles on the floor

Terrible and Fun Valentine

A walk among the quaking aspen
Humming we are not afraid today
Was what we had in mind

Nothing glamorous unless
You're taken by the thrall
Of every leaf a sun

But it rained even more perfect

To shiver and be wet through

The path returned to mud

Or did we just imagine it

Caught in crawling traffic

Wishing we'd stayed home

All I remember is a rainbow

All you remember is a star

We ventured out so far

Her Valentine

She doesn’t want to be just a good girl
Or a good animal
Or a good stone
 
She wants to be a gem
Or a pelicano
Or an avatar of rain
 
Each time she returns
With this thought in mind
She works on one of the details
 
Many weeks spent
In the torment of joy
Things coming together falling apart
 
But on Saturdays she swims
She comes back to her essential lightheartedness
Diving into the deep sea alone

Already September Valentine

I know we could talk all night long
But thank God the dog
And our doubles need to be walked
 
Our shadow selves taken out
Into the dying twilight
Where the wide spaces wait
 
The night air is also a Christ
Or a girl going by on a bike
So much homework undone
 
We both know what she would say
Having said it all before
But I can’t wait for the morning
 
If you get up at five
You can watch Venus dissolve
In yet another sun like love