Driving Valentine

Hi-jacking the obstruction
of justice charges with
reality TV and then parking
the same thoughts as
at a higher level or lower

we were driving and came
into a beautiful new part
of the city but coming
back a few blocks north
it was all rural poverty

this is what moves us
what a profoundly costly
and materialistic time
for those who love the body
more than the soul.

Human Valentine

Wherever a body appears
it’s like a bomb goes off
just a crater and shouts
where the spirit exploded
into visible form

Of course we see
one another’s true bodies
and historical feelings growing
from our hidden
places despite matter-

created space anyway
to come to a certain
end it pauses
and to imagine on
from there.

Leonine Valentine

What I know of you
so far looks leonine
in stature how far
back to the original
landscape do you go

can still be strolling
abandoned hills and
laughter ever after
not to defend oneself
or to get angry

and no forgiveness but
what is asked for
all the new mysteries
are mysteries
of love.

Valentine's Valentine

Piled to the eyes with words
and still not enough
words to say this world
and every surface
of my house and shelves

of buried self under
forests of words never
enough cemeteries for
written to death or
endlessly listened to

to survive which words
are written down
and crossed-out
the list of our lives
on ‘to do’ hearts.

Flight Valentine

Even when the best
or worst is there
who will
seize it
make it

make adjustment
reactions on the level
of despair repair
and so arrive
at surrender remember

you only have an
hour between stops
hopefully some
presence of mind your
only purchase.

Human Mirror Valentine

To mirror back
what one wants
to see or can
see of oneself
tucked in here

a tennis ball hit
from the inside
to the outside me
both and
neither

a traveling being
carried to actual
appearances and
the long heroic
way back.

After the Storm Valentine

In the slave cemeteries
of our minds
where we’re buried
with our masters
by our better thoughts

she walks gathering
the scattered palm fronds
depending on her sturdy
red wagon so much
to carry them all

a grown child
to the compost heap
while her thoughts
go on thinking
us continually.

Hands Valentine

Hands that Isaac had
musical a painter’s
hands Martin has
a worker’s paws
hands night had then

pierced and brilliant
day’s hands bitten and
chilly your hands too
worn on me like clothing
like children

hands cloven
hewn from
precious stones
hands that lift me
from the dead.

Philosophy's Valentine

So I said to the
other worlds
look let’s hug it out
you need me as
much as I need you

when all the forms
are shattered
and we wake up
in the chaos
of something higher

you’ll see metaphysics
can’t be overcome
but sometimes love
surpasses what remains
of Being.

Leaving Valentine

How the pitch of childhood sails
toward the conquest of narcissism
that dragon-livered country
one comes upon alone
in dire revelations

but if you can’t believe
yourself you won’t
believe the dead
or whole families of them
working invisible skies

or swimming upstream
against our comical bearing
some word
or wail or laugh of theirs
rushing toward our mouths.

Blessing Valentine

Ever notice how every
blessing welcomes
every other blessing
but every evil
stands alone

actually we’re
outnumbered
by the good guys I mean
who are always weaker
in the beginning

was the secret
the gods kept from us
so we’d stay awake –
what destroys destroys
itself just wait.

Walking No Dog Valentine

Fallen coat
of the body
everything sags and
scatters in the wind
on long walks

and the hedge
making a giant M
sagging
in the middle
of its leap

where was I
in my life
erasing mountains
or striding
the upland plain?

Waiting for Cavafy Valentine

Waiting for Cavafy
to come out
on the English stage
and start
postmodernism

at the deli on fifth
and farrago
the drugs alone was
Whitman the last
sober poet or

Kerouac who loved
men and stayed a
Catholic
no one forgives
like we forgive.

Eclipsing Valentine

To lament the praiseworthy
fictional facts of
our lives I put my tears
my onion tears
into my starter dough

that you may eat from my hands
and I from yours take up
sweet substance what
little crumb must not
be loved back

but who put the body
in charge of the soul
and the soul in charge
of the spirit he’s the one
we must lunch with now.

Hammock Valentine

What is bigger
than color
a room half
inside you and
half outside

so that as soon
as you enter
it you’re drawn
outdoors again
must find a mid

point to momentarily
rest breath rest between
floor and sky
between tree and tree
suspended in ascension.

Marilyn's Valentine

The purple works fine
alone with the green
the yellow feminizes it
thus the glow of
anger or passion

suddenly I saw her
Marilyn Monroe at sixty-five
as we would have been
her painted face and mine
motionless above

strange drapes
fluttering empty kimono
hilarious the
sandals she leapt from
when she fled.

William's Other Valentine

The spirit can never be sick
though it can put on sickness
we call it the body either
we have come through
to thinking’s no accident

or we have further bleeding
to go so the body’s a radio
ready to transmit
purely and sternly the static
of love’s northwest passage

and most chronic scenery
a new Hoya whose flowers bloom
only on last year’s stems
probing the air
with tiny umbrellas.

William's Valentine

O the bihilarity the bifocality
of it the prodigal returns but
as all the rejected evil you’ve
also ever made and done
coming home to be loved by you

O to be loved by you
in a great hurry
in so deep a hurry
forgetting whatever
happens is just a test

of our courage
O Tamino
from our past
the price of the realm
of nothing to fear.

Imaging Valentine

In the visible regime
paying the light bill and the effects
of scintillating scotoma on
subwavelength photodetection
devices in a single fiber

a speculated density left
lower lobe as above suspicious
for malignant neoplasm
a focal infiltrate
cannot be excluded

history shortness of
breath cough
no prior studies
the heart is normal
in size.

The New Valentine

At least it will be scary
in the retention of better than
of getting worse we who’ve
abandoned all judgment
just to enter here

where our instructions for the day
in sudoku code
await our unflinching unraveling
I have no idea
what this shit wants

in my poetry where there is only the will
working it can sometimes feel like calisthenics
but wasn’t the machine a way of
avoiding feeling human
scary enough?

Zero Valentine

Here in the summer
in the desert
it’s like your
conscience
on crack

and what the human body
drained of blood
looks like is
your soul being given
artificial respiration

by the whole cosmos
being given back
everything carefully
mineralized now
quietly dissolving.

Swearing Valentine

I am not Christ
Christ is other people
he is patching the holes
in hope the idea continues
the idea of another Christ

a slow growth rate
they can’t possibly keep
up with the simple
pleasures of discreetly
listening in on him

the Christ I am
he said
Christ I am Christ
I am and then
he washed the garden.

110 Degrees Valentine

The love that’s left
after you subtract
yourself the dividend
is called the unconscious
denominator in the old math

but in the newer glimpses
we’re getting of the strength
it takes to hold it all together
in your mouth the taste for what
would otherwise spell defeat

looms largest among these steep
hills and narrow valleys the flavors
of these last pale flowers
for with them the wrath
of summer cometh.

San Francisco Valentine

I killed a man
in San Fran
almost
my blue
and windy mind

we died and went
to China it’s still Chinatown
but much wiser
than I thought
you said it would be

on the map you would
have to paint this city in red
a mouth with braces
blue-eyed and wearing a war-bonnet
of tiny redwoods.

Healing Valentine

To be lowered
through a hole
in the roof
of your heart
another heart

slowly edging out
the older hordes
of feelings with
felt pictures of
others as oneself

that wound
where we were torn
from one another
and imagined ourselves
alone.

Sibylline Valentine

I’m considering a sibylline series
of haiku on my kitchen
in which is revealed
a whole new avenue
for glass and expressionism

my kitsch-end
what makes you
say that
but yes I mean
what you see

always oracular
but never too much Cumae
in your hummus
kind farts for
old folks.

Unsigned Valentine

To keep going
even if you fail me
or I fail you
and I will
fail you

will you
fail me too
I will I promise
I will and will
keep going you

right then
when I fail
promise
to keep going
toward the fence.

Independent (Sic) Day Valentine

He who bets on the shore
has a distinct
celestial advantage
when it comes to waves
bridges human beings

we are walked on
as a species of water
merely by ourselves
without enough notice
or concern

but that’s my report today
help me stop
pretending all this
and just focus on
my love for you.

Blue Tulip Valentine

When I showed him
my crayon portrait
of a blue tulip he
laughed out loud
there’s no such thing
as a blue tulip
then I said what
do you call this
unmistakable marine
the squeaky leaves
I’ve captured
too incoherent
for you too royal
a cross between
your new bruise
and the bottom
of the lake?

Rainful Valentine

The pain runs vertical thick rain
if you’re going somewhere
first you have to stand upright
a bladder can only hold two cups
the way a migraine cups a brain

some rain tries to hold your hand
while you run on ahead
but you forgot to close off
the first line of escape
when you made that promise

not to return or be
sent back to the old
earth outlines complicit
fields of chalky veins
where statues also ran.

Formless Valentine

What repeats itself
betrays itself
something moves inside it
or behind it
summer rolls her autumn eyes

and by the light of the hair
on her chinny-chin-chin
place-holder for a better
box of paints
she draws the wind

flooding the house
with fragrance and noise
searching everywhere
for a new form
to fill and rend.