On the Fifth Day Valentine

Humbled by my petty crimes
Of love and terror
By all I know
 
Chastened and laid bare
I take it back
The hurt I gave
 
My infant will
Accepts my searing thoughts
Like an adult grown after all
 
Past the vanity of self-annihilation
I tiptoed lightly not to wake you
Worry is no friend to love
 
Suddenly you turned in your sleep
And like a curtain collapsing
I could see what animates the world

Left Behind Valentine

If after life we look down
Upon the world from somewhere
All things are known
 
Which we can begin to understand
Trundling through the moods
Of passion and restraint
 
Our experience of the world
As over against our self
To the extent we had one
 
If after life we no longer
Put down the world on its pedestal
But cry for mercy
 
For the ones left behind
Only then are we fit
To return in time

Borderline Valentine

To bring dreaming more into the day
And thinking more into the light
Of what happens at night
 
There must be a cogent explanation
When we are finally equipped
To ask the question hear the answers
 
Which like a good lawyer we expected
But were not prepared to deal with
So many murders
 
We reach for our glass of water
And calmly ask for a delay
The judge goes up in smoke
 
It’s like that kind of joke
Where you feel both amused
And pissed it’s still true

Mnemonic Valentine

I find the world is a mnemonic device
For remembering former lives
And revising future strategies
 
This is what the plants do
They try hard to remember something
And then memorialize it
 
Remembering is a kind of longing
Where would we be
Without our longing
 
But one clear thought
Is trying to adhere
To so much will and feeling
 
It builds a kind of chaos
In the heart a whirling
Nest-like thing

Reversing Valentine

I once saw a map of the heavens
That pictured all the planets’ retrogrades
Their looping as only seen from earth
 
Two steps forward and one step back
A kind of pirouette or twirl
A wheeling back to strike
 
And wondered if we lived on Mars
We’d see the earth at times
Double back upon its path
 
Like someone falling back to sleep
To recapture some dream
Some wonderful dream
 
That has meanwhile moved on
Nowhere to be found
But in the future

Strange Valentine

The morning comes in somehow
From the outside but the sun
Comes out from within
 
It sounds strange but
Sometimes it never rises
Though the morning looks bright
 
As if in retrograde
The renegade sun
Refuses its light
 
Refuses to rise inside
Though you can just
Hear its breathing
 
In its cave of darkness
Poor little sun
Sleeping like a baby

Emergency Valentine

Now we come back to that scene
In the river losing consciousness
Surrendering to the flow
 
And then the abrupt return
Like someone bursting into a room
Having run a long way
 
Having seen through the water
The other side glimmering in the depths
Past the shadows of life and death
 
So you start to think of the earth
As your own body and blood
Your own son or daughter
 
You start to think of you as you
Your argument for being
Obviously an urgent matter

At the Solstice Valentine

I can see my so-called dead
Fathers-in-law glaring at me
And my dead aunt visibly moved
 
To tell me about her rape
Which only reminds me
Of my own
 
And my great great grandmother
Coming to comfort me
Though I don’t know if she can
 
Be trusted to see to my care
On our meager provisions
Of truth and air
 
Arrows and arrows of errors
And genius my dead
Come back to repair

Dirty Valentine

If cleaners and washers
Depend on dirt and grime
To make a living
 
The dirt always obliges
But from where does the dust settle in
As if permanent unstoppable
 
We dig up old cities
To see what’s left
As if we could piece together lives
 
Vaguely our own
A young girl’s tooth
A man’s marble finger
 
Things we threw away or lost
Or got broken off in the dirt
We come back to ponder

Driven Valentine

What will keep us from the fires
Of summer the ice-storms of winter
The lash of cruelty on one another
 
When sanity is out of season
And gratitude undergoes extinction
We go for a long drive
 
Through the blackened hills
Past the smashed houses
And the children crying
 
To the very edges of our minds
Where there are no tears or laughter
Where waves beseech the shore
 
And the wide sea reaches to bestow
Some peace upon us still
To quicken our will

Dreamt Valentine

It’s so great to be in love
To feel we can do anything
You have made us like gods
I kiss your head and toes
And everything in between
The soles of your feet
Are always warm
I place them on my cold cheeks
Half of courage is
Not to feel alone
Even if I have to wake up
I know I will always
Love you

Unprepared Valentine

One day left to prepare
To drive through the desert I love
To arrive at the open sea
 
It’s so archetypal it makes me
Shiver despite
The rampant heat
 
Alone I go into the wilderness
Of smoke trees and sage
Flowering after the storm
 
Into the land where the Anasazi
Disappeared not so mysteriously
When the dirt ran out
 
Some headed toward the sea like me
Death nipping at our heels
Knowing it would save us

Babies Valentine

Again I went too far
Or stopped short
Refining my feel
 
For the delicate dangerous avocado
Fresh off the potter’s wheel
But we must wait for it to be cooked
 
And slowly ripened in the dying fire
Buried in its pit
Until the blackening of the skin
 
Signals its flesh is read to be halved
And we must learn to squeeze
The fat seed from its cradle
 
And spoon out the beautiful
Green babies as if they
Were life itself

Kasper’s Valentine

That child Kasper Hauser
Not to diminish in any way
His personal pain and suffering
 
But isn’t he also a picture
Of each of us imprisoned
In a dark cell
 
Abandoned by our father
Torn out of a world of light
And luxury set down
 
With nothing and no memory
Of the glory that was ours
And then rescued by the magic
 
Of our senses and this world
Straining to see through their darkness
Some inner light and warmth

Birthday Valentine

How we got to male and female
Must have started with some discussion
Within a single chord
                    
The notes wanted their own lives
Then unity insisted on going solo
Not the same old same
 
In the beginning was the original divorce
Slowly as a back is turned
Love answered to the freedom not to love
 
So even those who never marry
Are grandfathered in
We go from love to loss
 
And back to love in pain
Each searching for a way
To give birth to one self again

Struggling Valentine

One fly in the house
And of course he finds me
Praying or eating or struggling
 
He insists on his prayer
His plate of food
I see he would eat me
 
Did he just come from some other corpse
And wants to crawl along my knee
He lets me watch him marvelous thing
 
I try to lead him toward the door
The thought you can’t shake out of your head
Don’t make me get the swatter
 
So he lands on my cheek
He would inspect
Almighty power

Where Else Valentine

I think bi-location must be
One of life’s finest achievements
That even when I’m not here
 
Still I’m here with you
That our bodies are not obstacles
To the most intimate presence
 
That there is another possibility
In which our bodies become transparent
And we see what we are
 
We see our bodies as mere spectators
Of real pleasure rank beginners
In the science of love
 
But where else could I have
Held you dear
If not my beating heart

Begging the Devil to Linger

Though I walk in the shade
Of great thinkers and feelers
I will fear no grief
 
Though I stand at the center
Of my own grand universe
I will not tremble
 
Your smile will be to me an outpost
And a blazing lake at sunset
I cannot exaggerate your claim
 
That there is someone else to love
Is the only thing that saves me
From my own devouring self
 
And yet may I linger in the shade
Of great thinkers and feelers
That nothing cannot be saved

People’s Valentine

Give us good food and shelter
Remove our debts
Cry the people of the world
 
Is it the cries aren’t loud enough
Or the dead ears stronger
Deafened by too many guns
 
Where most of the money still goes
To an ancient Egyptian mind-set
When the people long for a new Greece
 
Forced to work against their own purposes
And rescind their power
Building the pyramids of kings
 
O people of the world
Beauty is with us
Time to move on

Apology for You Because You Couldn’t Write One For Yourself Valentine

I want to tell you
How very sorry I am
For hurting you so much
 
I let my body control
My soul I tore
A part of your freedom from you
 
Took advantage of my power
How easily I was willing
To risk everything
 
For a few moments
Of idle pleasure
Idle violence
 
How can you forgive me
I cannot forgive myself
For hurting you so much

Driving He Said Valentine

Here looms the abiding question
Not to be happy with what is
And yet to be happy with what is
 
How the archetypal molds the typical
How the great doctrine of rejection
Settles into everyday life
 
To be squandered or perfected
To be abused or neglected
One’s gift refused by others or oneself
 
Always in transition we
Call them a body and a soul
But someone else must settle the score
 
And then we stopped
For coffee on a bluff
Above it all

Still Valentine

Either the machine is a metaphor for man
Or man is a metaphor for the machine
Aren't both about the mettle and the sheen
 
But with the plants we don’t have much
In common anymore or yet
We plant the seeds but must sit and wait
 
And the animals who are they really
Such specialized faces of ourselves
They make us feel ashamed
 
We still don’t know how
We’re all woven together
Each stone in its place
 
And yet no matter how much the gods
Toil and sweat over our cradles
We still want to live in this world

Airport Valentine

I would like at least one airport
To be officially renamed Abstract Airways
So we could go there and fly out of it
 
And we could land on a real beach
Or coast a real wave of foam
Having finally come to the front of the line
 
Our names blared out on the loudspeaker
Everyone wondering what
Makes us so special
 
And suddenly we remember
And would like to blurt it out
But already we’re belted in our seats
                    
And all the planes are leaving at once
Hundreds ascending together
As if they all could feel it

Zimmerman’s Valentine

You have to be a little mad yourself
To feign madness lightly
But he saw through it and helped
 
On the banks of the Neckar he let
His old friend lie down and laugh
For thirty-five years not alone
 
Not the laughter of fools who mourn
But the laughter of the river itself
Passing under ancient bridges
 
As it makes its way and widens
Into rippleless calm expanses
Seizing the sky as its own
 
The mad light of dawn
Which rises up every day
And then so mysteriously is gone