One Afternoon Valentine

Three pearly doves
Perched in the naked
Pomegranate tree
 
Just loving this lovely day
I imagine when you fly from Ecuador
It’s like this you just want to sit
 
And stare back at the thousand
Miles you’ve plowed through clouds
And rain to get here
 
And rest in the tree I call mine
But which is now clearly yours
At least for one afternoon
 
Just what I ordered
When I wrote to you to come
Spend this paradise with me

The Word Is Valentine

The word is you’re leaving
The word given forever
And then taken away
 
The promise of the immortal
Was just finally too tempting
An offer not to be refused
 
The word comes back
To be forgotten again
But not what the word has made
 
In the air it’s still sounding
The reformation of a growl or purr
Into a word like ‘leaving’
 
With its great e-e-e sound
Like a kind of keening
That never leaves

Valedictory Valentine

If I had God enough
I would be full of power
And you would still be here
 
If I had God to rule
You would not be gone
Or ever think of going
 
If I had God I would
Not be God alone
You would be here
 
If God had earth enough
He would let you stay here
He would even go himself
 
If God had God enough of me
He would never let you go
You would still be here

Mostly Valentine

My first love was a blooming lilac bush
And the garden that grew up
Unashamedly around it
 
Naturally biblical yet still
Preserving the old pagan rituals
And one metaphysical rose
 
But mostly I loved the puddles
Of melting ice after a rain
Where I could slide before they came
 
That something so prodigal
And sweet could be sleeping
In the earth under my feet
 
I was a strange child
Innocent as thin ice
Before I grew wild

Fuck Stage 4 Valentine

Death has to dig
A lot out of you
To plant a new life
 
We think the body is
All we’ve got
But it was never ours
 
In the first place
Which death keeps
Coming back to
 
The great reminder
Who doles out
Only so much time
 
But stranger worlds await
That land of farms
Where the work goes on

Revolutionary Valentine

Scrolling the ancient Chinese manuscripts
I come to the amazing Monkey King himself
Sun Wukong (‘awakened to emptiness’)
 
Who could freeze gods as well
As men transforming himself
Into anything except for his tail
 
But ‘capable of defeating
The best warriors of heaven’
Until Buddha laid a mountain on his head
 
For five hundred years
All this preceding Orestes or Job
A grand theory of revolution
 
The stone monkey jumps into the waterfall
And becomes the first king
‘He had three special hairs’

Steadfast Valentine

I thought one day at a time
I’d summon my heroes of thought
Assemble them around me
 
To tell me again
All these mortal things
Are a little insane
 
To speak of their long striving
To become aware
Only thinking lives on
 
And the rest just the debris
Thrown off by the necessary
Bodies of memory
 
Gathered together in a heap
And how after another long war
They would build a new city of peace

Visionary Valentine

In one premonition of my death
A hummingbird flies straight at me
Its beak piercing my third eye
 
But actually that’s real life
How I see its glowing ruby throat
Just before it enters my brain
 
You'd be surprised how often
This can happen this perception
That only the mind can die
 
While everything else goes on
Alive and healthy around me
Death can be so personal
 
An assault it takes
All my strength to bear it
As if I was losing you

Someone’s Valentine

Every day I open
The present of your smile
Re-gifting me
 
Every day I try
To do better for you
Sometimes it works
 
To be admirable
In the eyes
I admire
 
To answer to you
Even in our secret lives
Where we drift apart
 
From the world’s love
Refusing the one I dreamed I could be
For someone even better

Voiced Valentine

From the traveling voices
Going on in the inside
You know how you try
 
To pick out your own voice
Is that really what I sound
And look like
 
Not what I hear and see
From the other side of me
Which means matter must be
 
Everything on the outside
The totality of things and spirit
Must be everything on the inside
 
The infinity of the separate thing
Harboring a multitude of voices
And trying to get them to sing

Given Valentine

Given as I am
Given as we are
To vague exclamations
 
Of pleasure or terror
At the landscape painters
Of the coming centuries
 
And to now how many
Cloudy enthusiasms
For uncertain conclusions
 
On papyrus and clay
Disputing the ancient oracles
With unspiritual science
 
And all for a little tenderness
Or a moment of recognition
Which could happen any day

Beyond Country Valentine

While the wine-red Mediterranean Sea
Fills with capsized migrant boats
And the barbed cages just south of here
 
Fill with migrant children
Actually they’re all over the country
While some are sent back alone
 
I watch the white heron migrate
From the pond to the lake every morning
From the lake to the pond every night
 
Not a night I don’t think
Of those drowning migrants
Or those crying children
 
Not a morning I don’t go out
To scatter seeds on the ground
For the red finches and the happy sparrows

Survivor’s Valentine

Thank you animals
For being willing
To be animals
 
And you plants
For remembering to re-enact
Your fateful decisions
 
I feel like we’re always saying goodbye
Now when I see a bird hurrying off
Or the color-changing of a flower
 
In the twilight of the street
As the sun grows more extinct
In the evolution of the day
 
It’s not that you
Will go on without us
But that we will be all that stays

In Praise of Palm Trees Valentine

Here in the desert the palms
Are the champions of yearning
They go straight up I feel
 
To a victory of fronds
While here below the traffic hums
Of lesser mortals
 
They go on welcoming
The old gods of a loftier reason
So nothing is sadder
 
Than a row of beheaded palm trees
Standing alone in the desert
Or a long street bordered by giant ones
 
Whose wide leaves lift
And murmur above us
Their hymns of praise

William’s Valentine

This is a Polaroid poem
Taken of a large gravestone
Though the date of death
 
Keeps shifting and blurring
First it’s 1863 then 1282 then 497
And the date of birth 865
 
Or 1687 the more I peer
One calculates he lived three years
Another more than a couple thousand
 
One could even prove he died
Several decades before he was born
So thorough was his life
 
But the angel of death is a real person
Staring off as if waiting for him
On an adjacent pedestal

4000 Gaps Valentine

There’s a wide gap
Between the inspiration
And the eventual text
 
What gets written down
Is never what it
Started out to be
 
This quickening
Of the writer as he writes
His inaccurate report
 
Of what has a life of its own
Struggling under the writer’s hand
To be born or borne
 
When if he was truly inspired
He would not need
To be writing at all

 

At the Love Museum Valentine

I remember Memory as being
A small restaurant just north
Of Turmoil and Joy

Down the hallway there were rooms

Where paintings of other restaurants were hung
And in one a woman who is washing her hair
 
We see her from the back
As in all paintings we see
Something from the other side
 
But this is a restaurant after all
And though she is naked and lovely
We order oysters and take them outside
 
For moments at a time
We are completely ourselves
The sun is shining so we order wine

Why Do I Resist Valentine

Hot water no excuses
You have to take a shower
Sooner or later
 
I say I don’t want to wash
The smell of you off
You lover world
 
Or shave away your luster
Which just looks like dirt
Lint stuck in my navel
 
But brilliant to be naked
The streaming water warming
My whole body and mind
 
And then walk the streets again
See I have come back
I am one of the clean and kind

Poor Valentines

They have to be tucked in well
Or they don’t sleep right
These petunias
 
The one who dreamed up
Flowers and children must
Have been a dragon
 
To conjure up such fragile things
But underneath the wanton color
What becomes of the naked flower
 
Or the children for that matter
Are these the flowers of the future
Poor petunias
 
As a gardener I suffer
For my children
But as a father I rejoice

The Soul Speaks to the Tables Valentine

At first everything is laid out
So perfectly you don’t
Want to touch a thing
 
Or else you have the strong feeling
Everything must be rearranged
According to your own inerrant sense of drama
 
The tables must go first
Those curtains and the murky chairs
The floors scrubbed bare
 
What I had in mind
Was more of an assemblage
Of options and concerns
 
But then I could see
You’d thought of everything
Even the silliest whims

Unsustainable Valentine

Mexican food is like Chinese food
Or Indian food it doesn’t
Stick with you somehow
 
It’s like Armenian food or German
Food or Caribbean food
Two hours later you’re hungry
 
It’s like Greek food or hotdogs
With too much cheese popcorn
Then the nausea of starvation
 
It can’t go on like this Polish
Sausage or that Thai dessert
On the sidewalk in Barcelona
 
It’s like I have five tamales and two beans
And a whole amphitheater
Of starving people to feed

The Uses of Immortality Valentine

It’s a little chilly out here
Let’s go in I say to my retinue
Of cherubs and scoundrels
 
The mind knows it is
The terrible things that most want
To speak to us
 
The best would be to grow tired
Of listening to our own
Sorry excuses and moans
 
If you think of the group soul
Of humanity as a whole
On the endangered species list
 
But that’s just what they want
Us to think when we know
Unfortunately we will live forever

Texted Valentine

Yes I miss you too and sweethearts what do I do while I miss you is
I get up early I bundle up and take my coffee to the porch where the
cat I can’t call her ‘my cat’ any more than she can call me ‘her master’
we don’t have that kind of relationship but she likes to curl up in my
lap and purr and keep me warm while I keep an eye on the birds and
the atmosphere like today a beautifully notched zipper of a contrail
opened the clouds and the whole sky flushed pink at my happiness
I still have that effect on things sooner or later I will write this down
because I’ve never been able to stop myself from doing it but these
empty days are so full of words and pictures I can hardly keep up it
must be because you inspire me so I never want to miss a day like
this when so much happens that can’t be missed as you are never
really you are so there and now with me as I am here with you

Whoever’s Valentine

When I realized my life
Was being dragged up every morning
From some bottomless lake
 
And brought back down every night
From some infinite height
To arrest this body again
 
I knew love had trapped me again
Into its bargain of bones
Irretrievably you
 
Whoever you are I love you
I hold you as I miss you
I leave you as I kiss you
 
I only wanted to know
What it’s like to be you
What you see when you look at me

Against Silence Valentine

Often the world is in mortal danger
Of ending up in a poem
All the words crowding together
 
In stations and in airports
Struggling to catch
The last flights out
 
But the invading armies of silence
With their victories of defeat
Come rumbling down the street
 
While on the rooftop the poem is screaming
To be rescued and lifted away
By some helicopter or boat
 
But who will come to finish it
When the world is long abandoned
Before the poem is ever done

Smokey Valentine for David

Can we stop
At the smoke shop
On the way back home

I need some innocence

I mean some incense
Don’t mock me bro
 
They’re probably out
Of innocence anyway by now
I waited too late
 
They used to have one
Called ‘Sweet Pussy’
And one called ‘Scrotum Breath’
 
And one called ‘Heaven’s Kiss’
That smelled they said
Of the other side of death

Valentine Using Only Three Colors

I’m thinking of making a poem
Like a Jackson Pollack painting
With words just thrown down
 
Spasmodically spattered on the page
Thick impasto pesto pasta
All over your face
 
I’m thinking about all the things
We do with the body
Of a life’s work
 
The relentless patterns that emerge
In the midst of the courage
Of the impromptu
 
The wild moments
When you too were scattered
As if the words didn't matter

Interval Valentine

Only from the heights can we see
How deep the hole we’re in
And looking up from there
 
How close the clouds of stars
And what continues not careless
Beyond the airless dome
 
An ever-expanding wilderness
Filled with creatures and concepts
Longing for their names
 
But here at ground level
We must be the gap the interval
The connecting in-between
 
Necessary to all planetary life
The notch carved out
In which some tiny creature nestles

Chiron’s Valentine

To tame the wild horse
That lives inside
I take him for a ride
 
And though we share a head
He is always riding me
No matter how I try
 
To take the reins
So bitter in the mouth
And beaten flanks
 
Not till we’re both exhausted
Broken on the ground
Will he be satisfied
 
Where we lie now
Wrapped in each other’s arms
Untamed unsanctified

Music-less Valentine

If I imagine the whole
Grand orchestra of the gods
Struggling to construct my soul
 
Under the baton of a branch
Or many branches swaying
Following the paths of the clouds
 
If I listen closely and hunch
In the underbrush of seeing
So tentative is their touch
 
I can feel how leaves retract
And the soul pulls back
From being in their hands
 
However beautiful their making
Free to be alone
In winter’s shaping

Scraggly Valentine

As on some old scraggly
Pomegranate tree of the ego
Hang a few remaining fruit
 
So past lives accumulate
And the leftovers fallen
Generate a kind of compost
 
Food for thoughts flown off
And a few last leaves
Fingered by a freeze
 
Its skin is crusty and barnacled
Its joints are ugly knots
I think it would be fragrant in a fire
 
But that’s just winter talking
Come May it fills with flowers
Makes another brave ascent

Glass Valentine

High in the trellis in the sun
There’s a glass dragonfly
With its lacey satin shadow
 
Almost gleaming like a cape
Swirling just behind it
Fashion is so ironic
 
As the figures of the sun
Come down the runway
The glass breeds another one of it
 
A dark woman pinned
Like a specimen
Ashen turning on a spit
 
But isn’t it just
The sun must take
Responsibility for both

 

Between Plan Valentine

Hovering around what happens
All that might have drifted down
As If is a mountain town
 
What instead would happen
Or what could have intervened
Between the avalanche and the tsunami
 
If you had been detained
Or caught the earlier train
What were you thinking
 
How often I ask that question
But the unscheduled present
Keeps showing up
 
The recovery of wonder
Slow and ponderous
As it wants

Winter Waking Valentine

Exploring the cold expanse
On the empty half of my bed
With warm foot and hand
 
A light snow has fallen
Where you once appeared
Before I turned to sleep
 
With one thrust I lift
My body into that icy drift
And sink so deep
 
I can will your warmth again
Your body inching into mine
A frozen fire
 
Your mouth on my mouth
What a cocoon must feel
When it begins to crack

Perhaps Valentine

Isn’t sanity perhaps
Just a little bit ahead of us
Or is it us a little bit behind
 
We catch up to what’s
Already gone like a reflection
Watching its reflection
 
Trail along like a husband
Or the shadow of a family-tree
Falling into the tossing sea
 
Behind us what’s before us
So we’re always about to grasp
What’s just passed
 
Incrementally through darkness
Into which a little light
Suffers to pull us forward perhaps

Struck Valentine

I took a dose too harsh
And fell on my arse
Even the dead were laughing
 
My audience the sun
I looked straight at it
Till it struck me dumb
 
But it’s only Tuesday
And when you get up
We’ll go to the store and eat
 
Every day I grow more stunned
With the world this world
Which is not the same as the earth
 
I want to tell you
When we have a minute
How they both are you to me

Metaphors Carry Someone Else Valentine

I try to translate everything
You tell me are you
Still there
 
Your intimate verbs just sounds
Yet lords of the languages
Appearing out of nowhere
 
It could be a train passing
Or sparrows fighting
Or love’s voice booming
 
You tell me what I’m thinking
Your words are what I say
Your thoughts come back as mine
 
Carefully I see you’re writing me down
On the hard parchment
Of your dreams

Non-Epiphanous Valentine

Is nature morphing
Out of the posturing
Into the thoughtful
 
Are mornings maturing
Each one a little more comprehensive
And inclusive
 
Are the cold and the heat
Just the bitterness and the burning
Our ancestors have left us
 
Do we stand transfixed at stop-lights
Because we think
Nobody needs us
 
Is it the crowd that carries us across
Or are we swept along
By descending and ascending angels

Eternal Valentine

In the heaven I propose
Everyone is humble
In their gold clothes
 
God the humblest of all
And everything’s reversed
From earth so the light
 
Comes pouring out from
Inside things and persons
So everything is visible
 
All the secrets all the loss
With the body out of the way
The clearly comprehended cost
 
Paid off so finally eternity
Can peer into each one’s eyes
With sympathy and peace

Above All Valentine

Even if greatness came upon you
You would not be great
It would still be your fate
 
To seize your smallness
And to cleave to little things
To question what is great
 
Greatness with its use-by date
Its puffed-up follies
And its hopes too late
 
When to be small is all
To be of no account
And to have longed to fall
 
To let this be your greatness
To have stood with what is small
To be no one above all