One Morning After Childhood Valentine

Only young children worship the past
Love to dress up in heroic dimensions
Re-imagine some marvelous world
 
In order to adjust to this one aren’t they
Holding up their bright orange shields
Losing the last of their spirit-bodies
 
Baring their innocence completely
The little soldiers advance
On the last of the flowers
 
And some come already wilting
Like great teachers asking
How could this happen
 
But the wolf is already barking at the door
And the great armies of the Great Khad
Are still waiting in the yard to be defeated

Linda’s Valentine

When I took down your last book
Heavy with its loneliness and secrets
I had to take it outside
 
To blow the dust off
First I tried to wipe it
With my fingers into
 
A gray wad that kept
Slipping from my grasp
But dust is so fragile
 
It’s hard to know
How it can make a world
And yet it crumbled
 
And took to the breeze
Immediately when I applied
Just a little of my breathing

Dark Valentine

I was wondering about dark energy
Using my dark matter to do so
In the backyard of my universe
 
I was standing on grass among flowers
And the latitude of our little sun
Looked like both a mystery and an outcast
 
But what if each of us has her own star
And every being has such a body
Of light and its own real name
 
Finding when we get there
It was only here on earth
We were really invisible to one another
 
Flying out to the periphery
To dissolve in the darkness
That hasn’t reached us yet

Children’s Valentine

Once a month I imagine
The full moon of death
Shining brightly inside me
 
I let it rake my woods
And swollen cities with
Its blazing light
 
The stricken streets
And the children
Churning in their cots
 
Under the balloon of death
Floating gently
Through the night
 
Once a month
I tell them stories as they sleep
Not to worry about death

Memorial Valentine

I think it’s both a splendid picnic
And a bit of misery on the other side
Our dreaming makes that clear
 
Some things don’t go right
In the midst of other just
Brilliant achievements
 
And even if we only slowly
Earn the courage to fail somehow
There’s always a constant supply of trying
 
The will of a million stars
Flows through us after all once seen
We only give them passage
 
Who knows what they will make of us yet
Industrious engines of fate
Out of what’s weak and great

Enjoyable Valentine

Let me say it without fawning
How much I enjoyed
Your company last night
 
Charlie you stalwart thinker
Warming up the complicated thoughts
That prove thinking comes first
 
And John for seeing the farm boy in you
Still giving gentleness its strength
Strength its gentleness
 
And Rachel buoyant sun
Inclusive of all the colors
But always conscious of the earth
 
And Kim whose practiced speech
Put me off at first but the truth
Is always spontaneous and ringing
 
And then there’s Teri
L’Arlessienne and yet Italian
How many lives
 
You must have suffered through
To sing with such
Purity and tact
 
And me mute sponge and nudger
My Leonardo Michelangelo Caravaggio
As we must be I thank you

Certain Valentine

A part of me reaches out to touch
A brown bird hopping in the grass
And a part of me reaches out
 
To touch the cat behind me watching
The melancholy dove moans why
Don’t you tell me over and over
 
About this game you’ve been playing
Trying to take hold of things
Grasping at the mother
 
Like someone drowning
Resisting it
Or letting it happen
 
But how could I be certain
I’d reached you
If you didn’t touch me back

Olivia’s Clivia Valentine

Olivia knew what a Clivia was
When I said I’d tried to grow one
She was the first to know
 
What I meant the bright orange cup
With the lemon center
I saw it once
 
Yes she said twice to assure me
Look and touch
It never grows old
 
I was watching Olivia’s mouth
When she said the word Clivia
She was smiling and wrapped
 
In a pale blue glow
Like a flower
That’s been slept in

Sun’s Valentine

A school of gnats like protons
And electrons bat about in the air
Above the newly-seeded ground
 
All the air conditioners start up
At once with a loud thud
That settles into a calm drone
 
Bees are thick as traffic over there
I can’t tell which is which
In the blooming blue tree
 
What else do you want to hear
To get a picture of my plight
I won’t be coming home
 
I promised the sun I’d sit with it
Until it was done
And let it write this poem

At Morro Bay Valentine

I thought what I admired most
Was the honesty of the waves
When it's their courage that gets me
 
Honesty seemed a lovely beach
Gentle waves lapping
I could lie on
 
And float out into
Which admittedly takes some courage
Given the unknown the undertow
 
But honesty without the courage
To defend it forcefully
Is such a ruse and subterfuge
 
In a democracy of one
Unless the waves storm the shore again
Throw up the stones of a new foundation

Rendezvous Valentine

Will I run out of words
But they just keep coming
Before I run out of ink
 
Slowly I’m forgetting
How to write with my own hand
Poised above the keyboard
 
A stick scratching in clay
Stone on stone circling
An unclear message
 
To pick something up at the store
Or return to this same spot
In some distant year
 
The way starships
Visit the earth some nights
Writing their childhood home

Borrowed Valentine

These words aren’t mine
How many already I forgot
Until they drop back into my brain
 
That word for that flower
Which is crawling now
Into the arms of its neighbor
 
Having forgotten how to flower
That word for that bird
That comes to mock
 
With overpowering song
The forgotten hour
It takes to bloom
 
Its borrowed flowers
My borrowed words
Not long

Ruling Valentine

Does a question
Seem more poignant
Without a question mark
 
Or a comma pause
At the brink of a collapse
We have no patience for
 
Just for attention
Though I love the colon
As much as I fear
 
The dot at the end
Of a one word sentence
Having traveled so far
 
To have the door slammed
In its face because
Some meter rules

Throne’s Valentine

Between my resting feet
She curls a nest
And sleeps there
 
Black with white feet
And a flared cravat
A girl in a man’s tuxedo
 
This is what happens
When an Archangel
Comes up against a Throne
 
Take me back
This animal I am
Into your good graces

Don’t we sleep the same sleep

Aren’t we both
On the way home

First and Last Valentine

After you came with my help
And I came with yours
For the first time
 
Hummers started from my mouth
An embarrassment I called it
Of helpless happiness
 
Which proved not contagious
Though I thought at least you
Would come down with it
 
The coughing and the fever
The sweet rushing blood
Of the disease of love
 
After you came with my help
And I came with yours
For the last time

Mexican Valentine

After riding the subway in Mexico City
Then eating a sandwich on a bench
At the university you said
 
You were overtaken
For ten minutes or so
By the universe
 
A little hit of lightening
Or something epileptic
More Aleppo than Damascus
 
Making you laugh and pull back
A muttered whoa
Issued from the pyramid’s peak
 
The world turned inside out
Through the little hole of nothing
So you could see the brink

Flawed Valentine

With a cancerous mouth
He spoke the word love
Distinctly in his own language
 
Not with contempt or praise
But as if he was consoling it
The inconsolable one
 
Then he whispered the names
Of all the gods the memorable
And the unmemorable
 
And thanked them all
With many bows and curtsies
To a sonata of applause
 
All in his own mind
The beginning not the end
Of all his flaws

Musical Valentine

Rhythm requires a body
The way melody
Requires a soul
 
Of hands and feet
Or the movement
Of something darker
 
The music of our former lives
Brought home but never listened to
In boxes on the floor
 
But harmony is spherical
One note held against another
A spirit’s kiss and an embrace
 
That goes on for an eternity
When you have barely
Learned to dance

Actual Valentine

He did not just redolently
Talk about love to me
Day and night
 
But actually he
Did something
About it
 
He brought something
Into the volcanic soil
Of such tenderness
 
Gems fused into flowers
The first animals reappeared
Day and night
 
He put space back
Into its cage of time
He loved me I loved him

Veteran’s Valentine

Dust on the crystal
So dusty spectra
Fly around the walls
 
On a breeze that gently
Companions them how
Convenient everything
 
That’s needed is
Close at hand
Dust on the pistol
 
So empty bullets
Fly around the walls
So when you stand up
 
It’s as if a war has ended
And when you sit down
Peace descends

On the Mythology of Rejection Valentine

One time a long time ago
Before there was time or space
A whole upper echelon of beings
 
With one will
Set themselves on fire
As a gift to even greater gods
 
The way a child smiles
Receiving its parent’s
Open arms
 
But some chose not
To accept the gift
Leaving their children with a dark longing
 
To question everything
Adrift now on the sea of time
With a whole new sense of love

Horned Valentine

Now a Uranian mood
Sweeps upon us
The father of the father
 
The mother of the mother
Her Taurus horns
Bearing the serving bowl of lights
 
To our shrinking earth
Where do they go
All such accomplishments
 
Contracted into its center
Hardly a cinder left
Of the old god’s body
 
We put flowers on the tomb
But turn to where he stirs
Again on the horizon

Lost Valentine

The lost art of tact
Remains intact
Like a virgin raped
 
Her power only increases
Over vain evil men
The shame of their mothers
 
Who adored them as boys
Before they were lost
To their fathers and uncles
 
Positively Mesopotamian
Positively American
In the gardens of the world
 
And all for love
Or murder
For lack of

Passport Valentine

I pull back often
From looking back too much
I regress forward
 
So much received
I feel compelled
To put something back
 
To re-gift the past
Until the final honor
Is given back to the first pleasure
 
Of getting something
I desperately needed
In the nick of time
 
That plane I almost missed
Having forgotten my passport
My name now yours

Childless Mothers’ Day Valentine

I’m so happy I’ve lived in the time before
Picked dripping eaten in the field
Tomatoes turned into water chestnuts

All over the country
In grocery stores
And lettuce into sawdust
 
And among the lives of beautiful places
On which the future subtly traces
The past there was yours
 
The mecca of my heart
I got to visit
Almost
 
When it was sad but true
And therefore beautiful and good
In the time before
 
We hardly knew what
To do with our lives
Though we keep trying and trying

Light Valentine

If it exists
Then it is necessary
To some purpose
 
This morning proposes
And I accept with a faithless smile
An arranged marriage of days
 
And nights from which slowly
I recover after long flights
Into that other life I lead
 
Where everything is real
Not like here
Where only death is
 
Where light exists
And shines faintly
Into this one

Traveling Valentine (for David)

In deliberate difficult darkness
I travel sometimes
The lights of towns flashing past
 
Time lives for the future
Always moving ahead
Always leaving something behind
 
Asking what is enough
If you know
You don’t know enough
 
But you can almost
Feel it
Some good thing
 
Out there in the world
Searching calmly
For a home 

His Valentine

Out his office door and down
The many lengthy hallways
The hundreds of locked doors
 
Red-carpeted to represent
The distance he must put
Between him and his people
 
Proving the revolution
Never really happened
It was just another putsch 
 
When we’d elected spring
In the winters
Of our tears

Knowing spring must come

Knowing not even he
Could stop it now

Too Far Valentine

Freedom inspires the sin
Only love can redeem
To go too far when it’s not about you
 
Our only problem
The battery running low
And nowhere to recharge it
 
But everyone understands
The bullying must be stopped
Except the bully

Who carries freedom
The daily and the universal
Into idle reckless cruelty
 
What if we stopped bullying one another
Showed a little pity for Christ's sake
For our long sad stories and joys

Baby’s Valentine

Severely beaten by beauty
Wholly tarnished by truth
I crawl back to my small goodness
 
I gasp for air politely
Trying not to make a mess
But still there is blood everywhere
 
Finally I wash up on some shore
Bringing my drowned baby with me
Just starting her new life inside me
 
The life of the dead
The life of the unborn
Who weave the future together
 
With such tenderness and skill
As if they knew
We would always go on living

First Valentine

Who treats even animals this way
The philosophers of untruthfulness
Their vigorous defamation of values
 
Except for their values
Who refuse to acknowledge
That no lie could even exist
 
If some truth did not precede it
What progress can persist
If we don’t respect our neighbors
 
Those for whom the anxious search
For what is true for whom
The truth’s primordial
 
The first among the gods
Stand up and take a bow
We need you now

Scary Moon Valentine

The moon is what our earth might become
But the sun is what it must
If it will shine like a star
 
With its own inner light
Not some reflected glow
As if it were only a mirror
 
Whose blank surfaces embrace
What could have been before
Crossing the waves between
 
Let’s say a boat and a harbor
The difference between the shore
And not making it
 
With the moon still rising in the harbor
Somehow a comfort to us
And a premonition

Desert Valentine

Triple-digit days
We flee to the islands
Of our patios and pools
 
We desert people
In thrall to the permanent
Blue and dazzling sky
 
We love and fear the rising warmth
That carries us upward into evenings
We come back to the blazing stars
 
We see space doesn’t really exist
That nothing not even a cactus needle
Separates anything from anything
 
We are extinguished a little
And know the sun
Alone is alive

Without Valentine

Without some little wisdom
You couldn’t have gotten
To the field above the lake
 
Where whatever sentience you possess
Must be entirely left behind
Like clothing as you run
 
Your wisdom unraveling
Toward what you love
The quiet lake
 
And stride out into it
And falling smash
Into its cool depths
 
And rise laughing
Or crying
I can’t tell which

Time’s Valentine

I don’t know who is writing modern history
But they sure have a colorful imagination
Every day a new revelation and twist
 
Not like the last two centuries
With their constipated appeals
To the deceptions of reason
 
And yet the past drags on
Like an old spurned enemy
Our once closest friend
 
Still these days we’re steadily climbing
Toward a perception of true imagination
Who knew it could be so variegated
 
Limitless sublime
If we would only
Take back time

May Day Valentine

Though I can only see them in my head
And they scold me harshly sometimes
I still love and want them to be free
 
Like the one who hides in my tree
Knitting blossoms out of scraggly roots
Gone deep to get that certain blue
 
Her sense of humor requires
How many spilling buckets must be
Carried upward by a million workers
 
Famished by the sun
To construct a single panicle
But here are hundreds culled
 
Like little jokes or jibes
To cheer the tragic
Music of a day