All Souls Night Valentine

Sometimes I will do
something wrong
just to prove I still can
the dire pleasure of it
knowing the stench
that follows
this often happens
to an older part of
my childhood which I’ve
carefully preserved
mummified through
reformations and
revolutions a holy relic
a weakness behind
my weakness the dead
come back to warn me of
they know what would help
but can do nothing directly
while I have no idea what
to do but all the will
in the world to do it.

Fictional Valentine (for Eileen Myles)

Not sunlight
simplified
but starlight
magnified
so much more
precise camera
work requires
microscopic
lace-making
by children
and prisoners
who alone love
poetry and have
it read to them
all night
as they toil
and shine
out of the endless
books of poetry
being written
today.

Stations of Men and Women Valentine

A station is a stop
where you stand
and wait on the way
I have often waited
for a woman or a man
to catch up or leave
that other child for me
when suddenly I thought
they were stationary
station-like with
brief or longer stops
at each some underground
a hand in your
each turned away
but I have waved
where I could not stop
was that my stop?

What The Sun Touches It's That Time Valentine

One red pomegranate
hangs in the sun
still dripping from
multiple stab wounds
such things
go undisguised
among the listening
and the dead
we sense
a sea of light
behind that first
thought-thin layer
they use to cover
things up with
breathing light.

Suppositional Valentine

If I was black
I would be able
to be gay
if I was gay
I would be able
to be deaf
if I was deaf
I would be able
to be beautiful
if I was beautiful
I would be powerful
if I was powerful
I would be white
if I was white
I would be responsible
for everything
if I was responsible
for everything
I would be stupid
if I was stupid
I would be
a lot like you.

Owl's Valentine

Look up look up
the owl’s on the roof
befriended by pigeons
I’m at the monkey pants bar
reading Nietzsche
having a beer
waiting for you
where did you go
no that’s not true
I’m recovering
from Nietzsche
and no I’m not
having a beer
I’m having a cold
glass of water
sitting outside
today was human
some sun and breeze
the moon is just now
moving down our street
looking for you
where did you go?

Beyond Valentine

One has to change
to hang with me
only to grow
younger will the
ignoble man become
worthy friendless
and chamois-like
only our own good
did evil bring
for love to get past
but now you must leave
these high mountains
friend who overreaches
so a god can step down.

William James Valentine

The world (is) over live
with Edmundo Montoya
we watch on Sunday nights
though I think the current
pope is a little creepy
it’s not football but
the dead sea scrolls
that shed new light online
for example on Christmas Day
when she was 24 years old
she was sent to a leper colony
(experience cannot entirely relate
to our craving for abstraction)
and as each of her five children
was born they were taken
from her and on some gold tablet
it was all written down.

Unemployment Valentine

What is my real job anyway
the job I was born for and into
except they don’t have
that job anymore in fact
maybe that job never existed
or if it did was outlawed
civilizations ago
anyway who would want
that job now today
that job any job
if it’s done for money
it’s still slavery isn’t it
wake up!

Angel's Valentine

For no one’s pleasure
but my angel’s
do I sit here
breaking lines
it’s the poem’s way
of attention-seeking
of showing off when
you’re trying to talk
to someone else
for a change
so it’s a shock when you
look away how quickly
almost passive-aggressively
the physical world
snaps back into place
when the poem dies.

Falling Maple Leaf Rag Valentine

In the middle of
the pendulum
at the end
of the millennium
there are several
sidetracks to tackle
but physics is simply
something excreted
by the spirit which
the soul poor soul
must be what
labors endlessly
to turn us into
compost poured
on dead soil.

Actor's Valentine

A sparrow ducks down
when an orange butterfly
flies too near its head
then fiercely hurries off
in spurts strangely like
a swimmer doing
the butterfly stroke
but we kept filming
this scene over and over
until the sparrow
had to be hospitalized
and the director
arrested for holding
a butterfly hostage.

Scorpion's Valentine

Indigo time of day
time to sit and pray
what time is that for you
not religious pictures
that’s already over
more like that ancient
humming sound between
the spheres we corrupted
into aum and sex
so now it takes four
or five hours of hard
concentration to produce
ten to fifteen seconds
of true silence.

Second Full Moon In Aries Valentine

And like gold which
is always waiting to be seen
waiting to be seized
as if from another world
that gilting only perfected
by the sun as it enters
or leaves this world which
only the highest
icons could achieve
could you imagine such
creatures such fierceness
living inside you
a gold mind
a mind of gold
and everything you touch
a human wish.

Manly Valentine At The Fish Balloon Parade

Involved in oblivion as we are
when you say flying dragon carp
do you mean flying human crap
as if consciousness weren’t more
than a positive mental attitude
however panicked it may be
to be a kayak in the rapid vowels
of desire who at last finds peace
transfigured by the maelstrom
of himself beached beyond reach
where finally the mind lies down
unwilling and/or unable
to go past understanding
and so gets left behind.

Anton's Ass Valentine

What is this purity
and what is the purpose
of being in its presence
of course with stones
the builder wants the purest
geometry to work
but in our human hearts
we miss the calm
of being without a body
knowing it must exist somewhere
as the happy opposite of us
the first two times
it was taken from me
but the third time
I gave it up myself
out of my own free will.

Worldly Valentine

Come fall I like to sprinkle
a little bone-meal
on my neck and shoulders
rub a little iron on
my chest and thighs
to calm the sulphurous clouds
built up by summer’s
torrid waking-dreams
I am the world
the world c’est moi
and yes I can still see
you’re dying O earth
of your own kind of AIDS
and yes that I must
someday somehow
go on without you.

Adam's Valentine

If you think way back
before Adam became
Adam and Eve
so the story goes
Eve had already
been plucked
bedded by an Elohim
an even more connected
being than Yahweh
later proved to be
(sadly Adam afterwards
conflated these events
always feeling Eve
betrayed him
even before they’d met)
but Cain was her firstborn
a fire that came up
from the center of the earth
as much as from above
people could see him coming
and could take him
seriously all jazz and
baseball like the spring
he became Osiris and
then later Persephone
then you.

Atheist's Valentine

In my purely theoretical soul
I can feel all of it the full
animal weight of what
the heart demands and
what the heights attain
but is thinking a curse
better to live with the birds
in our steeples than harbor
masters we know not of
in my purely theoretical brain
I perceive a long desperate
loneliness sitting alone up here
much to the expense
and humiliation of all
my other parts down there.

Knight's Valentine

There’s that unaccountability
in all human communication
and some clear authority besides
but did you say knight
without amour or knight
without armour
people laying down
on the tracks to stop the trains
during the revolution in Russia
people hanging from the boxcars
struggling to escape
show me your hands
the hands of a woman
who never worked
a day in her life
a countess imagine
people being pushed
this way and that
we’ve all been through
a great strain a younger man
who loves you kills himself
to distract the guards
so you can escape
only to fall immediately
into the hands of the
local police and
then you phoned
the footage regressing
to silent Marlene I was
listening to you it was
1938 our lives weren’t
watching us and we were
hardly even getting ready
to be born.

Just Wrong Valentine

Thirty years ago I would drive
a long way to the city for sex
and spiritual development
but now I prefer being wrong
all the time and living among
those who want to stay wrong
no one here is ever alone
though no one feels
they really belong
our only crime is love
and we commit it every day
out in the open fields
some call us the holy criminals
of love a couple for hire.

Recovery Valentine

The morning’s holy secret
gradually reveals itself
in the criminal history
of the afternoon sun
spent mostly preparing
for evening to relapse
there’s no such thing
as recovery unless
you count the midnight
hour’s hairpin turning
the nymphs and sirens
singing sweetly of love
it all working on you
little to your credit.

Forgotten Valentine

One day all we’ve gone and done
will be weighed up by forty-two
green caterpillars who’ll become
forty-one orange fritillaries
who became eighteen
individual fragrances
who sit on the thrones
of their gods in animal forms
judging if we took up
whatever they gave us
continuing the work
they started or would we
really have to undergo
the punishment of another
great and primordial soul.

Tuneful Valentine

A tune in my head
turned out to be
a wound in my heart
which turned into
a bloody gap
in my thought system
but what explains
the wounds on my feet
the bleeding toes
who’ve clearly taken
a wrong turn
on a long road
downwards and inwards
‘righty tighty’
but if you love the morning
then you love the fall
nothing it’s like waking up
a morning in fall.

Cupid's Valentine

To live at the gate
of not knowing you
with a bowl in
one hand and
a sign in the
other saying
what surprized me
wasn't Venus really
the holy body as such
it was Cupid stupid
where would she be
without his careful
stabbing at you
without those
scars tattooing
your whole body?

Cable Valentine

Excuses begone
run for your life
Nancy is sewing
a bull is riding
sex slaves in
the suburbs
25 greatest
sleep numbers
will rescue you
from untold
stories of the E.R.
20th century
battlefields
lockdown chefs.

Private Valentine

Private as a snail
in a field of masks
where was I attending
some hierarchy on a hill
I saved the rain water
for the bird-bath
so few beauties left
the old mother tree
stripped bare
which would have been
enough time
but man is such a phony
whose whole game
is getting off.

Exiled Valentine

In our time love
was buried alive
perfectly preserved
or maybe merely sleeping
I couldn’t tell which
when the curtain
was briefly lifted
all I could take in
was that beauty
naked on the bed
if those eyes had
seen me they would
have swallowed me up
but as it happened
I was simply exiled
to this earth.

Cool Valentine

On the first
cool day
I open
if one
then all
the windows
what comes
to us
isn’t fall
after the heat
but a second
spring no
virgin now
these are not
the sixties
these are the
eternal
dateless days
when the world
dissolves back
into the hearts
from which
it poured
in a breath
of trees.

Dodgy Valentine

Dodging homeless bodies
dodging raindrops
on a wet dark street
the beautiful graveyard
of the world the sound
of someone digging
someone pounding in
a stake from time
to time him or her
the engineer of this
old dream perhaps
taking readings
of the granite fields
around the heart.

Message Valentine

Please leave me
a message
at the sound
of the sea
or if you’re
in the mood
at the crack
of the moon
or it drags
you up or
it brings it on
in the dark
everyone touches
everyone else
please leave me
a shore-line
and I’ll be calm.

Hard Valentine

Ultimately I expect
a successful outcome
to everything
accompanied by
the usual disclaimers
a harmony hacked out
musically despite
personal abhorrence
which would probably
surprise their objects
should they become
known to them
who doesn’t want
to be perfect
that’s a hard one.

Story Valentine

As soon as they
emerge they mate
even with one still
drying off barely awake
they stick it in anyway
sometimes flying off
one hanging from another’s
ecstasy (imagine
three year old humans
having babies)
but this is how things
are done here and has
nothing to do with love
which as we can feel
for ourselves
comes much earlier
in the story.

Little Valentine

Do I am
have I wait
such you as
was no waste
for wall’s remain
unget it never
can’t to can
stand sentenced
sham head given
roll retained
drum riven
was I will
wrung in you
mistaken?

Cowardly Valentine

Her name is Pain
Ms Pain Shoulder
and no she isn’t
from Colorado
but there are several
other places she’s been
and more she plans
to visit possibly stay
a while stretched out
under the sea-lit sun
no way she’s done
with traveling frolicking
or me though I have raved
how much better you
could offer her
your looks and youth
the unspent treasure
of her touching you.

The Evolution of Reality Valentine

When I looked up
from your face
all I could see
was harp-shaped
clouds marching
in rows over the
cobalt carpet sky
do you ever think
of the cosmos as
another busy street
we must jaywalk across
to get to the photo archives
let’s go from facts to process
not the other way around
the evolution of reality
absolutely depends on sleep
since even when we’re awake
most of the time
we spend dreaming
wandering in and out of
the island of the dead
who watch us closely
everything we do
but completely without
blame or judgment.