Sunday, July 31, 2022

All Births Are Virgin Valentine

When a sound becomes a name
When a light bursts into flame
When nothing is the same
It is my life I claim
My little life that stirs
Into an inner picture world
Drawn from everything outside
It's all so fresh and new
And suddenly I remember you
Though it takes me many years
You who were my first wonder
A face I could revere
So even now at the ending
I feel you drawing near

Saturday, July 30, 2022

Exhumed Valentine

A huge pink diamond is dug
And lifted from the rocky earth
Captured by our amazement
Of course it will have to be cut
And shaped by a compassionate hand
One that understands its lineage
I imagine all the beautiful gemstones
Rising up from their graves
The great treasure-hoard of the earth
Dragged to our museums for display
As if the bodies of the gods
Were nothing more than jewelry
And not the seeds of another world
The hardened light of ancient dawns
Melting over future seashores

Friday, July 29, 2022

Waiting Valentine

No matter how far away I get
From what is real and true
It's never not there is it
Even if I forget it and you
It doesn't wait for my memory
To get triggered but continues
To radiate its presence
Even if it offers me
Illusion after illusion
So I totally lose my sense
That you could still be here
As I remember you
Even then reality doesn't fool me
I know it's waiting for me somewhere

Thursday, July 28, 2022

Hymn To The Sun Valentine

To become a desert with integrity
You have to give up lilacs and forsythia
Be willing to trade a thousand forests
For a few radiant cactus blooms
And when you kneel to kiss the earth
To get your lips singed
And save your tears to drink
As rain clouds pass you by
To burn in the shade and remember
You were once a great inland sea
The site of a burgeoning city
Now nestled in the sky
You have to be able to suffer
The loss of all you love
Even the wild hepatica
For the gentle mourning dove

Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Vacation Valentine

How many beaches did you visit
How many caves did you explore
Like a leftover dinosaur
Did you make it to the tallest
Subterranean falls did you place
Your hand on some ancient hand
Did you walk the fields of war
Did you wonder if there aren't more
Cities buried having come this far
Than cities now above the ground
Did the paintings change you
As much as the forest nights
Was there somewhere you wanted
To stop and forget your life

Monday, July 25, 2022

The Karma Of The Poem Valentine

To whom do we owe language
Which so longs to become music
But must settle for fair meaning
Or a kind of dreaming with words
Each body in its own rhythm
Arms spread wide writing O
Some say it's from the birds
Whose music longed for language
But who invented singing instead
Before which there was only wind
And the silence of longing
But I think it's language itself
That is still creating everything else
The birds and us an early foot-note

Sunday, July 24, 2022

I Go To The Store To See The Children Valentine

How old are you
He lifts three fingers
Me I'm just two
How could you be
Older than me
We laugh uncontrollably
And then he's swept away
In his mother's shopping-cart
And I go on looking for onions
Cream and artichoke hearts
With an old recipe in mind
With the crazy impulse to invite
Everyone in this grocery store
To my house for dinner tonight

Saturday, July 23, 2022

My Other Birthday Valentine

One doldrum day in my ninth summer
I felt so strangely blissful and grand
I declared it was my birthday
And invited all my little friends
Too late to take back the lie
My mother went along with it
And bought a cake and party hats
My sister stood aghast and cried
But uttered not a word
While I in smiling terror played
My last day as a child
And when my nervous guests had gone
My mother turned on me in anger
Sent me to bed with a wooden spoon
All this set a pattern of hidden
Resentment mixed with regret
And I have struggled mightily
With reality ever since

Friday, July 22, 2022

Hope For Hope Valentine

I came across a brief but
Beautiful sentence about hope
In a magazine and meant
To write it down because now
I can't remember it or find it
Rifling through several months' pages
Until it becomes a hopeless task
Something something about how hope
Comes after a disaster
Misplaced faith before
Funny I can see the page
The exact placement of the words
The pale yellow like an aura
That hovers above them while I
Hope for hope it must be somewhere
Slowly turning the forgotten pages

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Everywhere Valentine

Did you think you could see God
With just one call as if heaven
Could do anything except
Through a fully-functioning
Hierarchical bureaucracy of spirits
Of course it's his prerogative
To send his most-trusted representative
To carry on the business of the day
So he can retire peacefully into
His beloved natural world
Begetting and begetting stars
You have to make an appointment
And be willing to never hear back
Be ready to let God ghost you
When he's already everywhere

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Called Valentine

Maybe evolution is our true vocation
The careful creation of the right conditions
The cultivation of a steady oscillation
Between here and there time and space
A dream that is slowly waking up
Into its own unawareness of itself
And must within certain prearranged
Temporary limitations work out its next
Forward movement wherever the river is going
Having come far enough downstream
We fugitives and vagabonds
To comprehend the ocean
When we see it

Monday, July 18, 2022

Where They Come From Valentine

Lightening and thunder all night
Three great assaults on the roof
With brief intermissions for sleep between
The first sketch of a new opera or war
Or perhaps I'm just dreaming it
Waking up in the middle of a scene
Half in my body half out
The singer I have chosen to play
Lightening is allegorically perfect
And the way she would pause
Afterwards in the hushed house
Waiting for Thunder to enter
To explain the hidden text
To our uncertain applause

Saturday, July 16, 2022

What Has It Not Been Valentine

A dried brown hibiscus leaf
Fallen to the ground assumes
The shape of a tiny swan its stem
The curving neck and beak
Its shadow a snail or better
A shipwreck's tangled sail
The forms keep changing fingered
By the breeze until finally
It's tossed out over the yard
Where I catch and crumble it
In my hand and sprinkle
The dust at the branching base
Of my old hibiscus bush
So in devouring all its forms
It might come to bloom again

Friday, July 15, 2022

Out To Eat Valentine

It was when I had to hoist you
Up over the four-foot wall
So we wouldn't have to walk
The long way round to the door
I could feel how fragile your body
Like an ancient amphora
Lifted dripping from the sea we
Couldn't stop laughing making
Our one large step for mankind
Even if our weary bodies
Might belong in a museum
We would still make it to the portal
Where our friend is waiting
And the feast of love is served

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Wiggle Room Valentine

I thought it was a real room
At first like the Quiet Room
Or the Boom-Boom Room now burned
Or the Hidden Room behind the books
But now I find 
I'm the worm
As the hook goes through
My wiggling room
Where I must turn
And face the truth
Who pleads with me
Whatever you do
Don't wiggle
The fish await

Monday, July 11, 2022

Taking Hold Valentine

There must be a friendly spider in the sky
Who lowers this billowing thread to me
Thin as hope but catching the light
Which if I pull on it
Might unravel heaven for me
The whole structure of grace
And wind come tumbling down
A cobweb brushing my face
Turning me icy in the heat
A tiny spider's mouth that spins
And re-connects the clouds
Into the swollen web of a storm
Offering me its lightening hand
If I could only take hold

Saturday, July 9, 2022

After Roses Valentine

Every now and then I break down
And buy a dozen roses for you
Who are no longer here in bodies
In case you need a place
Of beauty to come back to
Now and then and not just
My memory's weedy yard
The thing about roses is
I have no favorite color
It's just the form I covet
Of an endlessly opening cup
And the sense it was only
After roses the human body
Could find a place to rest

Friday, July 8, 2022

Half A Valentine

The moony mind and the sunny heart
Make love together and drift apart
Even the world is divided in halves
Itself only part of something else
On one side my wandering eager self
The hand that's writing this down
And on the other its shadowy double
Just as easily scratching it out
To reach you seems impossible
As if you lived a thousand years
Ago I struggle to see in the mirror
Of your face my own grown old
While you seem not to have changed
At all still young and bold
Still waiting for me in the future

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Never Without Music Valentine

An accordion on the radio is working hard
Through the hands and legs of a carpenter
Next door the accordion is his corazon
In the radio of his body no matter
What he's building I can't tell
If it's a kitchen or a city
Whatever the accordion wants
Leaping impishly around the yard
Tempting his doctor's surgical precision
With a dancer's dangerous life
Cutting back the possibilities
Of bone and wood and stone
Putting all his feeling in the form

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

How Does The Body Put Up With The Soul Valentine (for Vic)

We think it's a virus spreading
But it's really underneath
A growing epidemic of anger
Consuming whole countries
Justifiable and unjustified rage
Both equally ineffective unprofitable
And what a tough taskmaster
A cruel slave holder anger can be
How we suffer under its lash
Which can come at any time
What does it want so much
It undermines its own purpose
I am so angry with anger
I have finally given it up
Which does wonders for the breathing

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Uninsured Valentine

Daily I marvel at our stubborn desire
To make things in the world so much
Harder than they really need to be
To make myself my enemy
And then try to blame you for it
For every criticism three acts
Of kindness leave us still in debt
In the actual economic sense
Whose lives pay for the abused
Or neglected child or anyone
Don't you think it comes out
Of our already heavily mortgaged
Souls what we owe to one another
And to living on the earth at all

Sunday, July 3, 2022

Reading the Stars Valentine

Isn't it time we re-name the planets
Reveal their hidden single sentence
Now that we stand at the entrance
Of a whole new era as never before
Let's call the sun Gratitude
And the earth Today and Venus
Mercy and Mars what Holds
And way out there Saturn's The
The original article setting out
And finally the moon called Sway
Its knotted bridge over the dark lake
Raveling and unraveling Jupiter
And we can look up and read
Today the gratitude of mercy
(Over all things) holds sway

Saturday, July 2, 2022

Singing in My Sleep Valentine

Who sings midsummer
In the blinding heat
Of another long afternoon
So urgently and sweetly
While everyone is sleeping
Or caught listening stirs
Along the empty streets
Blurred but held in the sway
Of an absolute stillness and rest
In the space between worlds
Where there is no one and nothing
Where apparently a finch
Still lives or some such singer
Insistent on the evolution of song

Friday, July 1, 2022

Home Bound Valentine

Who wants to stay at home
And write a sketchy poem
I'd rather roam alone
Among the Mayan tombs
Or climb the hills of Rome
Car whirling around the Coliseum
Wondering where they got the stones
And where their water came from
And the idea of the Pantheon's dome
When someone overturned a cup
And set it up on four bright sticks
The feeling of being held inside
That kind of concentration
Where home is everywhere with you