Where Things Go Valentine

Down hill
To the dogs
To the gods
Up the nose
Up the ass
Nowhere fast
To the hospital
To school
To work
To the hospital
Crazy
Better than expected
To be released
To hell

Pedagogical Valentine

To teach a hummingbird to sit still
on the head of the bust of an angel
a winged thought prepared to drift
off the page of the sky has always
been my life’s goal before that page
is turned or I’ve been able to comply
with what I’ve learned about the plot
and musculature of the story so far
a certain self-effacement because
of moving frequently as a kid
still evident even in his body
from which Giacometti could have
taken instruction but for me
always an arrow toward love

Evolutionary Blues Valentine

What world
is the moon
the seed of
or the sun
for that matter
the father of
these are like
boulders on the
sides tossed up
by what volcano
a god the way
the head in one
life is the stomach
for the next already
all his sins
baked in

Is Shakespeare Bisexual Valentine

What I don’t see yet clearly
hidden behind the glamor I love
when I look at the great murderers
the great liars the great thieves
(the great fliers the great schemers)
is what I could become
and mostly already am
my selves unanchored tyrants
sometimes sailing sometimes drifting
in drifting I do my best work
that through me something
better might enter
this world what more
could I desire

Violation Valentine

It’s a kind of vocalizing
such as one hears among old people
sighs and snorts and sputters
the motor running just fine
thank you out here on the freeway
of life seventy-two and ticketed
for doing 82 in a 70 zone
but I was just moving with the flow
of the traffic Officer I was just being
swept along surrounded by these
crazy California (rapping, I’m going to
lose my shit in Californ-I-A)
speedsters unable to switch lanes
them passing me right and left
and just as crazily  refusing
to let them intimidate me
old enough to be their father
all of them disrespectful bitches 

Glimpsed Valentine

My mornings are devoted
to proud Lucifer lord of light
my afternoons to Ahriman
his slow eating of the light
and in between at noon
for a split second or at
dawn I catch a glimpse
at times as the last
of the light finally
gets consumed
of the face of the truth
the beautiful face
of true goodness
flashes up in the dark
within as it passes

Proverbial Valentine

Even a cactus can die
in the right drought
there is some snow we cannot take
an allergy develops from over-rapport
so far from him they say we’ve gone
he had to come again
if there were only gravity
everything would crawl
snake-like along the ground
some think whatever it is
that lifts things up is him
we have always been exploited
we just get distracted
now and then

Enough Valentine

Every minute has a lifetime guarantee
a history a family a consequence
most of it secret exciting implausible
and yet it happens to all of us
when people die we can speak
as if they weren’t listening
or could still learn to feel
no one honest expects a rose
to issue from this thorny mess
a bush is a mess is a rose
I think not therefore I am not
but this is what happens every day
in my changing mind of stuff
the poem is never enough

Saying Goodnight Valentine

That stray cat buggers off for the night
about to leap the wall but stops
and turns looking back at me
as if he’s forgotten something
and changing his mind he
totters back to nuzzle my foot
purring and flicking his tail
but five minutes later he’s gone
when I’m not looking just then
so much happens unobserved
but when I turn back to look
it all seems exactly the same
I went inside and made a tea
of tree bark licorice and scotch

Clouds and Columns Valentine

Well I’m not asking you
to have hope the situation remains
pretty much hopeless enough
you either push that rock
uphill or lie under it
so what’s all this emotional
pandering about if not
to wonder what’s behind it all
what it’s a picture of if you
were to draw a picture of it
using clouds and columns
of sun and other lights to amass
the furthest paradigm of you
that’s what I drew

Actor's Valentine

The mark of a good person
is that terrible things happen to them
often they are subject to insane
producers and bad scripts not even
off-off-reality would mount
what you could overhear in
their dressing-room celebrations
where the worst scenes are played
and they can get trapped in those
theatres of violence that never close
though they may gauge their greatness
by the beatings they received like athletes
called upon to defeat suffering
over and over again

Resume This Virtual Machine Valentine

Personally I defer to sparrows
you are listening to the world
re-written as a Mexican opera
you can pull the plug on all
these sad commercials for
the four seasons the real ones
not just the hotel I realized you
had no comprehension for what
I was about to tell you finally
by the way you went on talking
as the domino silences fell
it wasn’t just the fault-line
exposed it was the way your eyes
crossed when I spoke about our future
somewhere under prairie skies

Castaway's Valentine

I thought I heard a plane overhead
but it was just my stomach rumbling

Armed Valentine

Motions on!  Emotions off!
you’re all over the map today
emotionally speaking and we
don’t have time for transference
but must hasten on to the core
issue of the earth for which
the eight other layers
are mere accretions cast-offs
the lustrous inner walls
of the shell the exoskeleton
of love and love-making
but see even as I was plunging
toward it I got caught
in the extraneous along the way

Nature's Valentine

They come like customers
not at all or all at once
a crush of reddish-brownish
finches storms the smiling
birdbath but suddenly the proud
mockingbird steps forth
to claim this puddle his
by right of the municipality
of song and ancient orange trees
what has a finch to offer
in complaint they wait
while his nibs sips and drips
nature’s a monarchy but they
have democratic leanings
and chatter among themselves

After School Valentine

Ambergris and amethyst

sit in the sunny window

one the perfume of the other

after their slow sea journey

from dawn’s ear to day’s mouth

the myths of the laceration

of nations and the roaring flames

they watched approach and fade

over a red cascade of names

the tide continually gets wrong

and must like a punished child

write over and over an endless

number of times on the board

of the shore I promise not to forget

I promise not to regret

Thoughtful Valentine

When I think of my mother

I think of death when I think

of my sister I think

of childhood when I think

of my brother I think of sorrow

but when I think of you

I think of tomorrow

even though you won’t

be there in the old

flesh and blood kind of way

in the old way of touching

which does not belong

in heaven

Chilly Valentine

A few cold days in the desert

is a wonderful thing if you

have to put a sweater on

to work outside listening

to the traffic and the voices

of children on their way to

school others off to work

while you’re practicing

the religion of sweeping

off a patio and the art

of dead-heading yesterday’s

magnificent glories

now no more

Heart's Valentine

Yes the gods are always awake

to supply whatever’s needed

but often they feel restless

about withholding the grace

they need to bestow or suffer

the waves of human hatred

which soon follow the waves

of fear at not getting what

we wanted the need

for which we ourselves

created the requirement

for lack of readiness

for lack of a pure heart

for which the gods must pay

Sun's Valentine

In the summer everything is shaded

but in the winter sunlight floods 

the inside of the house even as

the sun steps away as if it would

run shouting down the alley

but instead it calmly returns

growing more obstreperous and

in-your-face every day until everything

has to be shut and covered up again

back and forth it paces in a year

and we poor drifters are subject

to its moods and ruins its feline

accomplishments and doggerel tunes

deciding what to do with us

Yonder's Valentine

That other earth in the air

from which a fine dust

is always falling carried far

from harvested fields and barren

abandoned places and particles

of thoughts blown off course

parachuting down unseen

into the dreaming heads of lovers

into the lying mouths of politicians

the wind that wraps itself

around the world weeping

like a returning warrior

the Holy Ghost of the blue spaces

the earth a tear in his eye

I Want Only What I Need Valentine (for J.)

Birds grow like flowers here
and then are seen no more
right now it’s a cloud of towhees
who sweep through the mind of air

searching for this morning

landing in my yard until
they catch me sitting there
in the cornered shade
and pause and stare at me
and I can see they’re on the verge
of recognizing me but instinct
barges in and off they fly
with often a trill trailing
a series of musical chips
that take me into their sky 

David's Valentine

The worst thing we can think
about evil is that it doesn’t
really mean what it says
that it isn’t really serious and thoughtful
staying up late growing its plan
because it thinks it knows
what it’s up against
the fight of its life upon which
everything in the future depends
if the reins can slip finally
into its hands even if all
that’s left is a cosmic cemetery
a zodiacal wasteland it’s prepared
to go that far out there
like Goliath with no clue

Remembrance Valentine

Waiting for the moon
to come up over the house
next door so it can
fill out the spectral corners
of the yard with the black roses
that only bloom in the full
moonlight of this one cold
November night here
at the bottom of the world
the faces of the dead
bloom again to ask did there
really have to be a Hitler
a Stalin a Pol Pot
did we still believe in death
back then still think
our thoughts meant nothing
we actually had to do

Ferdinand’s Valentine

Sitting in the full moonlight
I realize it has always been
a question of which gods
I will follow and which gods
I must leave behind
if I am ever going
to get home or anywhere
and realize I am the one
who is making all this up
out of the creative power
of my own ideas good
and bad and can when I
get willing and ready become
a real human being

Meeting Valentine

Cold days I’ve always loved
to sit outside in the sun
letting the sun lie down
across me like the dead
body of my sweet friend
and marvel how it still
warms me his garment
of pale light laid over me
which is his body now
he has grown intangible
but clearer and seeps
into me and fills me
like the earth I am
nothing without my light

Provisional Valentine

Drifting off with the clouds at night
I notice the moon has the same round ass
she had that night thirty years ago
when such things mattered
how long it takes to figure out
the body is just an artifact
of time and sex can become
a kind of recreational activity
passionately tying us to the earth
we fall in love with the painting
and experience nothing of the painter
how she or he lives with blind
devotion to the light and just content
to be making painting after painting

All Saints Valentine

That idea that we
are really spiritual beings
who go in and out of
physical bodies over long
periods of time has finally
taken hold among certain
species of alligators and
western barracuda
who’ve grown tired
of the revolving door
and have recently applied
to become human
in the next go-round
forgiveness permitting