Julian's Valentine

How each thing
has its own
prideful nature
and its own
secret name
inside the coliseum
of the mind
where the words
do combat and
death is
closely observed
by large crowds
we call the body
to prove it doesn’t
exist except
as dust

Watering Valentine

You’re my favorite
I say to the deep
blue flax but then
I say that to all
the phlox family
and to you lonely
Miss Scarlet
Hollyhock (finally
showing up) and
you feathery-leaved
cosmos flower
for whom I wait
as if I waited
for the world

Fatherly Valentine

Because he never had
his own father growing up
he never learned to defy
his father but only to please
and make him proud
and you can see that
in his later political life
or take this one who
did have his own father
but felt only contempt
for him and thus never
experienced a father’s
pleasure and respect
not as something earned
or sought but the free gift
of his original affection

Franciscan Valentine

Just like St. Francis
I stretch out my arms
for birds and butterflies
to land on though they try
not to embarrass me so one
hummingbird finally
momentarily volunteers
did you just see that
did that just happen
Francis was showing us
what anyone could do
who loves the earth his joy
but he suffered when
he saw we wouldn’t even
stretch out an arm or two

Because I Know You Read This Shit Valentine

Hey Sweetie Time speeds
past us every day faster
and faster I don’t really
accept it but I guess we’re
busy well and thinking
of one another every day
so try to catch me if you can
when you’re free and we
can catch back up on
back in the day or whatever
love is not enough for us is it
we who deserve everything Yours J

Karmic Blues Valentine

I feel living in a body
is like living in a prison
and like all prisons
the point is to escape
or take the time
to learn a new language
but not even death
allows for that and
even though I don’t
recall all my crimes
I know I’m guilty
and that the law is 
ultimately just
though not always
fair hardly fair
but I feel its desire
to put things right
as the main motivator
in the majority of cases

Tom's Valentine

Light finds its own day
manifesting some intelligence
above the level
where cats can reach
where you must build
your tiny nest
or you could become
an amuse-bouche
for some passing Tom
so first let’s stop
eating one another
in all these various ways
and then we can talk
about coming back
to the old place
and knowing it
for the first time 

Robert Duncan's Valentine

At the crowded store
where I found this
liquid soap the guy
at the check-out counter
smiled explosively
remarkable eyes
so now whenever I wash
with this emerald
cucumber-scented soap
his face materializes
in my mind as in a mirror
like a mocking balloon
of the genuine article
when love enters in

Onegin's Valentine

How much happier Tanya
would have been with Lensky
they agree about love while
Olga and Onegin agree about life
and would have been happier
just having an affair doesn’t
Eugene even tell Lensky he would
have had him pick the older
sultrier Tanya over the boring Olga
Eugene is terrified of boredom
it’s the first thing he asks Tanya
aren’t you bored here in the country
filling your head with love stories
when it turns out in the end you’ll
prefer duty to passion and ruin
habit to happiness and doom

Wall's Valentine

Turns out all that saved time is lost
time because all time is lost time
or perhaps merely inexperienced
or not remembered a lot
turns out it’s only the past and
future that have any real existence
what we call the present’s just
the sound of their bumping
headlong into one another the shutter-
click of recognition capture
then dissolve to the next embrace
I have pasted you on my wall
the one that stands forever

 

His Valentine

Somehow I’ve turned
my Tourette’s outside in
so now I’m always shouting
something dreadful at
myself inside dreadful
hateful curses that go
on and on unheard
and getting my feelings hurt
as if embarrassed by the truth
and then remembering oh yeah
right it’s not his fault
it’s his karma that’s at fault
so much to get over himself
so little him

Existence Is ‘God’ What Part Don’t You Get Mr. Hawking Valentine

Existence is not negotiable
the way living here is
even shovels pulled
over stones know this
echoing of swords
but to sign or not to sign
should be the question
I mean if we are all signs
of something ourselves
the evidence the autopsy
of an idea which has died
into the things themselves
even if you can only think
it through this far to love
it’s all a question of perception
and then valuing
then the gratitude can come

On the Last Cool Day Before Summer Drops the Hammer Valentine

The old man across
the street emerges
with a pail to pick
a dandelion and
arugula salad
from his yard
it looks like
he eats daisies
too his face
is so expansive
I hadn’t noticed before
how he appropriates
the sun nodding
behind those branches
sometimes he gets
caught bending over
and can’t straighten
up but gradually
walks himself upright
again by the time
he reaches the door

Left Behind Valentine

Some days are so beautiful
in that smiling understated way
I just want to say to everyone
it’s OK go on without me
I think I’ll stay impossibly
stuck here in this mid-morning
brawl of everything just getting
underway the trees heavy-laden
with colorful promises the ground
trembling with roots and worms
like someone shuffling his feet
I just want to live here
in the knowledge of this one
resurrected day before hope
has to intervene again
with its hopeless warnings
about anything at all
to be accomplished here today

 

Ars Poetica Valentine

Already there are the round
red asses of the infant
pomegranates the earliest
ones while most are still
busy becoming the color
of light red flowers does
that make me a nature poet
or if I said light red vaginas
would that make me shameless
as a New York post-modernist
poet who knows what to do
with poetry that’s the point
don’t turn it into a face book novel
don’t save it from its outlaw roots
its secret unprintable future
all it must do to reach you

New Moon Valentine

Deeper into the visible world
where your love manifests
as leaves and skin and
as quick as two sparrows
him jumping on and off her
maybe eight or nine times
as long as her wings kept
trembling more more he’d hop
back on and do her justice
until she’d had enough and
hopped to another branch
chirping that was great
it sounded like to me
and flew off leaving him
shaking himself together
then bursting off after her
yeah dude like that
your love visible and invisible
natural and unnatural 

Eleusis Valentine

The worst thing
is to be pulled up hard
against one’s own
serious limitations
I mean especially
after the prophecy
of childhood to feel
the heaviness of things
sink in but refuse to be
limited by that instead
to accede intuitively
to a sense of one’s own
inherent illimitability
the full flowering of each
self that can only happen
over lifetimes and in which
this life must necessarily
be incomplete a missing
piece of everything and yet
hardly anything at all in all

 

Windy Valentine

A shrub with delusions
of grandeur I trained
into a small tree which
suddenly stood above me
blue flowers hanging down
whispering so now I suppose
you want this for yourself
as well but everywhere I look
I’m a fake tree bobbing and
weaving with sudden gusts
of self-disgust inescapable tsunami
for days cast up on the highest reach
survive to survey the damage
and the loneliness of God

4 AM Mockingbird Recital Valentine

More muscle contractions
than songs we think of them
as songs but it’s more the
ringing of etheric bells
or a high-strung xylophone
struck to ripple out into the
populated air of a new Florence
or a deeper penetration of a
new New York notes played
by the ego of that species
whose rhythmic bursts
of pleasure and joy
come to feed come
to heal the world

Valentine's Dreams

Valentine’s first abortion
was actually in an earlier life
when he was a she
love feeds first on the slow
or lame too old or too
young to keep up
 
Valentine realized one morning
his dead friends and relatives
were coming to graze and nibble
on his dreams a not unpleasant
sensation he grew addicted to
 
but some nights they’d come
to parched and barren fields
and Valentine would watch
their sad outlines turn and lumber off
to starve another night
 
the unimaginable poverty
of the dead he thought
forced to survive
on our uninspiring dreams
with supersensible frugality

Samba Valentine

I once met a Valentine
in the witness protection program
for having forged a computer
from the toothed wheels of his heart
what a little shit
cowering in his cave as if
all librarians are hoarders
(is one hoarder a whore)
who thought the things just wanted
to leave to abandon us again
all our lovely bargain traitors
it’s not so much the amount
of the shit you have he said
but the freakin’ mess it’s all in
so you can’t even find
your dick or your vagina
whichever the samba

 

Late April Fool's Day Valentine

When the crows regard the balconies
with their flowering symptoms and
the ripe succulents begin to bloom
as their ancestral heritage and home
once open hills of sea breeze
now modernist visions of cement
when the crows begin to land
and scratch around on the balconies
toppling the glazed pots and tables
will I still think I’m dreaming
but I still can’t stop thinking
and rather than trying not to
maybe I just need to resurrect
my thoughts crystalize them
with forms that lift them up
from the brain-grave to walk
the world as trinities and saviors
do you know who I am
the homeless man yells in the street
I’m number one
you can’t take me down