Conversational Valentine

You never listen to me
I listen to no one else
otherwise quiet morning
the rain barrel is full
clear all the way to the bottom
where the muck is sleeping
I can’t believe this tree
makes so many forests
but nobody wants them
and to think the birds regard us
as finished objects
their lives are so brief
I need a new nose-warmer
now that you’re gone
ants come for the crushed snails
you left in your wake

Pyrrhic Valentine

I admire the courage
of those who accept death
as the end of life and believe
we’re finally never seen again
but it seems a Pyrrhic courage
or wasteful Stoicism to me
if they’re mistaken
and yet in a way maybe
it’s right to be brave
in the face of extinction
along with everything else
for that too exists
after which nothing
is the same

Its Valentine

Echoing but not beginning
hanging in the air
yesterday’s dead
morning is for mourning
I finally figured it out
but it kept on weeping
apparently I was what
it wept about
sparrows for commas
the it paper-thin
on which the I was scribbling
leaving no impression
slowly the storm retreated
like Genghis Khan from Vienna
when a saint showed up
think how often
everything’s over
yet it never ends

Hangover Valentine

After a long night’s rain
snails climb the walls
to eat the paint or what
pulling their unicorn horns
along behind them
spiraling back inside
when touched and
dropping to the ground
and the cowbird with
his hooked beak flings
the gravel everywhere
digging for grubs or
worms while the barrel
cactus drowns in his own
saucer full of rain where
the lawn chairs lie plastered
with yellow leaves and
the limestone angel’s head’s
really looking green this time

Aubade Valentine

Fluttering classical sleeve
invisible arm
geese waving goodbye
 
do you remember the three
drops of blood on  the snow
pesky sparrows ate them
 
a goose in an epic
is like the three in magic
the end of the tragic
 
a bag of morning glory seeds
is burning a hole
in my rocket 

I intend to climb one

and bring you back
the swoon

Earth's Valentine

That you can still fly
on one wing
old leaf
 
brown sparrows
brown fruit hanging
slight differences
 
the earth my lover
all these years
secretly
 
except for that one affair
I ruined you it us
vengeful confession
 
but you’re a saint
you keep forgiving me
taking me back and back

Everything's Valentine

O mama throw me
from this plane of consciousness
everything asks
some more unconscious
than others of a sense
of the inflection as coarse
in the speech of things
we go in all liquid impulse
but when we’re cooked
a breeze smooths our petals
or leaves ruffle our breath
mostly we want to know
how there’s so little tenderness
after so much time

Conscious Valentine

It’s clear the trees
have always been asleep
and the plants it’s
their nature to dream
and the animals they’re
awake but lost in a trance
of instinct and smells
and we human beings
learned to think though
mainly about ourselves
but those who’ve gone on
to the place without bodies
wake up inside the dream
of all of this every day and night
(the plants and animals and us)
and put on their dancing shoes
if they’ve remembered to bring them
and can't wait for us to join them 

Moon Eclipsed Sestina Valentine

All those who have gone
out into the moonlight looking
have gone off now have become
moon shadows they have
all gone away into moonlight
all those who went out into it
and now they are all gone
though some tried to stay behind
to linger in the moonlight
but now they’ve all gone off
those who went out into it
and still there is so much
moonlight left behind

Brief Valentine

Because each of us is crazy
in our own singular way
beautiful and deformed
out here on our own say-so
and not sweating but struggling
though we can barely scrape
after thirty years together
the surface of one another
if the first million years of love
are spent digging the trenches
hunching in the bunkers
heavy artillery falling and
missing falling and hitting
maybe the second million
will have earned a brief peace
and clarity so long reclusive

Wrong Valentine

Is it finally getting to where
no matter what side
you’re on you’re wrong
yes everybody’s wrong
let’s start from there
instead of pretending
or even trying to be right
and let those who won’t
admit their wrongness
be recognized as the true enemy
of everyone because except
that knowledge arrive first
no good can come for
anyone or the earth

 

If I Were God Valentine

Would I be
a careless God
if I were God
would I be
a dispassionate God
would I be willing
to go to the point
of not existing at all
for my creation
if I were God
and even if everyone
has to eat some shit
would I be willing
if I were God
to suffer my children’s
insufferability wouldn’t
I finally have to be
willing to go looking
for a way to prove
myself to them
if I were really God
if I were really
willing to be God

Heaven's Valentine

Choose
any life
and go
gradually
you will want to
return to the earth
but then when you
come back next
morning and find the
new vines re-entangled
in their original wrong-
headedness embracing
one another not
the wooden trellis
which also seems
to think it can make it
on its own you’ll start
to have your doubts
about the earth
and fear returning
but too late

Physics Valentine #2

Time is what we leave behind
all we know of it is a river
like the relief we feel
when anything is finished
but the future in fact is breathless
or at least it seeps a kind of
timeless beauty in its willingness
to go anywhere and be anything
rushing forward like a gesture
constantly colliding but
bridgeless and unresolved
like the imagined friend
who unbelievably is still

Physics Valentine

Time is matter
but matter is
not time think
of Luther shitting
like the Pythian
seeress high on
fumes could sniff
the future and
deduce from there
its marred beauty
its unpleasantness
that hurries us on
to higher things

November Valentine

You can see everything here
only recently reached perfection
by the way it’s all just starting
to fall away like a pose at the
peak for a picture and then the
emptiness the little pause returns
courteous but impatient
and the descent begins
sometimes steep and earnest
sometimes a flashing stream

Dangerous Valentine

We hate the ones
we love because
they do not love
us enough although
we is a dangerous
word best used
sparingly as in
spare me not
the despair of
love it seems
so little a solution
to so mighty
our confusion

Honeyed Valentine

Honeyed coffee
a big horse fly
the train creeps by
the windows I washed
still look smudgy
in the honest morning light
how is a haiku
not like a shot
it is a lot
a praying mantis
is resting on a star
an iron one
head pointing
down to the ground
we missed our train
he says but I’m praying
for another

Twilight Valentine

Three male mockingbirds
are fighting over my kingdom
a fairly enviable acquisition
if you’re a bird or a yard
they chase and charge
one another like Lancelot
and Arthur or was that
Guinevere and now there’s four
is this a war or mating
who is ever sure
with those stiletto beaks
I wouldn’t want them
coming at me but just as
twilight starts their musicale
begins their four mouths open
with a chorus for the entrance
of the mocking moon
till only one is left
to preen and swoon

Remembrance Valentine #2

When no one remembers
remembrance day anymore
and nothing is observed
and no one notices
that nothing is observed
and really it’s all dead
and buried like the bird
we dug up in the yard
just bones we re-buried
and forgot again
now that we knew
death’s secret
his dissolving treasure
his fraudulent nature

Remembrance Valentine

It’s not grass
but it’s pretty
joyful and round
small and green
leaves seen from
above look flock-
like northbound
in November
in the story
he hates God
but goes on
searching for
the grail whatever
it is this year
will heal us
all forever 

Sentimental Valentine

I guess saving these
few knickknacks a feather
a crocheted hacky-sack a small
bronze minotaur makes me
a sentimentalist a hoarder
of sentiment but they’re
just leftovers of a handful
of indistinct days and nights
that call back the curve
of your shoulder or the
breeze on my face  
as you reached
to turn out the light
the light just got older

Surgical Valentine

Like a nail through
the back of my skull
the sun is drilling
a ray of light straight
through to my right eye
and filling it with a dark
sticky light like twilight
so now I see it was
the sun all along
who soldered our eyes
out of that peculiar
silvery substance
while the moon stood by
with her scalpel

Researched Valentine

It turns out
(do the research)
matter is just
another idea
we failed to
follow all
the way back
or forwards
for that matter
and not a good
result but the
falling of a
gradual con-
flagration so
now the weight
of what cannot
lift itself up
from within
here in time
suffers when
it’s gone

Recommended Valentine

How can people who torture hens
and cows and race horses and dogs
and torture pigs and turkeys
not want to torture people as well
this is the background music of our lives
the screams of the tortured no one hears
but what if angels used us to spread disease
or cause havoc every day in the world
because it gave them pleasure to revenge us
for wasting our lives on garbage
and then harvested us like animals
or kept us in spiritual zoos  
what might we have to say about it
but maybe that’s exactly what’s going on
at least if there's any justice in the world

Beauty's Valentine

I read somewhere
beauty has no future
which I guess is true
especially here on earth
and someone else who said
beauty didn’t even
have to happen
for things to work
in the world
as if it was a bug
and not a feature
not part and parcel
of the earth but
something added on
that does not last
for long

Mantric Valentine

You are beautiful and strong and good
baby be good baby she said to herself
over and over rocking quietly on the rug
it was her morning exercise her mantra
that seemed more a part of another room
or prior arrangement or decision
even the drapes seemed different
but she could look through the key-hole
of death and see what was on the other
side was just this life pulled inside out
with all the same people there to talk to
the only ones we know except there
we need them more than ourselves

All Saints Valentine

You can hear the microwaves
go off in the kitchens of heaven
if you were to walk down the alleyways
in the morning or sit out in the garden
and the leaf-blower down the street
and cars being beeped and driven off
even the smells wake up and walk
something sweet and acrid then
something earthy and caffeinated
little scent clouds that drift
dissolving and reconstituting
themselves and you can sit
hidden in the shade all day
and do that thing writers do
poking with a stick
at innocent paper