All Hallow's Eve Valentine

The banal versus the perverse
Has always interested me
Our theological days of yes and no
A light on in the great house
Someone up writing it down
In his letters to the modern Heloise
Does Peter ever mention their child
The desire for God and the love
Of scholarly labor pruning
The vineyards harvesting hives
When God was not entirely
Thought out yet as whatever
Vague memories of the father
Linger on in the son you are

At the Cottage Valentine

When I stepped onto the cat's paw
She hissed and leapt
Through the open door
We were racing to
Get out into the open air
Sorry so sorry but did
She hear me good she
Doesn't hold a grudge
We plunged into the sunny yard
Two bodies in space
I was sorry and glad
She was glad but sore
Just standing there breathing
The sea morning air

Tombeau de Poe Valentine

I suspect Poe would have smoked
Whitman's grass and not gotten high
A lot of aroma without the lift
But he would have loved Emily's flowers
Always the lady's man having lost
All three of his mothers
Their stark marriage would have been
A new intelligence for the child
Of the poem prematurely buried
A little bell ringing in the coffin
Now they're having tea in heaven
Two kinds of bread and cakes
And Whitman visits every morning
Still lusty for goodness sakes

To All Humanity Valentine

What is would not exist at all
Without what was it's like
The individual against tradition
Our habits and proclivities
Transcendent and domestic
Things that happen night and day
We were always curious creatures
Each tribe in its own way
And usually there was one or two
Who knew the truth
Who valued it above all
And who were crushed
Pushed back underground
But who keep rising up again

Missing Valentine

The idea was to go on
Filling in the missing pieces
Of the past to expose
The house of the dead
On an island in the middle
Of a nowhere sea
Like the bird I buried
And then dug up again
A few weeks later
Because I missed his song
One day he simply crumpled
In his cage he who had
Straddled my finger and spoke
His pleas for a kiss so long

Someone's Valentine

Someone appeared on the patio this morning
It was sunny and shady and quiet
I felt its presence and the cat woke up
And looked around at the empty air
So I knew something was there
It was like a feeling looking
For a form or a thought torn
Loose from its moorings
The dissolving spirit of the morning
A sadness and a gladness
Like a gone friend dropping by
A face I strained to identify
But loved once saying
My love would never die

Friendly Valentine

Sometimes I feel I have a soul
Without a body and a body
Without a soul
Like two quarrelsome friends
In love with one another
Though neither will say it out loud
My soul perceives my body
As a dream in which it wakes
Holding another body
A body that always wants to lie down
And a soul that always wants
To get going how is it all
That holds them together
Is a love of travel and the weather

Clear Valentine

You can't accept karmic ties
Without including past lives
That's the only thing the natural
World is clear about
Through its many incarnations
Whatever explanation sorrow offers
It remains our only world
And if you admit the seed-
Idea of pre-existence
As the basis of evolution
You are lost out there in space
Did we dream footsteps on the moon
Would explain the world of dreaming
How it goes on without end

Enough Valentine

I know I'm not enough
Yet I still love you
We are a love a lot together
The comfort we take
It's so hot we want
To go on wanting
When Michael gets back from Mars
We'll have so much to tell him
The first word you gave me
To speak 'Well...I....'
In the half-light of fall
In the time before you had
A memory you could still smile
Brave flower of love
I know I'm not enough

Still That Child Valentine

Michael comes in Libra to defend
The goat-man from the scorpion's bite
It all ends in a manger
And a scary midnight flight
The fairy-tale the stars
Keep reading us to sleep
While the grown-ups quarrel downstairs
Having drunk too much
I love the part where the bull
Comes rushing back two fishes
In his dripping mouth
And the fishermen gather on the shore
For the feast of flowers
Real life is such a bore

Partly Valentine

Isn't most of what you see
The enormity of the river
Of what you don't
You are overwhelmed and drowned
By the invisibility surrounding
Other lives your own
Still a thriving mystery mostly
The enormity of the idea
That you are nothing and everything
Which is only partly true
A fact that can only be appreciated
By a certain kind of greatness
You must inescapably pursue

Night School Valentine

                      "Destruction will be the reward
                        of those who destroy the earth."
                                             Revelations 11, 18-19

Because she was shifted
From mother to grandmother
She never learned to speak or write
Good English or good Spanish
And her older friend
Whose Spanish was immaculate
But who struggled with her English
They went to night school together
And diligently got A's and B's
Just to prove they could
Take advantage of every chance
The ungrateful gringos offered
To go on living always in search
Of the right words for survival

Secret Valentine

Season of myrrh and apple loneliness
Long-burdened friend of sky
When gold fires fill the streets
And the flowery stars drift by
To feed on summer's corpse
And the moon looks you in the eye
And blinks giving it all away
The secret falls apart in seeds
Each one hiding a secret sky
Where trembling it must stand
And lift its arms in praise
Hand holding hand
In these dark days

Time's Valentine

Valentines waste time
That's not only mine
But you too are implicated
In the wasting time crime
Often not difficult to detect
Does love say go to the window
Stop everything you're doing
How does anything get done
Love says it's a waste of time
Our lives building beautiful houses
When just across the street
Love wastes away in a hovel
Writing valentines wasting time

Captured Valentine

Odd how empty a room is
Without a plant to talk to
To remember greenness
As a contingency of the right light
When I look up from a book
Unable to read another word
To watch how the minerals do it
Dissolving so quietly into leaves
Refusing to be just furniture or art
They startle me with the ways
They listen to the light
Even the thumb-like cactus I captured
And brought home to the desert of my room

Across Valentine

I went in to get what I forgot to get
But came back out to find
I didn't need it I think
Like this the dead are thoughtless
But full of feelings for us
And a willfulness that carries
Our memories across the emptiness
Of forgetting how they
Go on living inside us
While we have only thoughts like these
Vague diaphanous veils
Or clothes hung on a line
We who've only begun to feel things
And to do things here

Questioning Valentine

Is humanity more than a story
A foreign object in the world
Fallen to the earth like Gilgamesh's
Friend to love and go
Back to where we came from
What must we be working on
To have come so far from home
Our migrant lives rejected
And rejecting wherever we go
Why would the people who built
The pyramids lie about the reality
Of the spiritual world
That never dies
I'd like to know

Except Valentine

Are all the great poets gay and glad
Except for Shakespeare who was bi
And Goethe who cross-dressed
And Blake who married
What sex I am is a kind of sexism
We can do more than one
Thing at a time both making
Art and living artful lives
From century to century
One life at a time but
What are bodies for
Nothing and everything
Meanwhile great choirs
Are singing us
Into being all

Migratory Valentine

Many crows caw in California
Along the coast as they gather
Toward dark in the tall pale
Eucalyptus trees I remember
But here in the desert this morning
One crow appeared and cawed
Half-heartedly I thought
On a sunny roof nearby
I felt he was missing the ocean
Which was a pure projection
I mean he had only three
Or four caws and was gone
I wondered if even further inland
To the cold heart of the country

Nowhere Else Valentine

I believe in human beings
Only because I have faith
The gods who guide us
Will never abandon us
In their continual growing
Will bring us along with them
Because we are parts of them
And their creation is our creation
Only a god could convince me
With his proofs of beauty
But it was his stoved-in heart
That led me on to complete belief
That we have nowhere else
To go but him

Gospel Valentine

I found myself preaching
That half of life is rejection
And the other half acceptance
To find what you can accept
About rejection and what
You won't just manage
About acceptance I wasn't
Speaking abstractly
About pain and joy
When the surfaces fall away
And nakedness takes on
A whole new aspect
And you accept what you reject
Seeing your own hand
In the preparation of the event

Postcard from Purgatory Valentine

In my modernized and comfortable
Cloister garth I'm vacationing
Surrounded by a few herbs
And late mountain flowers
The trip is going well
Our tour guide and guardian
Of the ancient spirit world
Showed us around today
The actual vessel from which
Emanated the first words
Of the fading gods
Now we're just waiting for our guide
To finish his cigarette over there
With his truck-driver buddy
So we can get back on the bus

Morning Wood Valentine

Cats don't grovel like dogs do
When I was five I thought
Cats were the girls
And the dogs were the boys
And I was right
Two pictures that belong together
Hummingbird people
And dragonfly people
In the same tree this morning
The holiest time of the day
The earlier the better
The sun ambles in
The stray cat people come
To feed with the neighbor's dogs

Old Valentine

You are sweet and you are noble
And you look like lots of trouble
But I took the tumble-rumble
The sex was great the talk was better
It was love that made us young
But why is it always ignorant at first
And poor or living on the street
Even the old don't remember
How love goes on feeding on love
And grows to be so sweet and noble
And so much lovely trouble

Starting Valentine

Or start from the cosmic
And work your way into the comic
It's only Monday and I love you
More the more I love you
Or if all else fails at dawn sit down
And write the histories of your heart
Dare to sum them up
In insignificant phrases
Or else start from the comic
And work your startled way
Back into the cosmic
Who knows where love
Starts from is already a lover
And happily tragic

Aquarium Valentine

If water is necessary memory
And we the fish who can walk and talk
The long way back to the shore
For someone who's never seen the ocean
Not been swallowed by it yet
Its terrifying pleasure
Its sublime gesture
Now the air has caught us
Drawn us up from the depths
Bright goblin fish
And fancy guppies
Enough to fill a tank

This Valentine

Stop with the preferences already
This I like this and I don't like that
I advise myself frequently
But do I listen yes and no
Dodge all the differences
Only if you get there
Can you get passed it
Those who are good will get better
Those who are not won't
Setting up a terrible clamor
Only total adoration suffices
The gods on either side
To feel that anything could be
But this is the moment that is

Boding Valentine

The season of boding began
With a mockingbird fanfare
That went on to become a whole opera
In any case the leaves got up
And left at such appalling
Imitations of the great masters
But touched somehow by his wild
Enthusiasm and stern sincerity
I stood through his whole concert
Alone in my little yard listening
I was not unaware of the world
Out there spinning around us
Which for him was the single place
He could sing himself entirely

Far Valentine

We went too far
But we had far to go
Near went farther
We ran to follow
As close as we are
Isn't summer the reason
Fall has to go so far
A marriage of moods
Culminating in a snowy field
Once I was walking there
I found small mice tunnels
Dug into the snow to warm
Burrows and once I saw a hawk
Swoop down and snatch one
Its tiny feet ascending dangling
And I thought of you

Shakes-pearian Valentine

You and I have to break things down
Into smaller and smaller bites
Until we can't eat any more heart
Until we've stuffed ourselves
With wild venison of roasted
Youth and grief's caviar
Downed with laughter's wine
And we come to our renaissance
Trying to live a Shakespearian life
Keep moving vertically he said
And you will come to a certain
Rose-bush whose thorns
Are stars that prick you
Until you bleed them back

I Am Only a Mountain When I'm Embraced Valentine

I tell my friend don't worry
It will all work out the way
It's supposed to there is
A will that rules the world
Worry about your own two cents worth
That it not go unspoken like the truth
To spend a day with you
How it mitigates my terror
That all is lost sometimes
Doomed to the error of our days
But the circles we go in prove dances
And long walks other times with you
I mean can you explain
A flower you've never seen before

I Am a Photo of the Stars Valentine

The week Mars enters my sign
Not long after the sun and
Gorgeous Venus arrive but
Trying to drive a link
To the stars is exhilarating
Work when I just want
To rest and let them
Settle their long arguments
Like a child listening to his
Parents cry out their agonies
But today isn't that day
Today is the moment of the first
Meeting that pure moment
The distillation and the thirst
Of how many prior encounters
Arriving in a touch a look