Lyrical Valentine

Y U KEEP
MESSIN’ WID
ME BABY
Repeat six times
U DON’T WANT ME
TO MAKE IT
TO CHRISTMAS
Repeat three times
U DON’T WANT
NO LIGHT
IN THIS WORLD
Repeat and repeat
Add your own
Musical styling

Residual Valentine

Too perfect by half
The hibiscus discuss
The six minute poem
Placed on a piece of toast
What are these snails doing
Crawling between my sheets
I swear this is all
I could carry back with me
But even if I could retrieve
My steps the vision
Collapses into pottery
Broken to cover the bottom
Of a pot - good drainage
Makes good herbage

Paused Valentine

When the balance returns
He weighs the world again
To see who was worthy
Of summer who deserving
Of winter while Orion
Takes a stick to his options
So that things are equally divided
Between knowing and not wanting to
And then there’s Cassiopeia to pursue
Though they’ve never met
But the stars dream also
Pausing in their orbits
To bestow a few days on us
Of incomprehensible peace
The sun descending though dead leaves

Return of the Beaten Valentine

I said come on rain
But first the body smell
The wet foxy odor of it
Swept through this hell
And then shy drops
Darkened the wall
Like the slow approach
Of the beaten animal itself
So much light here
Tears us out of ourselves
But with the rain we remember
To come back to the ground
We fall right down on it
Like the body of a lover

Without Which Valentine

Reverence is the genius
Of the heart its deepest
Part without which
Even love is wrecked
For who loves what
They don’t respect or
Feel must be esteemed
As holy by the heart
Must all the virtues sour
If it’s lost or never found
Even the happiness of an hour
All runs to ground
Only reverence sees things
Worthy of its power

Goal’s Valentine

The ultimate goal
Is to grow the soul
Not as a figment
Of the imagination
Nor as a now-lost
Barely remembered
Musical instrument
But by some rhythmic
Alchemy of everyday terrors
Calmly viewed from afar
Your plan and name
You are the beast
That you must tame

Novice’s Valentine

The whole secret is
Said the novice of Sais
It’s not the movement of the veil
But what the mover meant
By not staying still
The secret is the will
And its efforts to be
Loved freely for
Itself alone the veil
Provides the pleasure
By which her beauty found
Reveals the treasure
Of the soul unbound

Enchanted Valentine

So far desire is wiser
Than knowledge the logos
Still dancing on the head
Of every pin-head the abyss
We still mostly regard
As optional the fact
Swims loose from its moorings
One feels one cannot act
With efficacy or pith
Enchanted by matter
As if it was the beginning
And not the end of an art
The painter not the paint

Contra Naturam Valentine

A homeless cat makes a home
In my heart and then I learn
An epidemic of cats
Is decimating the lizards and birds
This phenomenon evokes
An intervention so the cats
Are domiciled inside but still
Wild they call out
To one another in the night
Slowly forgetting how to hunt
And kill slowly putting
Aside the need for claws
The old jungle laws

Prelude’s Valentine

Another good reason
To be reincarnated is
If you missed Bach’s
Prelude in E-flat Minor
As played on a Saturday
Morning on a not-quite
Broken-in piano and a
Woman in a silk gown
Accompanies each tone
With her flowing body
A butterfly in a garden
While everyone in the room
Is weeping inside up to the
Final and only major chord
Which having seized your life
Gently gives it back again

Colder Nights Valentine

The lantana didn’t make it
In the heavy shade the black-
Flowered vine from Australia
Drowned in too much sun
The palo verde tree in its fifth year
Contracted esophageal cancer
Its leaves looked like dead coughs
The desert rose lectured on and on
About attachment and non-attachment
Using its neon blossoms as examples
I am I’m not I am I’m not
The compost grew fatter and wiser
Promising to start everything over
The way death always does

Scientific Valentine

The more accidental
Something seems
The more fundamental
Something streams
Through it
This is the first law
Of cosmodynamics
A science that seeks
To get past paradox
By making it commonplace
It was never a question
Of what the truth is
But of who
And you
There is always another view

Calling Valentine

Between the full moon and me
She rising in the east
Me sitting somewhere in the west
The moon catching the sunlight
Me catching the moonlight
Like two boys in a field with a ball
But what about the earthlight
Those who live in the moon
And those who live in the sun
Don’t they also say look
The earth is full and rising
And sit in their yards gazing
At the blue marvel blue marble
Each of us reflecting the other
Older sister moon and distant sun
All grown up calling to little brother

After the Feeding Valentine

So they gave me one of the leftover baskets
Of fish and a few loaves of bread
To take back to my village and

Share them with family and friends

Who all said they had never
Eaten such delicious food
And were amazed there were
Still some leftovers after
Everyone had gorged and
Had all gone home fatter
The leftover basket sat there
Quietly on the table in the dark
While everyone slept through
Another lovely summer night

Rich Man’s/Poor Man’s Valentine

Every socio-economic scheme
Only reflects the collective self-concept
Of any given people and place
Right now we think of ourselves
In a starkly Darwinian space
So the form that follows is either
Authoritarian or predatory
There are no Christians yet
On earth but one and he
Has only false followers
In those who claim him most
Though he would not like
Me saying that out loud
He is a gentle man

Already Valentine

If water woke and spoke
If air appeared not nude
If earth revealed
Its strongholds
So you could peer
Down into them
Like looking through
A lake if the fire
Let you hold it
In your hands
You’d be already dead
Or otherwise have
Left your head
There on the bed

Dear Valentine

You’re a dear you said
Yes tamed by the headlights
I won’t admit to being caught
The laughter of someone you love
Is the primary purpose of poetry
When it’s not being paltry
Which is always the risk
Not to have something to say
But everything to tell you
Here in this secret classroom
Of the mind which is the heart
A note passed from you to me
Which if exposed in all its glory
Would turn our lives into a story

Grecian Valentine

We’re closer to Rome than to Greece
As close as Rome was to Greece
Though we love us some golden fleece
As close as Alexander was to Asia
The first universal man
Is still further than us
Greece before there was Greece
There was Egypt and the Norse
Gods and there was Utnapishtim
I think we’re closer to him
He spoke of a sea flower
That would become Greece
The islands of the immortals
But it was swallowed by a viper

Unafraid to Die Valentine

Why are you so nervous and late
Because death is after me
But death is only another gate
Death is a father they say
Giving birth to a new fate
If love is real then the dead
Must see our souls if not our bodies
As we their souls can meditate
If we slip out of our bodies
For a few deathless moments
Since the god died
Unstoppably his body
Rises through all things
Death was just the first to fade

Retro Valentine

When you gaze backwards
From today over your life
Moving from year to year
How far back do you get
Before you start to forget
Or wander off track distracted
By something you can’t forget
But would rather deflect
To the surrounding merriment
Or hellish conditions
I can get back to certain days
Of accomplishment and failure
But a lot of it’s a blue blur
Only from a great distance
Can I see myself nearly
And feel myself stir

Mango Valentine

I love mango
I love mango
First I said it
Then you said it
With greater depth
And reverence
Remembering your
First bite
Finally finding
Something for which
You might trade
Heaven settling
For what it tastes like

Trolls Valentine

Real trolls don’t like
Themselves portrayed
As garden statuary
Smiles stacked in corners
Or ostentatiously painted
To identify some country
When they are the true workers
For the gods and wander
Through the ground
As easily we do air
Always breaking or
Building it up listening
At roots and veins
For their instructions
From moon and stars

To Kill the Soul Valentine

To kill the soul
In which make no mistake
We are all involved
Not as witnesses or bystanders
But as the accused on trial
To arrange to kill the soul
Only enhances the body
Which becomes realer
Than it has any right to be
And we forget we will all
Be called back to occupy
The bodies of our enemies
Under a new management
Under a new sketch of stars

We All Say Valentine

We all say no one
Can predict the future
And yet we all can see
What’s coming down the road
We all say no one
Knows what’s going
To happen next and yet
It’s already unloading
Its stacked cargo of events
As ordered per receipt
We all say there’s an end
To knowledge and yet
We all go on thinking
There still must be a place
Even that idea comes from

Ecuadorian Valentine

At last the rain
takes out his Stradivarius
and starts beating it on the roof
it's an awkward moment
for the trees who were of course
just standing there like me
so the rain starts riffing this
tune about long years
in the mines of Ecuador
do you have any idea
how much a drop costs today
how the delivery system works
but the roof is implacable
and the crying won't stop
and the trees start to pout

In Search of a Head Valentine

A tree is just a headless man or woman
The way they crowd together
Or stand alone
But a stone is the whole mind
Of God in a nutshell
It’s all there the silence
The self-sufficiency and hell
To be without someone to love
Which shows up in the silica
Blades of light in all things
And where certain gems are formed
It’s like the stone gives birth
That a tree might flourish
That a seed might perish

Wisdom Is A Woman Valentine

All of these poor valentines
Hastily honed and mined
I place in a satchel
Under the arm of my angel
To carry to her to convey
What thoughts in me
Have stirred out of nothing
For little Persephone now grown
Stretching in the grass alone
Simply because when I was ten
I caught her in the woods with him
And saw what she would undergo
Caught her backward glance
As she and he were swept away
Into love’s undertow

Earth’s Valentine

An orderly marshalling of green
The earth collapses to our design
How could it not be our mirror
How could we not grow nearer
And yet the signs bode separation
Of our species from the earth
Slow-motion suicide while
Nations fight for smaller government
The rule of just a few goes on
These things are so old
I’m ashamed to write them down
It’s not loneliness I feel
This morning but a helpless
Longing to move on
For us all to move on from that

Vogue Valentine

The fashion and the glamor we see
Which is most of movies and TV
The flaunting of great luxury
The yachts and the complacency
The woman fetishized by men
The man infantilized by women
All these we could see
In the frescoes of Pompeii
And the ruins of the coliseum
The fine jewelry in the museum
The skill of the craftsmen
Outdistancing the taste
Of the buyers and the sellers
Their conspicuous waste
Their lives of paste

Pale Pink and Green Valentine

What are pale pink and green
Flagstones and grass between
No what are pale pink and green
What do they portend
Flesh is pink in the cheek
And green goes with everything
Pink I associate with sunset
And green looks courageous and kind
The flagstones didn’t fade from red
They are naturally that shade of calm
And the grass growing between
Like a shallow stream
With blue depths
Calls for cutting
Calls for crossing 

Fiery Valentine

Perhaps the soul
Spends too much
Time in the body
While it has one
Than in the spirit
Who will mind
The store if the soul
Sails out alone
Into the dark bay
Of angelic beings
Anchors on the other
Shore lights a small
Fire with its love
Returns before dawn
Puts its body back on

Gun Valentine on Labor Day

How many lives can one gun tolerate
How much toleration requires a gun
Is a gun intolerant before or after
It goes off is a gun inherently
Unfair does a gun care
Or does it just stand there
One gun staring at another
How can a mere gun
Outlive its owner
What teacher wears a holster
Whose income does it bolster
Seize all the guns
And you’ve already won
Seize all the money
To pay for all the guns

Conscious Valentine

I wanted to read about Socrates again
Plato was 27 and Aristotle just 15
When he drank the poison
But they carried on beautifully
Filling in his first outlines
Of the thinking soul and
One by one translating
The mysteries into common sense
But Socrates was the last
Of a long wild line of satyrs
And the first of a long
Wild line of thinkers
He brought over the life of thought
To Plato’s love and
Aristotle’s conscious light
out of his wild doubt

Seeing Valentine

Seeing it has an inside
Not just an intriguing outside
Because of course it reflects
Us and we are always
Open to flattery
But seeing the source
Of the outside in the inside
How it slips its image into the world
To become the world
Carefully as a cloud
Or a child or a breath
Held then given away
Into the mouth
Of someone else
Who’s drowning

Neighbors Valentine

One of mine has three
Small dogs he keeps inside
Through the desert summer
But every few hours
He lets them out into the yard
Where they piss and bark
And shit and bark
With lovely exuberance
Until he opens the door
They all go silently through
Back into the cool house
It’s the funniest kind
Of clock to keep
But it seems to relieve
All neighborly tension

Dancing Valentine

I suppose I’m the ego of the place
But the place has its own separate self
Which is always being replaced
The geniuses with leaves
Are moved around like furniture
Like clouds and stars
In which I remain
The abiding centerpiece
Eaten by heat and mosquitoes
When I hear their bolero
I strap myself in like Odysseus
And yet everything is dancing
Some more fiercely than others
The tango of life
The waltz of death

Waiting Valentine

When into the cup of knowledge
The wine of love is poured
The bitter wine of love
The sweet wine of love
Won’t you drink it down
And ask for another pour
Even the cup wants more
The thirsty bowl of the moon
Carrying the darkness across
Without spilling a drop
And the moldy bread
Of the earth won’t you
Have more or wait
For the fresh-baked loaves
That always come soon or late

Undercover Geniuses Valentine

Often pose as plants
Or a whole species of ants
Their chirp has a scold to it
Their’s is the bridge
Nature crosses over
Into acts of love
And conscious sacrifice
Which is still the only
New thing in the world
And which could not happen
On its own unless
It was merely the revelation
Of something there all along
Stirring to love itself freely

The World Is All That’s Left Behind Valentine

Surely really deftly
The wingless spirit flies
Leaving not a shadow
On the wall but a line
Of light visible only
To the mind a thought
Within a thought
The world is all that’s left behind
Behind the secret art
Of angel-geniuses
Who use us wrench us
Tear us into place
Then pull the ground away
Take back our east and west
And push us from the nest

Sun’s Valentine

We are the revolutionaries
Of the sun who sat
At the feet of the moon
To learn our sums and angles
Now we follow a stern
But silent teacher
Whose look would
Beckon us to valor
If we’ve not grown cold
With pleasure and with pain
With security when there is none
Again and again he returns
Like Hamlet’s ghost
Not to reveal a murder
But announce a birth