St. Michael in the Americas

In the childhood pictures we brought over

From the old countries of the mind

He carries the chains in one hand

From which he freed himself

And in the other a flaming sword

Brandished above a dragon's head

We saw him as a picture of our plight

And dressed ourselves as soldier-angels

And roared through our monster teeth

And led the dragon on a leash

Or fell dead on the bloody ground

We knew we were just playing around

Until he brushed us with his wings

Michaelmas Valentine

Today we welcome the clever finches

Who make it back in the fall

Having learned to sing Your names

Into the quiet corners of the yard

They know how to scratch them out

In words made of twigs and chirps

And whatever seeds are hiding

Like when You bent down

And left Your imprint on the ground

And then assumed a branch

And sang Your blood away

Some of it must have dripped

On the finches that imperial day

I pray that it also falls on us

Lasting Valentine

Waiting in the little hallway

Between summer and fall

In that shady corridor of days

Drowsy from summer's dream

Watching it all fall apart

Each leaf so precisely placed

Not a murmur touching down

Here it is again the end of everything

The last days grouped around the grave

With nothing more to say

Death lands on a perfect day

Not too cold or hot

Not too dark or light

No matter to me if it comes or not

To My Brother on My Birthday Valentine

My one brother talks a lot 

But everything he says is important

Stuff about nothing in particular

News from the nodal point of anger

Which we both know is disguised fear

Which he doesn't know we share

But I can't stop the onward flow

Of his words roaring over rapids

Even when it comes to the slow pond

And the tall grasses of his despair

I listen even more deeply

To the silence as we float

Out over the depths of I love you

We both know is meant

Life's Valentine

If every single form of life

Is a soul-building enterprise

If suddenly small purple flowers

Show up on the red-blooming hibiscus

Everything has to be re-imagined

About how everything works

A default to the empty mind

In which everything's dissolved

Into the darkness of God again

And whatever we've left him

To reassemble from all of life

Into a new cosmos be sacrificed

That the great Teachers of Flowers

And the Masters of the Wind

Be sent forth again

Christ at Zuma Valentine

When you're not in diapers anymore

Feeling the rush of your own first steps

When you're not napping in kindergarten

Like a seed at the bottom of the world

When you're not suffering the ninth year drought

When you're not moronic fifteen zut

When you can never get enough traveling

When you can never get enough holding

When you're not in Zurich or with child

When you're just not feeling it anymore

But still in love with the world 

When you're not able to walk or speak

When you've not forgotten me anymore

But when you're good and ready come

I'll be waiting at Zuma's shore

Is It Fall Yet Valentine

Two dead Ficus leaves

Circle on the patio breeze

Rushing after one another

Then they stop and stare

What do you want

Each asks the other

I asked you first

They both repeat

Is it possible they're lovers

And the wind that's abandoned them

Their old quickening and fire

Following one another into the flames

That have turned them faded bronze

Frankly they look like earrings

Only an archaic queen would own

Banked On Valentine

In the first rough half of life

We pay off our last life's debts

So in the second half we're free

To accumulate new debts

These debts add up to death

Who just takes out a second mortgage

And installs new doors and windows

Still the house looks like a husk

In which a hard seed rattles

Like the last breeze in a throat

But finally the economy is such

We become the air and lake

All these debts have made us rich

This wealth in turn we re-invest

Secret Valentine

Even more secretive than the future

The always-unraveling one

Who cannot keep a secret

Always whispering to the past

Finding a fresh wardrobe for

The skeleton of every fact

The same act over and over

With a whole new cast

As if it were holding out on us

The future forecast in the past

The premotion in the deja-vu

The abiding presence there

We struggle to identify

As you and I and You

 

Dear I Valentine

Dear I at times too dear

At once the lowest and the highest word

Not God but my I I fear

Not the one that he conferred

Two I's that meet in a third

A little clearing in the woods

Where I find a stump and sit

And spy a trinity of birches

Dripping candling the sky

Perfect place for an I to die

Eyes left open to the light

One I that rescues the other I

The one that can never die

Flame that comprehends the night

Mistaken Valentine

Switching legs I kicked the cat

I didn't mean to I take it back

No one was hurt but a nasty look

Pursued by a hasty retreat

What's up with inadvertent things

Mean when we didn't mean to

Something in me forgot

Her sleeping on my foot

How could I suddenly not

Be stirred awake by your words

Falling and disappearing

Leaves down the page

Beseeching me to relinquish

My mistaken rage

 

One Valentine

I know you find me incomplete

A disaster at times a freak

My will flaccid my talent weak

You won't find the moon at my feet

Or a crown of stars on my head

You'll find me scouring the streets

Of floundering cities and empty creeks

Searching for you among the dead

Trusting implicitly you're the one

I will become despite myself

Because I saw you once alive

Wrapped in the rising sun

The whole reason I still survive

My one and lonely one

Joan's Valentine

Let us keep this safely between us

Holding on tightly to our pain

While only our voices remain

To echo that distant name

Though you can't return

Lost summer of green veins

A stray wind rattles your leaves

Giving up on us entirely

On our hands and knees

We comb the grass for seeds

Look I've found one gnarled

Nasturtium husk to save

No worries all our lives

Curled in it bound for spring

Getting On Valentine

I knocked cautiously

On an archangel's door

With my questions in my hand

Getting on with my life

But still standing there

If he was not at home

He would be coming later

If he was not to be disturbed

I would water the plants

Or go for a walk with a friend

All my questions could wait

Though they burned my hands off

I knew they wouldn't matter much

When I felt his touch

Honey Valentine

If every word in the world requires

Another word to explain it

We will never get done with talking

If every sound in the world requires

A symphony to express its longing

We will never get done with singing

The simple phrase I love you

To everyone in the world

It's entirely unexplainable

A jolt that takes us to a holy place

For a few seconds or a lifetime

Where the words take off their clothes

And expose their true raiment

Honey-colored in the silence

Magnificent Valentine

Isn't it magnificent

Darkness is first

Among created things

When the heights

And the depths had not

Been plundered yet

And the god was still sleeping

Dreaming of his darkness

Rolling over in the bed

To see his son come back

How many eons had he waited

Often looking out the window

Sensing the directions he was taking

The light in the darkness of his life

 

Voyaging Valentine

We find the word 'Frei'

In metal above the gate to hell

We finger fragments from the walls

Of Ephesus and Troy

We steal a flower from a grave

At Chartres and find a penny

With the face of a dead queen

On the floor of a ruined monastery

We stand under a holly tree

And have our smiles memorialized

We eat breakfast on a balcony

Above a sea of olive trees

We sit on the thrones of initiates

And get lost in the alleys of Delphi

Then fly home silently

Saving Valentine

The Messengers of the Beginning

Weren't dragged down into the mud

They went there freely

They sent the Sons and Daughters

Of Twilight to make things difficult

Their lightening of desire

Did they want everyone to be a Job

They lit everything on fire

O Man save yourself they said

From the world you created

We are the Thunders of the Sun

What more could be given

We lent you Our Rising One

Whose work is never done

 

Built Valentine

Someone is pounding something

I hear it faintly down the street

Twenty-six regular beats

Then a pause then thirty more

Another pause then I lose count

What can they be building there

A mathematics almost music

I remember from biology

The beat is there in the blood

Before it builds the heart

A bird comes first

And then the nest

Whatever it was it's finished

Just need to get it varnished

Constant Valentine

The constant struggle of the mind

To get past like and hate

Every mind everywhere at once

Knowing some won't make it I

Imagine death must strenghten us

Or what's the plot of the point

Of having come this far

Into a fairy-tale of riddles

If we can't come to the last page

Awake with wonder pleading

It all be read again

Please one more time

Re-writing the ending

But starting from the beginning

Living Valentine

I was still living here the day

The summer started to fall apart

Not a complete surrender

But a suspension in the air

It was taken out and shot

There is blood everywhere

And more to come I guess

If the sky is any measure

Sometimes I rush out

Into the street to see the sun

Pass through the cities of the west

And into the seventh heaven

That sea without a surface

Where the darkness starts to glow again

Another Dreamed Valentine

If we could have coffee alfresco
One more time you pick
The place I could tell you
About my dream last night
I walked in on you sleeping
Covered and wearing a thick
Dark blue bonnet with holes
For your ears I smiled
And wondered why your ears
Were left to freeze
But later awake I realized
It was so you could go on listening
Even in your death's deep sleep
And from that other world could dream
Everything that's happening here

Don't Valentine

Don't get stuck in the beauty
Though you must pass through
Its rot to see what
It's really all about
Some reckoning must already
Be at work to seize
The beauty we call ugly
Which is always a surprise
Sanguine spring and melancholy fall
Got married in a summer blaze
A winter pregnancy miscarried
In a March's rainy haze
It all depends if the final seed
Sprouts in the puddle of your days

Approaching Valentine

The lost traditions of birds and trees
Their festivals and sainted feasts conclude
And all is hanging wonder in the woods
But in my town a melancholy mood
Everything seems once removed
Like a distant relative approaching
With news of dead cousins and aunts
One wants to crack a joke but can't
Remember one to save one's life
But it's just death again coming in glory
When the wheels of the truck come off
And the hulk of it sits rusting in the yard
Plastered like you with red and yellow leaves
And you know you're going nowhere at last

Wanted Valentine

I wanted to speak of my laziness
But I keep putting it off
I wanted to show you my patience
But I keep going off
Is it just like you to keep saying
What I really don't want to hear
I wanted to remember you
When you are right in front of me
I wanted you to know our names
That can't be said
I wanted to write about my craziness
And assure you it's caged and content
Now all my hallucinations are of you
Or God or the faces of our dead

Noon Moon Valentine

Because the light is outnumbered by the darkness
It must be more strategic more inventive
More consciously and thoroughly thought out
Every day its brilliant structures
Must be re-imagined piece by piece
And the sense of something never seen before
Installed in all the insignificant places
The powerful shadows work to blur
Even that little ghost moon we spy at noon
Like a sail lost in the blue
Must be struggled for and held
By a light so fragile and gentle
That when it lifts above the bay
We feel there is nothing left to say

Lullaby for My Illusions Valentine

Sleep my sweet illusions
Rest your heavy heads
Dream to your conclusions
Now the story's read

Did the plot consume you
How easily you were led
To find the weeping woman
And her young lover dead

Did you finally figure out
Which of her tears were real
Did you stagger about
Struggling not to feel

His body lay there on her lap
Within the silence of the trees
And in her heart a thunderclap
That brought you to your knees

Irreligious Valentine

If most cats are faithful Buddhists
And most dogs pious Protestants
Most frogs must be Zen Masters
Whose entrails predict disasters

But the Seventh Day Adventist crows
Promise they know what no one knows
And tell it to the Catholic cows
Where the Muslim grasses grow

In holy atheist days gone by
Clouds called a council in the sky
Of all beliefs facts long divisions
Around the idea we must die

Finally a Monarch wrote their creed
And handed morals out like seed
And on the tongue of every clod
Placed a tiny crumb of God

Autumnal Valentine

For for for
Against against against
Is there only more
Argument and angst

I tried to appeal to my neighbor
But my neighbor pulled a gun
The bullets in the chamber
Said listening was done

I retreated to my garden
And sat among the weeds
And watched their flowers harden
Into a hurricane of seeds

But even within their silence
I could hear the ringing of a bell
Clearing a path to heaven
And a highway to hell

Small Valentine

Some poets are small
Children who want to
Eat everything they see
Swallowing their becoming
They long to put their hands
On their first touching
And love uncritically
Holding on tightly to a finger
Or a breast where they can rest
From all their wailing and staring
Totally at the mercy of the gods
Who tend and wipe their asses
And coddle them and dress
Them in their cutest clothes
And send them out to where who knows