J’s Valentine

I will come back for you
Or else I will be waiting by the gate
Take your time
 
As when we would go shopping
You would shop
And I would sit and wait
 
Enjoying watching you
And hundreds of others
Coming and going
 
All the difficult decisions
The bursts of pleasure
And displeasure on their faces
 
Finally you will come ready to go
With your bargains of treasures
Your look what I found for you

Pond’s Valentine

Stay with me what blooms
What gets cooked
And gives itself away
 
Time is the anomaly
Among eternity’s children
Stubborn from the start
 
And yet she brings the finest hours
Breaking things down seasonally
So we can see the process
 
The magic tricks of the sensual world
Just before they get summarized
In a seed or a look
 
It might be an egret’s glance
That lifts your heart away
Or something like it

Truck’s Valentine

Monday brings the recycle truck
The loud machinery of the past
Hoisting and dumping my debris
 
Alright it threatens me
So those ideas didn’t work
Here’s a clear slate
 
I crave your bottles
And that can of delicious salmon
You dressed with avocadoes
 
And then licked the plate
So why not open
Another bottle
 
I will be back
In a week to prove
Your life’s a wreck

Turned Valentine

We’ve got it turned around
We should have started out with wisdom
And ended up with youth
 
But if it’s wisdom
We end up with
Then it must bring youth
 
As if every day of dying
We were sprouting more
Springs inside
 
But if wisdom is accepting life
And youth is not
Aren't we brought to the same impasse
 
Until the wisdom of starting out
Meets up with the youth of ending
In which dying has no part

I-95 Valentine

Our wills sail out to the future
Our thoughts drift back to the past
Our feelings stroll the shore
 
While there on the hill of Sounion
The blood moon enters
The Temple of Poseidon
 
Having showered the earth
With its million births
The moon sleeps in its cradle
 
Are your listening to me anymore
Or too tethered out
Of your body to hear
 
There is no I on I-95
You can drive for miles
And never find one

Mysterious Valentine

The mystery of evil in the world
Not to be blasé about it
But let’s bike down to the lake
 
The cool water will dissolve us
And after a quiet swim
We can sit in the shade
 
And watch the children work
At building ramparts again
Against the waves
 
We can see how it all happened
How this clear lake showed up
Just at the right time to save us
 
We can look at one another
And stop worrying about the world
Just feel its wonder

High Summer Valentine

The eager rain of the future
Wants to extinguish the fire of the past
But the flames won’t let it
 
It holds out its promise
Of no regrets without regret
Then defers to some darker cloud
 
It’s only a summer philosopher
Who won’t follow it
All the way to being
 
Invisible rain
Platonic rain
That bears no flesh
 
The gates of the furnace open wide
Only the invisible escape
To fall in future rain

Returned Valentine

What to do with these bodies we make
And pile up in neat rows
Or scatter about the countryside
 
We can’t let go of them
And yet we throw them away
Burning in lust and power
 
Such compact things
Each one immaculately conceived
Regardless of what happens later
 
But ultimately we had to come
To yours your particular take
On smiling and crying out
 
And naturally the day arrived
When you returned
To a body I could call my own

Therefore Valentine

Christ therefore I am
Both a curse and a blessing
I bless my cursing
 
And curse my blessing
I am an anguished man
But Christ therefore I am
 
And cleave to my suffering
As really not my own
Since I am nothing
 
But a word he speaks
So I begin to think I am
And have this will for walking
 
I stride right into him
And stride right out
But he does all the talking

Reading Valentine

If you read the world three times
You start to get it maybe
With that last try
 
The first reading is so full
Of wonder and shit
It’s hard to face it when it fades
 
What that illumination was
Covers the whole second reading
Like a lunar eclipse
 
Great fire-storms and rains
Search and find
Your covetous heart
 
Which meanwhile is only
Sending up its best
The third recovers all the rest

Camp Fire Valentine

Something’s not quite right
There seems to be a connection issue here
Sorry about that
 
But ruins are the opposite of dawns
So try turning everything off
And then back on again
 
Leave it all to the imagination
For about ten seconds
And then throw the switch
 
If this is just a temporary condition
You’ll hear the click
Of the fire flaming up
 
Into clear pictures of the past
Of what's just happening
And what’s still to come

Third Valentine

What separates self-satisfaction
From self-dissatisfaction
Is just a thin slice of love
 
Transparent of course
On a fine breeze
That goes unnoticed
 
Like a little rampart we build
That knows these wars
Won’t last forever
 
A self that sees
It must be separated
From itself to see at all
 
But who does the separating
That third breeze
Who watches our fall

Traveler’s Valentine

Was it a romance
Or a war dance
Each ending up in the other’s arms
 
Don’t be fooled
This is just a working draft
Of the world
 
Our entertaining tour guide
Could only point to where
Something had been erased
 
Something significant in the life
Of the emerging theme
We could not abide
 
And there are more rivers needed over here
That will have to be replaced he said
By all we hold dear

House’s Valentine

The boys in the choir
And the girls in the pyre
They’re coming to clean my house

As if history was a steam-roller

With the most delicate fingers
Uncovering my buried treasure
 
The earring of a Nubian princess
I entertained one night under the carpet
The blade my murderer forgot
 
Fleet-footing it out of a dream
Like the whole 5^th century
I was just reading about
 
But it all comes clear now
And clean what once
Just seemed

Anniversary Valentine

Because there is no end to things
A woman steps off a bus
And the whole world changes
 
Or a boy drives across the country
To put an end to things
A slash across a paper
 
Another scenery painting
Another still-life not letting
The buildings contain her
 
They just want to get this one thing done
This one drawing really lived
And have some fun
 
But she’s getting on another bus
And he’s quickly running out of gas
Because there is no end to things

Returned Valentine

In the pre-moral world of the mineral
With its pure gift of the flower
Before the onset of desire

We lived a simpler life of will
Undifferentiated and unconscious
Configured by subtle forces

So we keep looking for the moment
We crossed over into the continent
Of personal feelings stray thoughts

When the beautiful animals we were
Separated out
Into individual selves

And felt it for the first time
The suffering of that longing
To return

Olympian Valentine

Olympian as an ant I followed
Garlanded with a cloudy sky
Making his way home

Always checking
For a solution
To some problem

Negotiating the clever leaves
Having captured what
Must still be eaten

A complete surrender
To a given task
Worthy of his devotion

But the conditions keep changing
And the poor ant
Seems to have lost the scent

Improving Valentine

If you think of the improvements
Of love in the world
At any given time

The quantum of one
Good person
In a whole town

Posing a question
Putting the comedy aside
The  mockery of our peril

Or the one who drove over a cliff
Found alive after seven days
Having survived on radiator water

I mean which
Would you
Rather be

Moving Valentine

One big fat dream
We keep swallowing
Catching our breath
 
Heading out in inspired directions
Returning with the proofs
Of wrongness lack of fit
 
Every day the sun lends us some
Of its abundant self-confidence
Urging us to get on with it
 
But when we see it all in time-lapse
The waterfall of stars rushing over us
The great ships angling in and out
 
We can almost see the child’s hand
Placing all the pieces
Carefully moving them all along

Seen Valentine

What hard feelings I wonder
Does the mollusk remember
Around her nougat center
 
The single inner life of each mollusk
Is indivisible and inseparable
From her whole constitution
 
The alchemists claimed
It was Venus
Not to be intruded upon
 
And not to be neglected
The Platonists named her
Star of the sea
 
I think there is nothing
She has not seen
And still she returns

Lord’s Valentine

Heal thou us
Lord Hummingbird
That we may heal ourselves
 
I believe you have the glory
And the power to perform
A feat so minor
 
As the transformation of the world
What’s hard is humor
Though you must be a joke
 
Of the gods yourself
I like more when you sit still
The guardian of my garden
 
Just visible in the leafy tree
I planted years ago
Having fallen for you

Talking Valentine

When your speech descends
To babble and you don’t
Remember me anymore
 
Will we face a further friendship
Than we ever faced before
Will we cling together and hover
 
At the brink of something fuller
Which only the body can bestow
When you have left it
 
Just a body lying on a bed
And the final funny thing
In the end
 
Is that we just go on talking
All through the hard time
You were being born

Partial Valentine

Restlessness in the heavens
The moon pulls up
Like a hearse
 
Between the sun and the earth
So even the air shivers
Seeing its black flowers
 
A picture of the planets
Running into one another again
On some dark street
 
While in the background
The windy dissipation
Of some bitter days
 
And then a warm embrace
But we must keep
To our separate ways

Unavoidable Valentine

Having finally gotten to the mystery
Of our connection having crossed
The deserts of doubt the mountains of fear
 
Will we stand amazed in love
At all the unavoidable complications
We were free to foist upon ourselves
 
When it’s not really memory that counts
The perception of memories
By some rememberer
 
But the fact of a consciousness
That cannot be killed
And has a name
 
The mystery that finally
Connects us now
We’ve made it here

Holding Valentine

Poetry is the broken thing
Holding its breath
Between lines
 
A harsh dictum
Or a frivolous ditty
A long love song on one note
 
A proclamation on a wall
About some coming event
You’d like to attend but
 
You’d rather hear a fiddle or a drum
The beginning and the middle
Without end
 
Poetry is the unspoken thing
Holding its breath
Between lives

July 10 Valentine

The rigor mortis idles in the afterbirth
Of this wrought child whose hands
Replace all other mornings
 
And whose fingers orchestrate
The long grass swaying she cannot see
Poppa play with me she says
 
Her gaze curved to the years
Of air and pleasure equally
What can I do I break down
 
In thirty years I have not seen
Such beauty in one place
Not even the still twilight
 
Which at times I love
More than human things
Rivals her still sleep

Something About the Eyes Valentine

When I first interviewed the gods
They just wanted to tell me stories
About the murders I half-started to believe
 
We had a friendly interrogatory time
Until I feel asleep mid-sentence
At the good part
 
Lulled by their dramatic voices
Something about the moon and stars
An eternity of ideas I left singing
 
They were so patronizing and wise
But my guilt grows impatient
With too much attention
 
Still they pursued me
Even in my dreams and made me
Look them in the eyes

Afterwards Valentine

Thomas stands for shock
Judas and Peter for denial
The first long stages of grief
 
John for the graceful youth
Mark holds hands with Paul
Luke doctors us all
 
Mary and Martha
Argue all day long
Until the Baptist cries ‘Enough’
 
Jesus comes and goes
He lives alone now by the lake
Still goes fishing every spring
 
Mary’s like a ghost
Of her former self
For whom the children sing

Suicidal Valentine

I rescue a suicidal grasshopper
From the cat’s blue water bowl
So grateful he follows me around
 
I see he’s lost one of his jumping legs
Can only skitter across the floor
Though he’s kept his basic persistence
 
I wonder how he got into the bowl
As if some bomb propelled him there
Taking his leg as token
 
Some piecemeal resurrection
Of the leaping that brought him here
Surrendered at my feet
 
Only when love’s complete
Can it be happy
He still sings

When the Sun Sits Down Valentine

We distinguished nose-pickers
With fly-paper brains
Descend on these northern towns
 
Eating up the beauty of the lakes
And of the green until it’s gone
And only the blue remains
 
Every summer for new
Generations to discover
Alone out ice-fishing
 
The dark blue that remains
Of these northern lakes
At the bottom of a hole
 
Serious as a soul-attack
You know the lake wants out
But spring is always tardy

Unwoken Valentine

The initiation we undergo
Every night in vivid dreams
And deepest darkness
 
For which the following day
Seems merely a distraction
A seductive diversion
 
From the true urgency
Of its inescapable implications
For our waking lives
 
Essentially we’re all dreamers
And the world is what
We’ve recovered so far from our dreams
 
Our sadness is about
Still not realizing
How much thought it takes to wake