Contemplative Valentine

Is it a ‘contemplation of peonies’
a peonine complication for you
two in bud three in bloom
so we know it’s June
somewhere we once quivered
a pioneer’s flushed face
waits for you knows
how the ants must come
to eat your resin skin
holding the petals in until
they explode so
softly so completely
strange what we keep
private and fearful
you reveal with joy to all

Satori Valentine

Not under but
across from the fig tree
I almost said abyss
I sat watching
with an open gaze
nothing in particular
a few trees behind a wall
sparrows fall from rise from
I cannot think of the fig tree
without thinking of the Buddha
I almost said the beauty
we share the same brain
for a few seconds
as he passes through
but if you look at the religions
of the world they’re almost
all stories of young men
from some backwater town
who promise to change
the world and do -
so how come I’ve fallen
for the religion of you
I suddenly realize it’s true

Small Valentine

Still in the corners
of my mouth
the taste of you
sometimes
 
which of all
that must exist
this does exist
as well as small
 
but certainer than
memory’s kiss
or scent of clothes
or face of cloud

Social Valentine

These butterflies are our neighbors
but I don’t mean the social kind
though they are social at times
like today when we remember
the dead but not the war
that changed the world
even though they don’t understand
the butterflies come back
as the dead grandma said
their wings actually stretch
far out into the starry darkness
hidden behind the peaceful sky
but we can’t see that yet
though once we did
and still as children may 

Holy Ghost Valentine

Thanks to you the world
does not merely go on
but takes on size and pleasure
as if following its first nature
 
thanks to you the color pattern
of the world takes on flourish
and verisimilitude in the decisions
of animals and nations
 
and thanks to you even Samuel Beckett
is wicked sad but not defeated
though his picture of the gods
as somehow unimaginable just
 
a teenage illness he was eager to admit
without whom only dementia
and devolution would ensue
and everything really turn to shit

Revolutionary Valentine

Is this picture crooked
or is it the country itself
do we really think we
don’t see them lying
to themselves and then to us
as if words weren’t already liars
the moving gesture of the lungs
the same in every language
used to say the great untruths
we gradually discard/relearn
you see how sententious
words become when we try
to take them seriously
how they’d like to take over
and push us completely to the side 

Passing Valentine

The great mineral mind
of the earth its fiery core
to which we descend
with our own feelings for hell
which prove fleeting unfaithful
watching the moon slide
across the astonished sun
like death at the door
a shudder passing
was it a god
gone through you
sun through glass
or merely your life
shaken loose?

Victim's Valentine

But the doorstep

is swept clean
to his hovel
which turns out
to be a cavern
containing a marvel
of a castle
where what is dead
in us rises up
and takes over
and usually we
are none the wiser
who is using whom
spellbound by
the power to leave
our bodies if only
for a few moments
timeless there
on the floor

Haiku Valentine

The beauty of the world
yes yes but what’s
really behind it

pausing as if trying to remember
the answer
the hummingbird

while the world he says
I have often mistaken
for myself

a couple of clues
with which to reconstruct
the implications

as if it cost you a great deal
every syllable
freshly spent

Ghost Valentine

In the beautiful body
of a young man I love
the ghost of the morning
sometimes comes quietly up
behind me in the kitchen
or sitting in one room
I sense him sitting
down the hall many
a trackless path he’s traveled
the ghost of the morning
hunger not passing him by
his appearances are brief
unpredictable and washed
with a simple gray light
lifting and gone by noon

Ascension Valentine

Thinking one’s way back
from a wholly physical
grip on the world
to the primacy of some grace
preceding what then
becomes possible of appearance
is a desert road
into the eternal world
but I use this daily miracle
going on inside every
person thing and story
merely to illuminate
the proof of love itself
which is never over
and never enough 

Sticky Valentine

Not letting them come

to seed yet but flower
after flower climbing
the dragon stem
the painful openings
at night the triumph
of its fragrance
on your fingers
when nipping it
in the bud use
your thumb nail
to slice through
and just for these
few petals how
many beings gave
their lives

Mother's Valentine

Before warmth

became a part
of all things
it was just itself
free-floating
as a flame
in the darkness
before the fragrance
of its lovemaking
emerged
the nectar and
the rivers of blood
poured out
to make the worlds

Jess's Valentine

You said every kitchen
needs a chicken
a picture or a pottery
chicken the abiding
spirit of the place
who awaits your presence
or your absence it’s
immaterial to her
as she sits and broods
nesting on the future
even without food or water
even without eggs
for that matter
where every afternoon
her green wings seem
about to flutter
as if she heard someone
finally at the door

Dropped Valentine

I crossed the room
just on time to watch
that fly's two hindlegs
as he lay on his back
kick death in the face
before death won all
morning it had been texting
me with its grinding buzz
but I wasn't in
I was a water feature
shaped like a guillotine
or a free-standing window
I crossed the world just
on time to watch you die

Garden Valentine

I always wanted my
little garden to be
a silhouette
of eternity
simpleminded
but lit up
so many winged things
are drawn in
to nest and feed
to bathe and sing
a barefaced idyll
a living work of art
of all the arts
always I’ve wanted
our old garden back

Sonnet Valentine

The bomb was intended
for a whore they said
but it never made it to Washington
when the smoke trees bloom
a pink fog settles in the desert
under the Scorpio moon
we are pushed forward in time
which is flat until we fall off
then it's all backwards from there
here the saguaros are eaten out
by owls and wrens and vanity
all for this beautiful silence
picture me driving west
listening to Bach or 60's best

Exile's Valentine

Take the moon away
what would happen
a light would have gone out
the stars would seem nearer
there would be no tides but
a dissolving sense of time
we wouldn’t have our earth
reflected back to us
silent in space a lifeless thing
wouldn’t have recognized
it was that part of us
we still refuse to love
the rejected one who must
eventually come home

Green Going Red Valentine

Not to treat plants
as décor nor pets
one is married to
because feeling is
just what they don’t
do at the point
of being a plant
such as we must
all become we
can only speak
of consciousness
as a general sense
of joy in moving
and being moved
the stars tightening
what the sun undoes

Pupa's Valentine

Her mind’s clarity is air
warmed or cooled by light
a wavering thing
where you can sit
while she encircles
and breaths through you
but so far this year
I’ve seen only one caterpillar
on the passion vine
and that one now is hanging
in the pupa stage
inside that clarity
of light and warmth
from which two flames
eventually will lift her
from her ash of flesh
to lay her million eggs
and then be gone

Self-Valentine

We both got one
but I wanted to know
what I looked like
from what others really
felt and were feeling
if love is not an opinion
the way fear is a conjecture
or at least a marketplace
of yesterday’s seedless ideas
(Gillespie cheeks blowing
their adolescence away)
but not for us alone
did the gods feel the need
to undertake a mission
to our superficial world
but that even among them
some humor still exists
where the self is concerned