He Said Valentine

Come inside
the whole yard
belongs to one starling
black backward slash
bouncing across
the red brick sentences
so much easier to lose
something than to find it
yet here we sit he said
though it’s not just to satisfy us
a goddess or friendly demon
occupies the facilities
dictating feelings
our flesh their battlefields
but what if after all this
we are only at the first grade
of suffering

Even Valentine

One finds solitude
in all the strangest places
and in the end to be
an unanticipated bonus
whose necessary outcome
is to deepen and to sweeten
times with others close or
even walking in a mall alone
and yet aware of the intimacies
of strangers which involve one
as a relatively real commotion
looking at but trying not to see
one another’s joy or sorrow

Lost Key Valentine

Poetry is the first place
words should go to find
and revisit their feelings
the extra key to the car
hidden in the secret drawer
when you’re locked out
of the exuberant emptiness
of morning like a machine
that’s been shut down
do we think of us that way
poetry is the first place
the I of each of us can go
after a coffee and stagger
back from all there is to this

Reincarnational Blues Valentine

I admit I grew so tired of you
of the sameness of our lives
though we knew it had to happen
I admit I wanted to run away
I confess I dreamed
of royal blue Canadian lakes
and the farm which was our name
for what wasn’t really a farm
but another life
I concede I conceded
I wanted to take you back
to earlier periods in my life
to earlier periods in yours
over and over I wanted us
to start again until
we got it right

Later Valentine

Today I want to go
to some forgotten lake
but I want someone else
to drive this time
so I don’t have to
risk our lives
ogling every interesting
or beautiful thing
or person passing by
along the way
so when we get there
after plowing through
endless wastes of desert
like  worlds at the bottom
of the sea I’m not
sweating and full
of despair for humankind
but can take off
my clothes again
and enter that
water cool and clear
like it was eternity

Valentine Written While Listening to Lisa Robertson Reading Her Poetry So You Know It’s Poetry On My Computer (from her poem “The Weather - Saturday”)

Da da da as uu eff of
se da de it du dud ba ba
dad dad pop fon fon
ta ta na wa di fo it fro
te la do daw ight ni na so
fuc be fa of too de en in a
num num wast so so dad
munni ni ni nee af ear
a ba a li a ight tot all ly
per she em a or an or
amo en fa geema in esstee…

(at this point I lost the signal,

the one from my muse I mean, later)

Pierrot's Valentine

Comedy occurs in the spaces
between expectation and tragedy
and vice versa
a pile of toy cars assembled
on the living room floor
58 dead
if you rely on opportunity alone
you end up with opportunists
without a sense of humor
my life has lived me more
than I have ever lived it
and I can say that with relief
as if I would have known
what to do at each
opportune event

Missing Valentine

If after forty years
sitting in this chair
watching grass and
sky and wall between
and then going right
to left a bird flies by
and then later another
going north to south
or south to north
as the case may be
on any particular day
and I still see it
as a message for me
I still take it personally
and leap thinking
to go with it then yes
there may be something
irretrievable in me
something missing
struggling to return

Ephesian Valentine

In my open secret garden
where unseen I like to stroll
around and sit in the shade
miniature as the rain even
or at last under the pomegranate
tree which these days
looks more like many-breasted
but still green Artemis
whose tender areolae
will I pluck and discard
on the compost so a few
a lucky few left hanging
can ripen to perfection or
get gorged on by the birds

Michelangelo's Valentine

Day turns his back on us
oddly falling into himself
peering at us over his shoulder
right leg lifted defensively perhaps
aren’t muscles amazing
which is strange because Morning
seemed wise and mocking though
interested in what we had to say
turned full frontally holding
something I can’t see what
a photograph can’t hide
how Evening is no allegory
but something physical that floats
toward Night whose left leg
covers but whose breasts invite

Conceptual Valentine

I remember having feelings
and still do at times
not just the casual sturdy kinds
we use to contain
the monotony of works and days
or that we are all emotionally
occult to one another
the usefulness of that contract
and confusion or the hopelessness
of our desires not the same as
the despair of our desires
I remember feeling all these
with deep devotion even awe
before the concept came
to frame them and explain
the man and woman of cognition
we alone within can marry or divorce

Leaving Me Valentine

It was summer
I was eating a lot
of watermelon
with gin I was
about to commit
another sin
I was new at this
‘going within’
I built a little tent
in my head
and crawled in
is this what you meant
I tried to act surprised
when you kissed my chin 

 

Death Bed Valentine

So now I suppose
you’ll get serious
with three grains of light
left in the hour glass
who reaches for
the true books of
knowledge you’ve
collected over a lifetime
the important paragraphs
underlined annotated
loaned out to a friend
never seen again
thank Someone
you remember the words

Grandma's Valentine

One of my first impressions
from about three or four years old
standing in my grandma’s backyard
watching school kids at recess
behind the fence across the street
and standing alone in the silence
after they’d all been swallowed up
by that huge gray building called
‘Sacred Heart’ except for me
the loneliest boy in the world
not counting I was too young
and didn’t really live there but
for the first time I remember
feeling two opposing things
at the same time torn
wishing I could join them
in their fun and yet
happy I didn’t have to yet

 

Twilight Valentine

I went out to see the sunset
I was the only one called
layered orange light
behind trees and houses
throbbed at the end of the street
a stillness and nothing moving
and when I turned
satisfied the day was over
along the roof edge
I saw the full moon riding
toward me still chasing
the last yellow remnants
of sunlight still clutching
the last of its gold

Monsoon Valentine

After a heavy rain
where everything gets soaked
I feel like getting drunk
and listening to the kind of jazz
that goes with dry martinis
and the performance of the present
 
and yet I want to reminisce
about the last five minutes of existence
during which you hypnotized the sun
eased the release
of its repressed self-feelings
like the relinquishment of longing
 
after a heavy rain
I long to see you
lift your glass again

Cricket's Valentine

In what excellent haiku
will I be hidden next
cleaning my toes
 
a figure in the landscape
without which there is
no landscape
 
whether fallen into the sink
or risen up through the pipes
baby lizard gets trapped
 
how can there be a world
based on everything eating
everything else to survive
 
what nourishes my soul
more than the idea of a soul
even if I don’t want to believe in it
 
it’s the light that eats me
but the darkness
spits me right back up

Nobody's Valentine

The nobody in the next chair
(there are only two chairs)
I often address in a formal manner
though he’s a very casual dresser
usually wearing nothing at all
no skin or bones or breath
one naturally thinks of death
but nobody doesn’t think like that
he thinks of life and the life after that
he thinks if their word for Granada
was our word pomegranate
they would never have named
that city Pomegranate
but somehow Granada works

Finder's Valentine

I hate myself (a bit)
that I can still feel
broken-up about you
and I hate you (a bit)
for what you cannot
feel about me
but at the same time
I feel so many opposite
things about you
and me and what
I hope you will find
of love in the world
there can be so little
at times at others
so much so much

Half-Born Yesterday Today’s Valentine

Real poetry is at least
as alive as Twitter
what text can’t afford
not to come in the form
of a poem if how the lines
are broken makes
or breaks a poem
but I can sit so
I just get the rain
on my feet so I
can feel the electricity
sleeping in the grass
like the one poem
that unites us all
so when the hummingbird
through drops swings by
I can tweet myself
into the sky

Vernon County Valentine

I made a path through my woods
with a little clearing to sit in
on a stump larger than any tree
growing then in what was left
of the unimaginable first forest
which co-exists with the I
I was then it was circular
and followed already established
deer or rabbit tracks except
when it wandered off to take
advantage of colonies of wake
robins trilliums clumps of
hepatica and jacks in their pulpits
still preaching in my graveyard brain

Triptych Valentine

The true purpose of beauty
is to distract us from the truth
which is invariably abrasive
and insulting at first
like an abused child or animal
before you get to know it
and you start to show it
first as a performance a recital
a point of referential magic
you release like pollen
which is the point of everything
evil going out into the world
goodness coming back

Marital Valentine

Not for nothing does marriage
rhyme with carriage or disparage
or in arrearage or in steerage
or cleavage or wattage or dotage
the way medicine is always advancing
and therefore always primitive
does love get better like that
daily touting its latest discoveries
how you will be whole in body again
after someone else kicks through you
as if you were a doorway or more like
a window climbed through for clearly
love is not of this world
but has already come and gone
voyaging these skies in hills and stars 

Subterranean Valentine

Strange how the natural is the same
as the supernatural only the visible
the obvious half of it at times
at this still embryonic haze of our
proliferation or probation whatever
we remain outraged at
the violence we ourselves commit
just think of the mission
of obscurity in the uniform
development of critical theory
or some tissue in the lumbar region
when the truth stops at the teeth
and the small package of the ego
sleeps in the subway lost and found

 

Red Valentine

A nest of aneurysms
is my brain – holes in
my head as father said
 
but did he reflect correctly
how red capitulates to brown
mush of memory
 
let’s not go there
now we apprehend
every feeling has a GPS
 
every gaze is local
the red leaves but returns
the blood in everything
 
continuing to bleed
red embraces brown
brown embraces blue
 

Dragon Valentine

dan   luke   ruling   kimmy

remove and uh    supply-side

we like a canceling the order

junior caught doctoral

sci-fi   stingy   soonest expression

well leaving you   know I mean

wounded when alone

reversed oranges just put together

let’s get here     come on    ha

any difference   no not yet

autonomous head on the size

but it was yesterday   in his head

of the bills more willing

huggles along    jocelyn despots

archivist out   manual bras   nonstop

backing into grateful exceptional

cheap shot    he was in great seats

though about many

whole mike dot lights

you’ve never been cutest

I mean you shit about it

into my status   pinky site

it was fun living today

check   or    ruling    leaving you

I’ve taken some but you

what do you do     in just a moment

it’s not such a good deal

I mean top of the mobile basins on

the sovereignty white-out

I got home     alternate arrangements

I mean I think of    and everything

looking often     fellow

Amanita Valentine

How thinly I’ve
skated by
on ice so thick
 
this summer
death caps
delicious then you die
 
the function of fungus
as an early phase
of disdain
 
‘a destroying angel
breaks through its
universal veil’
 
trying to catch up
with myself only proves
how elusive I stray

Waving Valentine

Watching the death of me
among the surfers
the deft one
 
with the body of a bird
or a frog adapted to
a boy’s lanquidity
 
the body of a pistil
as it enters the hole
of the blue-green bottle
 
toppled on your desk
the tsunami of a petal
and then at the end
 
a little curl turning
on a dime and sinking
with a final salute
 
to whomever’s next
pray
it is another wave

Biographical Valentine

Sleeping dreaming
shitting pissing
standing walking
speaking thinking
I take my name
a pair of trochees
marching along
or yours how stupid
can it be to think
that you could be
contained by
O yes him
a lovely dactyl

Self-Hating Valentine

You to whom it is given
to know the secrets
of all ages and the ends
and origins of all things
say why we need
the sensuous world again
when it’s clear we do
but when it’s not clear
we have souls
or immortal parts
enough to really
appreciate it or are we
simply on vacation
from a moral world
of angels who have
descended to the merely
natural world of June
bugs earth-worms and
self-hating humans
be a good mother
could you please
explain it to me again

Camping Valentine

Summer exhales
the long drag
winter took
and held and held
and we are
high again
on a mountain
in a tent
by a creek
the summer before
we grew up
the winter after
we made love
it was something
like that
it was like
nothing else

Valentine Beginning with a Haiku

The all-encompassing one —
the sun caught sliding
along a toad’s tongue
it’s ten degrees cooler
when the toad sleeps in
I mean the sun
in its bed of down
in its bed of doom
the toad is the sun
or is like a toad leaping
into the sun
would it were
the midnight sun
and I and the toad

were one

 

 

 

Haiku Hunting Valentine

Heraldic research
proves inconclusive –
summer’s encircling hawks
 
but taken as a picture
of your life you can’t
go wrong starting
 
with the old yet find
you can’t make use of it
nor must it all be lost
 
but the pieces gathered
taken to the spring to be
dissolved and reassembled
 
of what spring
do you speak my love
but the spring of love

Perfect Valentine

With the world and me
I’m always trying
to fix it I’m like
a woman with a man
or it’s always trying
to fix me it’s like
a man with a man
we love the brokenness
but we can’t stop
trying to fix it
so we can relax
and finally know
that we are loved
that we are seen

Greed is the True Terrorism Valentine

We make the world vibrate
with words and money
words as a kind of money
money as a kind of speech
we trade words for money
money may be the only word
universally understood
but the more money you have
after a certain amount
the more immoral you become
the words know no limits
but you become corrupt
an abomination a devious
enemy of your own people
a word no money can buy back

Heavy Valentine

Finally it’s the heaviness
that gets to us of the earth
that we want to join them
the heavy things
in their heaviness
mountains oceans fields
like sediment filling
the mouth of the river
in the order of the seniority
of its heaviness
dragging its long parade
of heaviness behind it
far out to sea

Untitled Valentine

All I ever wanted
was to write one
simple sentence
that would contain
that would proclaim
this is not all
this all I see
whose proof cannot be
governed by such terms
but I wanted to write it
as a broken sentence
a kiss could patch
I wanted it to be
I love you