Aloe Valentine

I finally see it spinning
blind for twenty years
how the aloe does it
from the center clockwise
a quarter the first stem turns

making space for a second stem
to step up right across from it
leaving room at the center
for a third to fill in there
between them and so on

turning and tightening
each time at a higher place
just above where the first stem
took up its intractable form
with such fleshy grace.

Beach Valentine

One day he discovered nothing works
you know the difference often a Tuesday
you can have your cultural feelings
but when will the waves stop analyzing
our love affairs

this too much of a good long dream
simultaneously decaying
and building itself up
so we went down to the beach
where I heard my conscience singing

my conscience throws like a guy
as if he’s above all that
but not in a snobbish way
as if saying yes we will see to that
and yes we will see to that too.

Riddling Valentine

One flower has broken free
of the tree of power
one flower joined by another
separate but in wonder
or in harmony that’s sweet

or incomplete and sour
joined against itself
a leaf sewn to a face
to restore some place
of power

but our free work is free
we flutter and our shadows
dawdle in the dusk
hey look another tree
has entered me.

MJ Valentine

Whatever he was it wasn’t fifty
more like a permanent fifteen
dropped off from some celestial
circus truck whose voice
never cracked

because he carried his own music box
around him spinning at the center
of it whoever sang and spun before
causing dancing to happen
happy tragic years

study being able to exist
only for four or five minutes
at a time but flashing and brilliant
before falling back
into a stupor.

One-winged Valentine

No one not unhinged enough
would notice the dreamy
nature of all we feel
for one another
as for the earth

would take pity on us
would buy our lives back
for us out of the goodness
of his courage or the courage
of her goodness

but those days are done
now the helpless author
must sit in the audience
with everyone else and laugh
and weep at his amazing life.

Coefficient Of Valentine

I was noticing that pleasure
in jumble and willed ignorance
where does that word originate
hold on I’ll go get it
then I have to leave

actually I haven’t moved an inch
since fall of 1943
whether due to life or death
I am trying a way to find
what he was sent for

all fathers are in heaven or else
they disappear all children
fall from there the coefficient
of reconciliation rises from there
see what I mean?

Marin County Valentine

Having adopted early on
the agon of the aggrieved
abandoned goddess
virginal in its conception
as a barren amphitheater

all her life flicking back
her hair long and oval yellow
sad Madonna of the doll-like poem
and sundown walks
hurling thunderbolts

at her last lover
when it’s really her first
she misses those horses on the shore
and the sea greater than the darkness
of her love turned hate for him.

Team Valentine

What an ant seizes
or an imagined angel
recognizes of our mineral
world having let
death in they can

only imagine what only
we’ve arranged
a personal death
full membership
on death’s team

as a token of our esteem
for what cannot die
but tries to every year
living already what we
have to prove again and again.

Blog Valentine

Gone with rain
the lake sleeps
so soundly
we’re gifted
momentarily

but did I need to
tell you that out loud
or just post it to my blog
how excessively gifted
we all are and how

if I wanted someone’s
foot on the back of my neck
I’d get a massage
not a new dictatorship
O clerics.

Divan Valentine

In the very process of being formulated
right in their first motherhoods
lies become ants and bats
sent out to gather in
the dead ends of things

to pretend and push
when you aren’t even pregnant
my blood crawls
when I recall my own
abortions and adoptions

to be as lonely as an ant
but a hard-working missionary
for the queen deception
we aren’t one
we aren’t free.

Mystery Valentine

The mystery of the human will
buried under its own particular soil
of physical movements and whims
past the islands of desire
spends its summers here

in the ocean of the human heart
on the northern shores
of its southern seas
whoever thought humans
should take up thinking

lands here in winter
in the shape of a palm tree
a brain carried in a basket
a head with shining wings
flying off forever to itself.

St. John's Valentine

The shiny residue
of dreams the foam
of washed-up kisses
your feet swirled around
by minor coruscations

so you described your drive
along the shore your dream
by my side half-submerged
laying down on the road
to sleep or die

in the dream you’re sure
it’s death but when
you wake you’re certain
you will live
forever.

Gay Valentine

The hummingbird isn’t the gay bird
but you knew that on some level
the way Lorca denies his effeminate side
to reject even that much
brotherhood is republican

but at what point does this become
a gay poem or lurch over
into feeling like an overcast poem
I started out filming a butterfly
fluttering around my face

then cut to the butterfly’s face
huge now and searching
into my face and then
a hummingbird came by
stared at both of us and fled.

Peering Valentine

Something peers
in at me
when I sit alone he says
how much life thankfully
others live for us

so we wouldn’t have to repeat
ourselves diligent as grace
we could be for what utters us
a kind of morning experience
you pick the day

but no one goes there anymore
too spiritual or lyrical those
colorful stuffed fish on the walls
looking more alive than when alive
and everyone eating at one table.

Iranian Fathers Day Valentine

To those who go out confidently to cities
living and chipping at ancient restraints
with the machinery of slow canals
and the pensive rage of slogans
wiping their blood on the walls

we celebrate today the failures
of sad fathers whose sons
go sonless confidently off to wars
or widespread riots the best
they could come up with

who keep for themselves
what to do (confidently)
with their rejected gift of self
whether to reject him too
or let him kill them.

Stand Still Valentine

The curved eye
in written e
the names
small birds
fly off to

the ash
everything threatens
to burn to
which is harder
to be with God

or be without one
once every year
we prisoners fall
not far
from freedom.

Listening Valentine

Upwind
of you
I could feel
hauled-off
the feature
I preferred
after all
was of you
the garden
who said no
bargain last
who listens
to anyone
as I listen
to you?

Lost Valentine

A man who talks continually
to himself out loud like a child
reading well dressed walking
the streets returning a small
package in a plastic bag

so you know what century
even if not what bed ruined
his absence swelled his names
with the features of private
associations the manners of

a musician notating snow in
order to have it at the end
of Africa in his hands that
exhilaration and suspense
as dedicatory as a poem.

Thinker's Valentine

They taste a bronze breeze
what carries of unknown
destinies and bestows
them on us painterly
and wars crowd in

not to call holy unholy
what does appear to them
finely and we
laughable anthills
each a head whose

thoughts scurry around
its royal corpse
just imagine
being a slave
to your thoughts.

Seaside Valentine

Trying to quench
an inner sourness
with sugar and doom
trying to enter
while imaging the room
only you could do it
swim off in a sea of courage
everywhere only waves
of burning courage
and you swimming there
I was laying on the bed
when you entered my head
I was looking out the window
when you fled.

Arriving Valentine

Pain has no issues with me
she runs right
down my street like
a little girl in a
washed-out summer dress

the mother of a city of pain
another lover’s
forgiveness or revenge
the world boarded-up
with some of both

but let me show you
to your room
your stanza
where you can get
settled in.

Reductive Valentine

Eventually poetry had wanted to
individualize the voice of being
by becoming the most secretive
of all the arts really ancient scary
in its foraging pillaging and patching

up the past but once its letters
had imprisoned all the words
it became seductive and reactive
wonder and reverence nearly driven
from the murmurs of the world

and now turned into text
its moving lips
cannot speak or breath
or reach across to
you and kiss your dangling mouth.

See You Valentine

The mere outside
the more inside
a plane takes off
from my brain
a bird elbows

my kidneys
am I awake yet
how long will it
take you to see you
in the morning

tremble sometimes
how narrowly we
escape
our captors
their raptures.

Days of '09 Valentine

When the trellis leaves off
the vine tangles around itself
building a rope upward
for the sounds outside
to enter its dream

but when it wakes up
it’s sitting in some green music
last night’s rain hard inside it
water running somewhere
renouncing itself as it does

as tears do
for still not having wrung
it all out the laughter
of course continues on
afresh.

Holderlin Valentine

I could strangle Holderlin
for hiding out so long
except maybe he was psychically
imprisoned by too much walking
and heartbroken of course

by too much loving
of a certain kind
what do the events of one’s life
have to do with the noise of roses
our weighted heads

calm as pear halves
afloat on sunshine kisses
a world whose walls
only reached as far
as we could love.

Fatal Valentine

The tearful erasing of a natal
chart as a clear result of rebirthing
into a human who would really
rather not have to hurt someone
as a condition of his being

surrender says you become
that thing for a while
the unnerving facing of a fatal
morning in someone else’s
tortured memory mall

memory is difficult said
mockingbird who flings out
sketches for songs
each year more frantic
more prolific than before.

Sides Valentine

To give up
in defeat
is not surrender
waiting attentively
is not defeat

nor the whole conquest
devotion relinquishes
as she bends her abdomen
planting a seed
on a leaf

she is large
containing multitudes
he is small
a single self
whose side are you on?

Furious Valentine

To love a red geranium
you don’t have to be an old lady
those mansions
at the end of
self-importance

the Mothers Goethe met
on his journey to the center
of the soul were furies tamed
but furies first
and therefore heartbroken

they knew only
the one in love
with all things is free
they could say
who was worthy of them.

Forgotten Valentine

What the gods wrought
the gods forgot

or we the gods forgot
classical projection plus

minimal reflection
equals maximum rejection

but if these beauties
are the dregs

of the spirit what
must it be

kindly or clinging
all the way from Atlantis

something that must suffer
to still be with us.

Chicken's Valentine

Do you need a poem
to hypnotize you
so you can cross the road
whatever happens to a chicken
wonder begins it

but for the non-technician
who stumbles reading aloud
a poem that’s a nurse
making him skate on his ankles
isn’t always helpful

except when it is
because absolutely nothing
gets accomplished
through thinking alone
that’s how we got here love.

Breezy Valentine

He would run
right up to the brink
of non-being to look
over into that hole there
did I hold him back

I know I held him
but did I do it right
calling and calling
to him from
another brink

our footing steep
or sure the lake below
unloosening
a lovely breeze
tonight.

Code For Valentine

These descriptions however
as applied in the abstract
to war crimes by lengthy
probably false justice
it’s all in the rebound he said

lose the rain she said
we speak in a code
of longing what are
the diaries we come
to see of others who

inspire or deceive us
imagine an art
that practices making
beings by speaking words
never before comprehended.

Bipolar Valentine

Realism is thought to work
through a series of sensual
phenomena embodied
in active beings with
varying powers of perception

there are terrorists out there
I mean tourists in the spirit
but no one believes it
anymore unlike a case
of genuine idealism

where there are internal forces
to be fought over
and the crudest impressions
give purpose and direction
thought a mere deletion.

Crossing Valentine

It’s hard to believe pain
made this lofty blue sky
the chances of pleasure
really doing its part
to perceive this creature

who crosses it
imagining his head
becoming three heads
his skin this blunt
blue flayed and re-grafted

every day bigger
and clearer
deducting what dies
from what goes
wondering on.

Free Valentine

Waiting for the moon
to come up in the wind

feeling like a galleon or pollen
pushed around the same room

when the great doors fly open

what carries us aloft
is free but not convenient

and summer is a movie
Doris Day Is Gay

it’s OK really I
remember the same summers

their lakes and leaky kayaks
their fish excuses

when the great doors flew open.

Ice Age Valentine

You know what cures
a mind like a sieve
a case of the dumb-ass
having a bird
in your own big mouth

for a brain a nerve
the bone is the tumor’s problem
a chipped shoulder
go soak yourself
haywire

today I would like to drive you
through hilly country
where I used to live
rivers and valleys
no ice age ever smeared.

Saturn's Valentine

If we were to think
of the illness and misfortune
of the people immediately around us
in our lives as something we had caused
knife-wounds we ourselves

had frequently inflicted it would be
overwhelming at first of course
truth slapping us awake
four hours late
for the emergency

but instead the blood is everywhere
on the walls which take it down
into the sixth earth layer of hell
where the bodies are hung in closets
no notes found.

Sandy Valentine

Early mosquitoes before
the morning wakes up
and the heat turns up
bliss sits down
on the slowly sunlit sand

blessings on the day
the luxury of even being able
to say it we
broken pieces of mica
are shattered into

the ways the shadows yield
pulling away from the will
of the world to stand
alone
as only a lover can.

Confused Valentine

Modernism is clinical depression
post-modernism is deranged depression
a normal reaction to an unfortunately
now normal variation on plangent
themes of madness

in my family everybody fought
with everybody so escape
got confused with peace
and rape with theft
but I refuse to be intimidated

by the present moment anymore
my goal in life
is to eliminate the egotism
of writing a poem
in the very act of writing it.

Freedom Valentine

Isn’t the heart still only a seed
shallowly planted in the body
which dies to feed it that
its first drink in the cold fire
be sweet and juicy

if to have and to relinquish the power
to enforce fictions
on oneself is freedom
to decay how deny
angels you haven’t seen

when history you haven’t either
the stage is small
the seed’s soliloquy
runs on
for pages and pages.

Flashing Valentine

What we require
at the tips of tendrils
where she sticks her eggs
one at a time
decorating the vine

so death’s built-in
not an add-on
the ancient altars
kitchens where
the gods were cooked

all we’ve been eating
she thinks are different
flashes of light
some pushing day
some pushing night.

Language Valentine

There is no message
from the mystery
of the I
no message
from no I

incorporating the incorruptibility
of the distraction of language
as part of three coming into being
out of one and then
four and six ‘re-marriages’

except number serves all forms
seeking to unionize
with every color now
but the colors of eyes will never erase
the color of surprise.

Not It Valentine

As in each morning
he hands you back
your heart not
invalidated openly
but crinkled and unsteady

and sends you back
for cross examination
excellent and exhaustive
doddering across streams and streets
as in life that hummingbird

but that’s not it
the spirit can’t be sick
the poem won’t just sit still
won’t symbolize a self
for itself real or fake.