Not Yet Valentine

Too little is always better
Than too much
Too little patience
For too much reason
It's part of the doppelganger
Who faithfully follows us around
With his too much logic
But is it too much to ask him
To step aside sometimes
Too little of my I
In all its majesty
Leaks through to see
The greatness of my littleness
In fact the smaller I become
The more I grow and shine

Almost Valentine

The call of a child
Down the road
Sounds like a bird
In distress but somehow
It cheers me
Almost a word
I never use
Comes back to serve
The rush in my heart
The reaching out
To a friend in the street
Whether love you bring
Or anguish
I go out to meet

Hymn to Life Valentine

Aren't all deaths murders
From a certain angle of light
Death tricks life into thinking
It can get away with it
And in a hurry the case is closed
And though the thousand witnesses are sure
About what they saw and heard
And despite the libraries of evidence
Death escapes prosecution again
And remains at large
Until you can't believe your eyes
That life keeps getting murdered
And coming back for more
And no one seems to get that

Feasting with the Dead Valentine

You don't take the first nibble
Until everyone's assembled
At the well-laid table
You wait while the sun
Dashes in and out of the room
Seating the late arrivals
I love this part of quiet chit-chat
Faces revealing the years between
The quiet laughter of recognition
But we all stand when the Guest
With trumpets and violins
At last sweeps into the room
Humbled to have been invited

Medicinal Valentine

When we visited the Hopis
They were already dancing and singing
Casting their bodies off
Into the warmth and light of space
Using the old movements
And the first poems sung
To make a healing substance
For the earth all the way
Home in the car we listened
For the answer that would come
As when a bird stops singing
And sits and waits
For what the stars in heaven
Might offer in return

Teri's Valentine

To put a journey together of songs
In the effervescence of the spotlight
To hold forth your life
Always to an audience of one
Even if strangers come
Standing in rapt attention
To say this isn't mine
This voice your hear
I give it back to you
The only way I can
In melancholy melodies
And boisterous tunes
I've carried in my heart

The Body is a Red Flag Valentine

Money our equivalent to love
The more you have the more
You give away or not
Which must like love
Be kept moving flowing
Or it gets dammed up
Acting cruelly on its hoarders
Not a commodity but an exchange
I try to keep that in mind
Passing a derelict sleeping
In the shade of a bank
His half-naked body
A mnemonic for love
Ezra said it was usury
But it's just hate

Waiting Valentine

While I waited for the doctor
I sat on the examining table
My legs dangling looking
Around at the antiseptic room
A little poster above a desk
With two heads in a blue sky
And below the spaced words
Know your health.  Know yourself.
And suddenly I remembered our visit
To the ruined hospital of Asclepius
And the little temple at Delphi
Where those words had been erased
I sat and waited in that empty space
I still wanted my health and self
But what if the doctor never comes

Following You Valentine

From the United Bank of Prayers
I have made a huge withdrawal
For you my stars
I have mortgaged the moon
Which was only meant to be
A little getaway turned
Into a money pit
I have pawned my last doubloon
I have sold the Rembrandt
For a million mercies
Which may not be enough
I have packed the things you love
In that old luggage you bought
Was it in Brisbane my stars

Promissory Valentine

In the adult stage
Of their overcoming
Of gravity in the time
Of their lifting off
In a great exhalation
When the soul reaches
Out into dark spaces
As far as light can go
The leaves in my yard
Return to being stars
Even in broad daylight
They flutter and gleam
Promising what seems

Late Valentine

I sweep and water
And sit in a clean space
And stare at light on green
And white on blue
And a few orange flowers
So quiet I can hear them
Beginning to open and close
Is it because I stayed up late
Last night my body is still asleep
So the rest of me breaks free
To wander the lucid yard
To enter the dream of the world
To become a passing cloud

More Valentine

If I can
Love someone more
Than I hate someone else
That's the least to be expected
To be loved more happily
Than I have to suffer for
That's the most to be hoped
Lift someone up measurably more
Than I put myself down
That's the best to be longed for
Tell my secrets to someone
More than I hide everything
From someone else
That's the least to be ashamed of

Skin's Valentine

While I was stroking
Your cool arm
While you were
Quietly talking about
Some beautiful farm
We once lived on
I was just trying
To memorize your skin
Remembering you were dying
And letting you go on and on
About the neighbor farmer
Who lost some fingers
In the jammed corn-picker
Laughing at your rhymes
While here at your skin
I go on stoking and stroking
Your warm arm

Costly Valentine

On the trail of the ephemeral
The astute and the perennial flower
Duped into a single day
And one incandescent hour
Which it knows will come again
Sooner or later in a year
On the trail of the ephemeral
Body where it goes green
And flakes off in a white storm
After much cogitation
It could be an eye or an iris
Fear is always of loss
On the trail of the ephemeral
Love is always the cost

The Next Thing Valentine

I wonder if we held one another
More often and for longer periods
Of time the way apes still do
Not wanting anything but to let
Yourself be held and
Holding on for dear life
Quietly in the knowledge
Of a longing gone beyond
Knowing and come to rest
That at a certain hour everyday
Everyone in the world
Wherever they found themselves
Would hold the nearest person
Like a long-lost relative
Just for a few moments
Just to see what's next

Brilliant Valentine

I’m so brilliant I whisper
But of course I mean my angel
I have only the brains
Of a groundhog or a spider
But miraculously she
Makes use of them for her escape
Only to be stranded as she is
On some tiny island
Sixty leagues from heaven
Meanwhile she teaches me
How to tango on the beach
And how to build a fire in my heart
If I ever hope any day
To get us rescued

Today’s Valentine

Today the brilliant scientist only wants
To write poetry that has nothing
To do with good or evil
And the poet we all make up
Having already worked out
The essential theorem
Just wants to wake up
In the morning with messages
From the other side
Words of condolence
And congratulation
The only words we can speak
And then get down to work
On what together now
We might make of today

Fields Valentine

In its thoughts the other world
Puts seeds in our heads
Which either grow or fester
Those that flourish
They feed on or harvest
Our grim thoughts
So much garbage
Fills that world
Even a mustard seed
Must enter sideways
Have you ever watched one grow
Fields of ripe golden thoughts
That must be cut down
As if those seeds could ever run
Out of new ground

Once Touched Valentine

I don’t think I’m feeling pretty guilty
Enough for all the happiness I’ve gathered
Some days I am not worthy
That it should come into my heart
When for a few moments
I should recognize my failings
And I see a flash of you
In the glory of being
Your blazing self
This happiness I take
Back with me into the dark
The conviction of a hand
Placed in a wound
Forgiving all doubt

Poetry Was Meant To Be Discarded Valentine

But poetry itself is a metaphor a man
Employing millions of worker metaphors
In his vast warehouses constantly
Being shipped out into the inner spaces
Of the world a package arriving
In a secure place hidden
Behind the rosemary bush
Two books a fat one and a thin one
One says too little one too much
Reminding me to bring I must
Some of that scent into the house
And to discard the books somehow
Release the metaphors from their mornings
And let the real shrub speak

Just One Day Valentine

It’s just one day
Is it something I say
Just coast ya think
A dry day for forgiveness
A poor day for permission
A squeeze play
Between sun and moon
But I see I’m not alone
There are millions of us
Who still love every morning
As if it was our lost child
Come home with hell to pay
Who cling to every night
With nothing left to say

Changed Valentine

Let me now praise former wives
Who went on to better husbands
Or found themselves a woman
To love as deeply as a man
Let me now praise former friends
Lost touch with former moments
Who wouldn’t know me anymore
And me not recognizing them
Let me go in search of them
And find who’s changed more
The photograph or the reality
How we lived in one another’s faces
Let me not discard but thank
Who we were and came to be

Deceptive Valentine

The great deception
Of this morning
Perpetrated by the light
Capturing me again
Was that here in its warmth
It suddenly rained for five seconds
And evaporated even faster
Like a liar’s ‘tell’ the fact
That we never really
See the light itself
But only its reflections
That only light can see itself
If it has a mind to

Accidental Valentine

I dropped a glass bottle on the floor
And was picking up the pieces
For months where I had swept
A new shard would suddenly appear
How could I have overlooked it
Hiding in plain sight
Sometimes it was the sunlight’s
Glint would illuminate
The presence of a tiny chip
Curling in the corner of a table leg
Which I on hands and knees
Would carefully retrieve
Is it possible a little vial
Of perfume could scatter a life
And leave me bleeding on the floor

Twilit Valentine

In Christ-time in our time
We get to see that mysterious presence
So familiar so remote
But it’s Lucifer we have to thank
For starting the first revolution
That freedom is primordial
And we must live on the earth
Between sun and set
Creatures of twilight (two-lights)
And dawn coming on
For Christ you can substitute
Anything in the world you love
While Lucifer is stuck loving himself
Which by now can be seen
As an unavoidable half-sin
When forgiveness rescues him

Independent Valentine

Results without the means
By which they were accomplished
Is magic the hocus-pocus
Of thinking refusing
To think about itself
To catch itself in the very act
As it slips from nothing to nothing
You see the ball but not the player
Who hits it out of sight
Eventually it’s a voice or voices
A monologue in a dialogue
You try to identify who’s speaking
And call it I it must be me
It must be everything that speaks
In me so heartbrokenly
So thoughtfully

Shopped Valentine (for Frank)

They were out of it
Or I was out of it
I’m not sure which
So I had to get you
Not your favorite yoghurt
And they had no fresh
Fruit so I had to get frozen
Often I was frozen in an aisle
Not listless but without a list
I had to stop and wonder
What we needed most tonight
Luckily the store is a map
In my head so I could survey
Its shelves almost as eerily
As the computer that put them there
Gathering and hunting
With my ancient skill
It wasn’t long before I caught you
Roses and a Beaujolais Nouveau

Raised Valentine

Hurled forward into the future
And dragged screaming back
Into the past at 2:22 PM
I had to draw the drapes
Nestle in for a nap
The best part of childhood awaits
I roughly remember the prayer
That goes with it into the dark
Stream of hurrying dreams
But at 4:10 PM some man
Banged the door open
Flashing the light on and off
Yelling my name twice
And just as quickly was gone
The house was in darkness
The doors and windows locked
My life still loves me I thought
Rouses me from the dead

Know Thyself Valentine

There’s so much we don’t want to know
But it’s not the quantity of it
But the quality of our not-knowing
I want to know I mean how it feels
When too much knowing is not enough
To rip the veil we’re always wearing
I don’t have enough time
To hear everyone’s story tonight
But what I know of story-telling
It’s best to wait until morning
To know what to say or do

Crumbling Valentine

At one moment the leaf
Lived on the stem the next
It lived on the ground
Luckily there are several
Others to carry on above
While the lost leaf
Crumbles into the underworld
All this world is made of
In its first expression
The first tingling of matter
As when a cock hardens
Or love embarrasses you
And you feel like you’re dying
But don’t depend on matter
It's the latter not the former

The New Moon’s Sermon Valentine

I’ve seen how your differences
Leap to easy opposition and
Your dreams fall back to promises
Not kept but isn’t that the outrage
To save the children you must
Save the parents chicken and egg
Finding your denials in yourself
And in your repeating relations
Always a choice to make
Or prove one doesn’t have to take
It lying down or standing up
That no one is ever like anyone else
Or never unlike completely
Why doesn’t this plain fact
Overwhelm you discretely
With its devastating calm
What is it waiting for

St. Johnstide Valentine

The new page flutters forward
Only to be pinned abruptly down
By the same old words
Now and then it escapes
Only to be pinched by fingers
Back into place on the page
Which always wants to be turned
So little is learned from the words
But that little is the luster
Of a tiny cocoon shaped like a bird
Of something that didn’t make it into the world
The wind wouldn’t have it
And the page said no
Not yet