Wedding Valentine

‘Unavoidably lightly
or wantonly’ the archbishop
is wrapped in what looks like
a rug of a cape maybe all actors
after a certain number of
years turn ‘good acceptable
and perfect’ gifts just not in
this world where we marry
at a royal rate and then take back
our troths still amateurs at life
so with all sides dangerously
clueless I side with the
sex chat girl just making
a living playing with fire
who after all the nasty
her job requires she endure
says she still loves men
and mankind yes
and says it with a smile
tenderly totally.

With Or Without Awareness Valentine

I am trying to marry one
awareness to another slowly
or at least to introduce them
to one another gradually
like one of those stretch
bracelets of lapis stones
one rubbing up against
another on your wrist
the way each stone
closes off with its flecks
of gold inside each deep
thalo sky could be dawn
could be sun going down
I am trying to convince myself
of one awareness at a time
and can’t imagine how
they’ve come apart.

Family Valentine

All families are broken
all broken families
stay broken or go on
to be broken in new ways
all families go on
just as the last one dies
a distant cousin appears
carrying the lineage luggage
like the gold teeth of Auschwitz
dug up at night
by the children born
during Auschwitz
they spend the money
on college educations
for jobs that don’t exist
and have beautiful families
all families are beautiful
all families go on.

Mortal Valentine

If you have to say
something secular
about the heart
if you have to be
a coward a piece
of doggerel a twit
if you still haven’t
shat out that last
brown scrap of cruelty
and wiped the blood away
if you are so old to me
and we are so done
with the movies of our lives
and walking home
with even greater vigor then
say those mortal words to me.

Among Fallen Things Valentine

Picking small yellow leaves
and flowers out of your pubic
hair I realize how much I’ve
been wanting to write a sexy
poem full frontal and dorsal
and rear nudity of the poem
that is the male body
and the female body
as Whitman fairly put it
but why have we put a fence
around it to keep ourselves
out or to have to fight
our way through to
the original tenderness
of feeling you up?

Ideal Valentine

It’s not these sad bodies
perfect in themselves
in fact that are wrong
it’s that our souls are animals
who live always in sight
of their prey resting between
kills and couplings leonine
and vulturously clever
in fact a soul can be
any animal it wants
and the body can only obey
but the spirit has to be
imagined even the idea
of the spirit has to be
completely imagined
or the idea goes away.

Stolen Valentine

Isn’t memory mostly instinct
supplemented with pictures
sensations dream-like and
vivid water-color sketches
like the ones we shoplifted
from a tiny gallery in Maine
in 1969 was it the life
we wouldn’t be living there
facing the Atlantic
winters we did want to
that made us do it
take something back
with us not ours to
remind us of our loss?

Easter Valentine

Lord what is it with you
and me why we don’t seem
to see eye to eye I suppose
one is always trying to strike
a certain note with one’s life
whatever kind of life one has
a note like you or an animal strikes
its whole body constructed
to serve one simple desire
over and over and
to have worked out a certain
repertoire of strategies and
preoccupations like the boy
at the end of my block
who faithfully takes his motorcycle
out for a run once every week
tearing through the dark streets
at the highest volume of
exultant screaming
he will ever reach
this side of hell
or heaven.

Earthquake Valentine

Now who will lead us down
into the depths
into the underworld
where we must find
our way back to the dead
we the about-to-be-dead
now the world is a grave
of our own construction
who will come now with
his blossom arms and
his hands soft as petals
when the blood is poured out
the one the earth has eaten
the one carrying the stars?

Briefly Noted Valentine

In pursuit of the
turbulent penis of
happiness a novel
on the rim which came
out in mid-November
not for nothing but
for money an illustrator
of the dead working
on a fourth bankruptcy
sings of his adventures
finished but constrained
in the country of I
if the rest is hysteria
you gots to be America.

Optional Valentine

Must I have communicated
my wish to you subconsciously
where exactly is that first
frisson stored at recognizing
some hidden realm inside
must be there for us to have
a deeper listening level option
not just a chemical understanding
of the history of my involuntary
movements must I have communicated
my wish to communicate with you
only out of the darkest recesses
of your secret life inside me
and not to have passed in the hall
at such excessive altitudes.

Wednesday Valentine

Dear daylight what
are you doing
for me so far
while I’ve been
hard tapping
to weave some
kind of kind
words together
about you and me
I mean if we
met someone dude
and I wanted to
introduce you
you don’t look
anything like
Mercury not
near enough
balls or tats
for all that.

Partly Cloudy Valentine

The force of conscious thought
only lately recovering from
the force of willfulness itself
the strength implanted in nature
set going and intelligently maintained
even a man-made lake
perfectly catches the rays
of a blinding blessing
as could knock you off
your horse were this
the century of the plains
had you the sense that’s in a plant
or the rain that’s in sorrow
or the yellow in yarrow.

The Money Plant Valentine

Every day
one leaf
is yellower
the others
hurry past
not looking
not needing
to be how
green gets
on with it
actually sets
out to fail
to fail and
fail again.

A Different Moonlight Valentine

First thing you try
to write it all down or
hold something up
you have only half
a glass empty of time
to use tragically wisely
before beauty streams in again
with its posse of wintry
presuppositions like
a nail slipping through
a hand or buds built up
by a hidden universe
just the sheer volume
of stuff pushed through
that’s sun-driven green
and kneeling at your feet
the servant god
his fallen flower.

Palm Sunday Valentine

I would like to be of use to the dead
who of course go on being quite alive
and whom we accompany
and who accompany us
(let’s stop pretending)
in and out of matter
in and out of mother we cry
I want a home birth
though this is not my home
but the so-called dead
with their characteristic patience
clearly see what we here
need to accomplish and can
only accomplish here
and will tell us if we ask
though we’ve forgotten how
on this strange-familiar star.

Resinous Valentine

I keep looking at my life
turning it over and over
it has this amazing black resin now
I never noticed before and
how much more personal
it seems though still resistant
to any but anecdotal evidence
for or against itself still bringing
only unreliable witnesses
with unsubstantiated theories
to report on indefinite conjectures
and if you hold it away at one angle
from you the shining resin starts to melt
and run off like happiness into the ground
but if you turn it toward you like
sadness it never wants to let you go.

Little Lonely Valentines

like the shadowy characters of the past
my grandparents and you
sleeping moth

a man is bending to smell a daylily
beside a little girl
frozen there on the frig

all my ancestors gather
when I miss you most
after all I chose them

how can we have wanted
people who can’t talk to us
except through the silence

by the time the notes arrived
the music had already gone
old violin.

Twitter Valentine

The primary task for thinking today
must be how to comprehend
the non-physical foundations of reality
since we don’t believe in them anymore
nor even believe the reports
of those ancient experts who claim
to have seen and experienced them
on an individual daily basis
and therefore like us but
for an entirely obvious reason
had no need for or idea of religion
nor consciously separate world
and nothing to fear at night
but the newly-ejected moon.

Leopardi's Valentine

"I won’t call heartless
who gives me breath."

If night hawks plan
early bird murders
without awareness

(we have no way
of monitoring our suffering
without awareness)

if very high numbers of people
are willing to inflict pain on others
for even small sums of money

if we already know who would be
on slavery’s side today
if 1861 was scrupulously reenacted

without awareness
another spring image from Issa
another Chernobyl.

Window Girl Valentine

In flip-flops and torn
hoodie because
it’s chilly she hurries
and mini-shorts
because she can
she wears with
long pale legs
the Holy Ghost or
cigarette in hand
smoke thrown scarf-like
back with fashionable
bag over left shoulder
red with yellow rings
from my window I
caught you girl
in your quick going.

Sleeping Beauty Valentine

You consciously evil ones
with your millions
of mindless minions
who believe they’re
doing the best things
completely without irony
you can count on cowardice
can’t you crossing the river
of denial and even a refusal
on the part of the poor
to pay attention when
they’re being raped
you can count on them
for that infinity
of waiting can’t you
before they wake?

Mother Arriving Valentine

A wren’s face
in a tidied nest
of storm clouds
two mentally blue
egg-like serpent eyes
boiling and about
to crack open into
the four directions
the fluid future behind
the solid past ahead
till I appeared
that is when you
are all the blessed
this wounded lost?

World Valentine

Isn’t it the pink roses
with the gold frame
and the mauve roses
with the silver lining
you love about this sky
the way it’s bending
over backwards making
plans for us making us
its further mission
its true accomplices
as colors or as moods
and yet we stand still
in fear to watch
our intricate flesh
be extinguished by
this world we’ve made.

Rant Valentine

So Lincoln and Gandhi were gay
and Martin and everyone ran around
and Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s
baby momma whatever they use
to try to bring them down with us
to their level as if their ‘sins’
could lower their value for us
as if it was the human part
that mattered or what we drag up
from the past and not the implosion
of passion the actual behavior
of love they could only have
brought us from somewhere
outside this stupefied world.

Desert Valentine

A gray day
is a great day
in a desert

the first small bean
a little boy’s bud
or a little girl’s slit

the first moon’s wink
a tiny kayak tossed
over pink Niagara clouds

but I’m getting ahead
of my story
as I intended

better a poor dandelion
on earth than a cold
star in heaven.

Gay Valentine

One night in Istanbul
he agreed to go back
to their rooms with two
men for a smoke
one showed him the
scrimshaw on his hard
whale’s tooth penis
while the other went out
for something he wanted
them both but not in a
predatory way
early in the morning
he dressed and left
crossing the Bosphorus Strait.

Train Valentine

On the late morning train
from Paris to Switzerland
we sat staring out the window
searching for the France
of our patchy imaginations
which were looking strangely Minnesotan
when suddenly a sign flashed
Citeaux just a green field
I could see no ruins
no habitation
on either side the train
refused to stop though the monks
kept singing for us I assumed
Salve Regina so fast but that
was in another century
and we in someone else’s arms.

Bald Valentine

High winds that come
as static to us but their nest
doesn’t budge and he
seems confident it won’t
sitting austerely
on their (three?) chicks
the wind combing
his head feathers up
a mile in the air
a rat’s bloodied carcass
waiting for dinner beside him
guarding as much as praying
for his beloved’s sudden return
on such a great day for coasting.

Returning Valentine

Take the ferry to Aegina
when you return at last
maybe at the end of your life
bringing colored pencils
and good paper so you
can sketch the coastline again
as you approach and see
if you can find the Temple
of Aphaea’s amber columns
hidden among pines and scrub
on that hilltop where you
can spread a blanket
on the ground and sleep for
centuries or more.

Before Valentine

In that time
before perception
before sensation
unfurling leaf
even before direction
when you were asleep
just a dead idea
buried in the sadness
before affection
in its flower form
penile and opening
even before the owl
had thought of thinking
in that pale light
before light
I thought of you.

Issa's Spring Valentine

So here they are at 7:30
of a Sunday morning mounting
their mountain bikes as they
mounted their Speedos one gear
at a time into their seventies
except now they’re overweight
and the bikes are skinny but
strong as the backs of the poor
so I’m not worried anymore
even on this fat laughing pair
I make no judgment heap no scorn
cycle round each parked car O spring
on our empty street laugh louder
wake up everyone for blocks.