Bone Valentine

What bone does poetry
want to pick with you
what bone does it want
to please

but if you’ve stopped
whatever you’re doing
unimportant or otherwise
to read these few words

how much more than
a fortune it means
you’re already happy

already wise and won’t
be hurried along there’s
still time for small things
even for nothing at all.

First Light In The Last August Piazza Valentine

Premature disambiguation
of the light do some research
in the midrash usually precedes
grapefruit and coffee on the lawn
or taken from behind or on the run
can we the deported peoples
of malnourished Europeans
think clearly about
our own fallen futures
in this most physically
presentable of countries
inside the bubble of perception
the reliability of corruption
the assurance of our deaths
the heirs of all our actions?

Driving Valentine

I’m often sitting waiting
for the panic to catch up
with me always just one
step behind its stalking
what is the greatest
experiment still not
acknowledged
even as a prejudice
in the world this enduring
hatred of poor people
virulent Poorism I call it
goes back to the beginning
mother of all metaphors
embedded in wars
I mean who kills starving
women and children
as they were fleeing
the bombs?

Not Much Good Yet But Enthused About Life Valentine

A true masochism
would arrange
to disappoint everyone
one at a time
refute all expectation
nationality and name
don’t you have to be free
to be a little dynamic
I mean a little demonic
if no one else is at first
in painting it’s simpler
to say when you’re just
using black and grisaille
to stand in for all color
to catch it while working
hard on what you’ve never
experienced before.

Palm Valentine

You palm tree
with your great wind power
trying to carry my dreams out
past the sun

snapping in the wind
you sheets my mother
wrung and hung you
flags of glory folding

and snapping in the wind
bringing the whole sky
to cat-like attention
casting off birds

planes clouds you
west light half done
you cold white sheets
smelling of the sun.

The Year Of The Lord’s Favor Valentine

The tip of your cock
is so wet I wish
I spoke Spanish
when will equality
of survival Jesus
asked for be done
in one afternoon
a dream a journey
a drop of dragon’s blood
whenever I open
my mouth I prove
words are liars
take the shaft
of my pen in your fingers again
you who have written me down.

Shriveled Valentine

What is this
head tilted
pointlessness
smiling silver
gray sky for
dear mother
morning rain
may you no more
into ambition
stray a devotee
of chaos
but sever me
from all drivel
spittle and spunk
that I may wake
awake even
if shriveled.

How Much Valentine

The way gay folks
and black and
Hispanic folks and
poor and white
rich folks constantly
are watching one
another everyone
secretly vigilant
careful fearful
that’s how I love you
shyly and without
apparent remorse
and whenever I need
them my weapons
are all hidden
locked up
at home
and no matter how much
time I really have
to write them
after I write them
these last lines
it always feels like
I’ll be taken out
and shot.

Paul's Valentine

I said your prayers for you
the prayers of your religion
the words I remembered hearing
you say them over and over
was that your religion
the repetition itself
thinking the sounds
and colors of the words
could be consciously creative
and subject to your will
if you make me change
I’ll make you pay for it
we would say to one another
you were my brother
but I was only pretending
to be your brother.

Runway Valentine

Overactive bladder
is not a normal part
of life unless that’s
your style I don’t
know what to tell
you why else
would anyone
send a diaper
down the runway
with a man in it
let me paint it
on your stomach
a dress that doesn’t
just mask odors it
knows when to
stop being one
hot shitty mess.

Two Mourning Doves Sleeping In The Middle Of The Street Valentine

When I slap your ass
it’s because I’m coming
to follow your rhythm
forever and have made
allowances for the bawdy
and natural embarrassments
that accompany the voyage
and that you can still blush
means you’re not an animal
not because you’re too good
but because your cover’s
been blown I know what
you look like like a bad
movie with Giovanni
Ribisi in it can’t be all bad
I think I’ll paint the whole house
the same color floor to cielo
a new light shade of grin.

Tapas From My Angel Valentine

And what isn’t unfinished
about us we leave to the others
we’ll become as soon as we’re good
and ready like any reasonable poet
who works out every day especially
when he doesn’t feel inspired
just to show who’s boss
that athletic attitude
of soul but from another point
of view one who wants to cultivate
a certain connection with the will
the word as thought and self
the colors as the heart
the continuous work
of copying and painting it all in
on this small time frame.

Glimpsed Valentine

To lay the stone
of the heart
into the heart
of the stone
and for a gem
to flower
what high
pleasure has
a tourmaline
for a body
the corpse
of a thought
as when pulling
my shirt off
over my head
in the sun
I glimpsed some
one else sliding
out of my body
like being turned
inside out
that school girl
I keep seeing
my angel.

End Of Messages Valentine

Chickens
in the yard
traders in the pit
all as usual the last
few days before he died
but what if creation wasn’t
assisted by sexual attraction
where would all that scratching
go if there was no
sexual attraction anymore
what would fill that
enormous pain
where the last
surrender set out one day
to find where
real warmth lies
and to return with it
intact and virgin
in the form of
a phantom
heart?

Individual Valentine

My interest in poetry
is restricted almost entirely
to the experience
of the individual poet
the individual truth
of significant and
insignificant beings
yet to be united within
the stream of existence
which poetry encloses
and opposes and which
we who were born of
Elohim and humans barely
children themselves
we mythic poets and
lame queer faltering
ones without whom
you all would hardly have
made it even this far
left to your own devices
don’t look now but
we’re still the secret
agents of the word
the old mysteries bestowed
still available but now
only individually received
individually deposed.

Edible Valentine

Vaguely I sense
this trembling as my own
the walls always blinking
green blushes yellow-pink on
the manly pomegranate tree
whose fruit I’ve trimmed
to ten specially chosen
accomplices on whom bestowed
innumerable embarrassments
and many gem-like intuitions
for them to work on and develop further
to be edible is my only personal goal
manured watered promising self
that whatever beings feel
hungry enough to eat these
seeds these tiny deeds of mine
may be pleased to do so
and find them mostly sweet.

Questioning Valentine

How few know
and of those who know
how many act
on what they know

questions for the wealthiest materialists
offset by the same small number
of truly spiritual thinkers

our neighbors are both braver
and more evil than we had ever
imagined he shouted silently
to himself

do we really want to know how
many of us hold vengeance
in our hearts or how goodness
untested ain’t no goodness at all?

Aubade Valentine

Among the properties
of yellow is a merciful blue
discovered in the darkness
where the roots turn white
is it from fright buried alive
but the first born of the light
is yellow pale pink pale green
yellow
but then they all sail out
toward that impossible blue
exhausted exalted
tender-hearted
blue-green
blue.

Violence is the Religion of Materialism Valentine

First we must caress
the totally mindless violence
of our whole human family
its entire history of hatred
repeatedly winning out over
even the stingiest kindness
we must kiss this violence
as we would our enemy now
made friend and neighbor
and turn and think again
about those without food
or water so vividly
so even artistically feel
their discomfort becomes
our urgent demand
most urgent because
unheard pleading
pleas please.

Valentine's Return

A childhood busted
with watching reality
shows on TV being
recalled in a future life
by a mother who doesn’t
renounce you anymore
than her other sons and
daughters from the past
who pray for guidance
and blush when they
receive it and don’t want
anymore of that sickness
that love sickness
the monarchs
floating out over
the purple field
at two in the afternoon
above the town
centuries of the traffic
of pilgrims and now
skaters grinding ollies
on hydrants or napping
under the willow trees.

Whoever Wants It Valentine (To Jess)

I’m waiting
for the lines
to come to me
the way the world
is waiting for a god
any god
to come to it
to save it
from itself
(the cushions are still
dripping from last
night’s rain)
except that now
my penmanship’s
improved I’ve
nothing to send
you but an
empty page
whereon I’ve
written so much
love and thanks
there’s no room
left for words.

Bipolar Valentine

I feel happy for you
that love’s a deity or
a default of daily life
but I’m still stuck
angry and stupid
and totally pissed
with myself a lot
of hours not ours
got honed pumping water
at the sink in aesthetic
grandma’s house
I have only a vague idea
what that would mean
if the pope himself
won’t do penance and change
one doesn’t have to be
clairvoyant to know oneself
as the Greeks penetrated
frequently striving
but to hold up to no one
not a mirror or a clear
image of yourself.

Nursing Home Valentine

A persistent vegetative
existence augmented by
a voracious animal libido
inside a mineral will
here no one gets
out of bed unless
they’re dead
years of staying well
so they can deteriorate
over longer periods of time
skeletal pretzels
one fell and rolled
to his death
what does it mean to
say I don’t want to be
the one who feeds them
wipes their behinds?

Empty Valentine

A box thrown over
the fence labeled
bodybuilding
but the box is empty
as the body is
and the building for
that matter
so who ordered
this life supply
of empty space
the box body
its potential for biking
and ball-busting
slowly the box
fills up with dusk
is that you returning
can I have my body
back you go
what box I ask.

Yesterday's Valentine

To know
that I know you
intentionally
in the sense of
not believing
in my own ignorance
that I’ve known you
too long not to know
you too well to speak
to myself that way
took years of conscious
projection that you
put yourself through
it and consented to it
moves me still
many things done
wrongly or left undone
every year of the life
you loved me.

To Be Completed Valentine (for E.E.)

The mineral is about contraction
the plant is about expansion
the animal is about migration
the human is about aggravation
the mineral is about rumination
the plant is about conversation
the animal is about salivation
the human is about expiration
the mineral is about divination
the plant is about hallucination
the animal is about idealization
the human is about incarceration
the angel is about liberation
the mineral is about…

Saguaro's Valentine

My saguaros don’t love
the heat anymore
than I do they’ve
simply learned to
defeat it every day
to stand there like
St. Sebastian letting
the sun use them
for target practice
though they know
they’re outnumbered
their arms can only resist
as a way of waving time away
if nothing else with them
it’s elegant and simple
there’s inside and outside
there’s roots and stars
what else would serve?

Unpainted Valentine (for Elizabeth)

After forty years of watching
those painting shows on TV
just for a little amusement
where always the same cadmium yellow
sunset is being brushed in by the same
old man’s hand how can that be
I took up painting
for weeks I’d been haunted
by a pair of gray celadon eyes
I tried to hold on to
not from lust but amazement
at the sheer achievement
of those pearls yellow blue green
laid down in thin lines
around lacquered black
expanding centers
and I wanted to paint them
but for my first masterpiece
to warm up as it were
I tried to sketch in abstract
what true social renewal
would look like in chalk
on Japanese paper almost
in the form of a school girl
if the bomb hadn’t fallen
stretching out her hand
vaguely held up by a blue
hydrangea because I hadn’t
mentally practiced
my brush strokes nearly
enough for eyes yet.

Romeo's Valentine

I’m sin-blind
all my sins are even-steven
give me my sin again

it looks like hammerhead
and hummingbird country
coast city drawn

Romeo thought all
for the best he says so
to his fading friend

now Shakespeare’s far
enough away to sound like
the original comic books

he signed it pale as any clout
in the versal world
servant to Juliet’s nurse

hoarse bondage
is but a little way
above our heads.

Angelina's Valentine

Isn’t Angelina
Jolie just one of the
best impersonations of Persephone
we’ve seen in a long time or what sweeping
through airports through crowds of gaping mortals
a small flock of five year olds in tow reprising her role
as the winged victory or the angel at the prow of our sinking ship
I think she’s brave
or stands for bravery
or something like it
I say that as a father
I say that not as a father
I say that at a safe distance
from fame.

Familiar Liar Valentine

The task today
is to accomplish
children something
totally vengeful
toward the past
but still of one’s own
unique devising
not you yourself as day
never seen before
but some proof
preferably handmade
you were and are still
living in some
idea on a piece of paper
or some familiar mood
or wood or woody
if woody could.

Skyped Valentine

What to wear is
something that won’t
explode in seconds
the smallest armor
can produce the saddest
psychic couplings
but what’s as manhandled
as your heart anyone
both deceptive
and telepathic
(her squeaky verse
in her squeaky voice)
you’re not even trying
to be nice
you’re nice naturally
waiting quietly
for the most silent moment
to step out.

Arthur's Valentine

As a poet to get past
the sycophancy of poetry
to actually having
dinner with Rimbaud
suffering his abuses
to have come the closest
and gone the farthest from
to have been so abjectly
in love and been so stupidly
refused never to recover
we cried in our absinthe
and then he stood up
on the table pissing
gloriously on all
poets all love.

Opposite Valentine

Your arm across
your chest while
you sleep is money
to me the currency
of a realm which arises
as the consequence
of words on a page
as here rehearsed
everything is eternal
within your head
that way it’s fair
to all you face
turned into the
darker hemisphere
the way the moon
spends all its spunk
slinks home
but what if we could
never hide you said
sleep love on that O
opposite of golf.

Shaken Not Stirred Valentine

Done with one reality
you’ve barely gotten research
underway for others O man

is that why foreigners
have the same dumb
things as we to say

in the movies we see like
we’ve found your hotshot
computer sweetheart

out there in flames
in the woods or
this curse began long ago

and finally take me
to the tornado
I’m not sure where the

sound is coming from anymore
inside or outside me the picture
like filmed streets

vanishing behind the driver
to make it look like he’s
really driving the car.