Still Waiting Valentine

Last night I waited for the rain
But no rain came
Only the wind to blame
For the forests still in flame

I waited for my mother
To leave my father
But finally couldn't bother
And went my own way

I waited for your train
It hurried in on time
But no you on it
As it scurried out of sight

I waited for my body to die
I was as patient as a sky
That's never known a kite
I dreamed I was a boy last night

Marina's Valentine #2

In a time of great hunger and danger
I can vividly hardly imagine
She wrote poems about buses
And swans and loved the rich
But mostly she sang like a nightingale
The loneliest songs of praise
With great pitch and valor
Until she took love too far
And it dragged her down 
Just so she could watch
Every motion of its unfolding
Forsaking even heaven
Just to live enough
To write it all down

Marina's Valentine

The end of August everywhere
And yet so many different Augusts
Too early for purple asters here
And too late for cascading stars
I think of her crossing Nevsky Prospect
In the fifth month of her pregnancy
With the daughter who would die
Of hunger before that permanently
Wary gaze had settled in her eyes
I think of her fastened to the earth
And still pacing Nevsky Prospect
A little August Russian doll
Waving her frightening poems
Sticking to her promise
To bring down those pretty domes

Beach Valentine

You call from the beach far away
Where it's sunny and breezy
With news of your world
At last the garage door is getting
Fixed and the holes in the wall
Filled in the annual invasion
Of summer ants is out of control
Your friend's father had to be hospitalized
With a painful infection your cousin's
Neighbor woke up with a gun to his head
Yes I'm fine today my big news is
I did the dishes and watered the plants
And slowly while I was listening
I lay down on the sand beside you
And held you lovely in my arms

Distracted Valentine

When enough of us can admit
How ineffective and over-rated
Anger really is how far fear
Deadens thinking hardens
Feelings when enough
Of us admit how vulnerable
We are at every stage
Of our existence how easily
Soft and gullible we learn
Too late how we were lied to
How we let ourselves be lied to
When it was our own selves
Duped into foolish anger
Distracting us from our work

Past the Time Valentine

Is the grass greener under the battlement
The water swifter under the bridge
The lightening fiercer in the city
The thunder louder in the field
Is there now an inescapable control
Between the world as echo
Of collective human voices
Raised to the pitch of a hurricane
In terror and in want
And the next storm that breaks
Over the backyards downing houses
As if this violence wasn't very convenient
And could still be pinned on something else
Willed ignorance or blind expedience

Love Is Fear Inverted Valentine

When she's very afraid
She runs and hides
The garbage truck or cleaner
Coming down the street
Loud grinding noises
From some Godzilla
Out to eat her
As if the world
Could be that simple
But even she knows
That's not the case
One day she went out to meet it
Crushed to find
It could easily be defeated

Funeral Valentine

We have only three crosses
To hang on: science art or holiness
Or what was your intention
In coming here if not to ask
What you are doing here
Your motive behind it
What were you going for
Trying to undermine death
By numbering it or painting it
Or adoring it this great big
Lumbering thing death it must really
Be put away with finally
If we're to make much progress

Unmoving Valentine

She's a loner outdoor cat
Whether it's cold or hot
But when I go out into her world
She runs to sit in my lap
Weaned too early and
Thrown out in the alley
Her trust was broken in two
But she sits and stares at me
With ambivalent adoration
Lover and betrayer her eyes say
Begging a simple question
Who are you for me to love
Her wisdom is the silence of a monk
My only purpose is not to move

World's Valentine

Happiness is the gift of the gods
But the suffering is of our own devising
Let me count the days and ways
Ravaging our goodness until it's
Almost gone and the fever breaks
On one side or the other
Happiness is the suffering of the gods
When they damp bliss down
To all the world can stand
When suffering comes to meet it
Without their infusions of joy
Often arriving at the last minute
The world would not be worth it
Nor we worthy of the world

There Are Only Second Chances Valentine

If theatre alone and music
Don't prove reincarnation
The embodiment of someone
Else and yet still you
How may we take on
Someone's deepest desire
To suffer the spectacle of oneself
And overcome the desire
To be anyone but oneself
Friends and family are almost
Everything except for the freedom
To be one's so-called self
Whatever that may be

40th Year Valentine

When farmers write poems
And children paint sunrises
Something happens in the valleys
Where the ice never came
The young and old of the people
Who lived here long ago
Feel they have awakened
And start to stir in the creek-beds
And the empty snowy fields
Take on the color of homecoming
The steep cliffs are burnished
Again with remembered wonder
From what the stones have suffered
Becoming a spirit in the trees
Becoming a glow in the eyes
Of the families who have gathered

One Day Valentine

One day frantically searching the skies
For my wayward sense of humor
I happened on a cloudy planet
Where a gloomy forest lived
Without ornament or wit
I could only walk three trees away
But when I flew up above it
I could easily see it covered
The whole circumference of that star
Orbiting there night and day
For centuries without the sun
To break the fog illuminate
Its lifting branches so completely
Was it lost in sorrow and despair

Roaches Valentine

I went to the store for one special item
And came back with ten other things
Forgetting what I was sent for
But unwilling to return
In the middle of the night
I'd found a cockroach in the kitchen
But when I got back with the swatter
It had already escaped
I figured I needed some roach motels
Where it could safely sleep
The way it reminded me of my sins
As soon as I awake
The part of me I want to remove
But unconsciously love to keep

Into Our Hands Valentine

Our lives are trembling hands
Placed into the wounds of the world
But proof's not necessarily belief
Where no proof's needed
Evidence of torture and murder
But the killer goes uncaught
And the body we examine
With tentative fingers
Feels like touching stone
That is still suffering
Its dissolution into light and air
As if the dying would go on and on
The crime unsolved
Until the wounds release the hand
And place it on the beating heart

In Time Is Triumph Valentine

The future is what moves us forward
While leaving us behind creating time
The reflection of a rhythmic repetition
Of a music stilled to the drone
Of the past pushing against it
Time devouring the eternal
Which is why it doesn't last
Whatever's outside time
Arrives inevitably inside it
What we have in the common season
The vortex of the stars and sun
Settling into the form
Of so many possible futures
Out of so many impossible pasts

Hidden Valentine

Who reads the hidden histories
Of what didn't happen
But might have and almost did
So much more voluminous
Than what squeaks through
And actually occurs
It's like there's a tiny pin-hole
Into which many vistas
Are crowding but only one
Breaks through speculation
One particular grain of sand
Among the trophies of the real
While all the others wait their turn
Until finally there is nothing
That won't happen

Bedtime Valentine

In the time before records were kept
For which no shards or jewelry are found
Absolutely no physical evidence
Emerges from its sifted sands
Of what only existed in the mind
Of a great sorcerer and a little girl
Or so the scribes translated it
Who found themselves together
In a deep forest one day
Writing up a storm
You have to be a child
To really understand the story
To hear it many many times
And slowly build its memory

The House of Crickets Valentine

In the hard heat crickets creep in
Under the door searching for water
And crumbs I drop on the floor
Which means soon enough
The house is full of crickets
Who make me their king
And teach me how to croak
Applause at orchestras
Of saws cutting strings
I grow thin delicate legs
Angled like safety-pins for leaps
But they keep me enthroned
As they facet my eyes
So I can see the world like them

Desending and Ascending Valentine

The long headaches of wisdom
For which love is the medicine
The churches are wrong
The body isn't the problem
Poor slave framed
For his master's deeds
As if it was your own
And not a temporary loan
A gift of elemental magic
Which appears and disappears
Yet only through it can we learn
How to bring light down into our senses
And give them their ascension

Present Valentine

My thoughts are mostly filler
Foam pellets engulfing
Some bubble-wrapped idea
I am ripping to unravel
Who knows what
Like I know you
My half-solved mystery
My heart's killer
Who saves my life
On a daily basis and this
Great box just sitting there
Ready to be opened
I can't go on like this

Inherited Valentine

What the father lost or squandered
What started as a lark he said
His son would rescue and restore
Freely he would bring a freedom
His father could only imagine feeling
Watching over his son
And she is also watching
Because he is also her son
She who could comfort God
And know when to take his hand
Was she too close
And the father too distant
Except she knew how to let him go
How the goodness she had given him
Would only grow and grow

Nothing But Grace Valentine

I've got to send my double to the moon
For re-education and re-deployment
He's disobedient and insubordinate
He bullies me with scorn
And cutting contempt
When I try to reason him to calm
When he cries on my shoulder
Repeating he's a failure
And we both break down
In sobs and laughter
I keep telling him the same
Old story over and over
The one about the lame blind man
Who had no one to help him to the pool

Blue Bird's Valentine

Whatever is happiness on earth
But listening to our angel
And doing the work we love
Whatever the work
Throwing yourself into the little
Tasks and the major mistakes equally
Not just for the exhilaration
Of accomplishment you feel
But don't trust too much
But out of a thinking will
That longs to see the totality
Of what's really going on
To become a scientist of happiness
And pick its feathers and its bones

 

Reappearing Valentine

Warmed-up leftovers suffice

For heaven's last meal

Even more delicious

The next day on earth

Of course ravenous helps

The wolf soul descend

On the sleeping infant

You've grown into again

It must be this helplessness

You love to come back to

Always crying out to be cared for

Free of all guilt and shame

And more beautiful than ever

Hearing your name

Chore-time Valentine

I spent the morning polishing my karma

Then I sketched out a new kind of hibiscus

One that only blooms on the coldest nights

Then I thrashed roomsful of dishes

In alphabetical order and dusted

Off my two tympanum so the voices

Could become more orchestral

The music more insistent

Then I took a long hot shower

So by nap-time I was wiped

And I could drowse like a heavy baby

My circumference moving all the way to Mars

My center-point still you

Words For It Valentine

Fortunately for us all things

Are in service to our minds

There's no other word for it

The only other word is love

Its activation and response

Here at the limits of abstraction

One way or another we're all

Watching one another's thoughts

Trying to figure one another out

It's not enough words carry meaning

They must become effective in themselves

And learn to work on us again

Just by being spoken

As when we were children

And believed everything they said

Deserted Valentine

'Summery' and intense summer

Are our only two seasons now

Where once a great inland sea

Fed forests with melting ice

Leaving us various cacti and sand

Ready to burst into flames

Yet here we build our homes

Drawn to suffer in the warmth

To wait for a few cool days

And nights when we can open

Our windows and doors

And climb the path to the ruins

To feel the breeze from then

And touch the snowy moon