How Can You Look At Them And Not Valentine

On first looking into the awesome pictures

Floating back to us from deep space

For a moment it felt like spelunking 

Into a dark cave's huge walls

Lit up with ancient paintings

Strange how I felt a little

Claustrophobic at first

And stopped breathing

Without a body to sustain me

The moment of letting go of everything

When you see that it includes yourself

But it passed in amazement and relief

It's not just that there are stars

And galaxies that go on forever

But that somehow they all survive in us

Hans Who Is Everywhere Valentine (for Dave M.)

Hans the stable boy in your story

After he had met the three great minds

And served them the best wine all night

Witnessing their ecstasy and laughter

Was left with the heavy responsibility

Of putting them all to bed

Two of them already deep asleep

The third still mumbling her prayers

Have you ever had to put a drunk

Parent to bed pulled off their coat

And shoes and tucked them in

Then you've seen how wisdom

Is just a foolish child as Hans did

So much for beauty truth and goodness

Hardly capable without him

How Do We Manage It Valentine

It's so compelling to me

That the great minds of history

Are all found at the beginning

With periodically other further minds

Coming to their rescue

Just in time someone is burned

At the stake or a young boy

Is tortured and torn to pieces

So it all moves forward

Body by body their ideas

Of freedom and clarity of thought

Slowly-quickly like a lava-flow

Until a new island emerges from the sea
Back to the beginning of all we know

A Hand Away Valentine

A lot of lightening and a little rain

Much like my over-heated brain

After too much talking fluff and nonsense

I walk down to my imaginary beach

To hear the sentences roll in

The speech of a saner voice

Telling of more important things

Left glittering in the sand

As the red sun goes down

Warning of what's to come

More lightening and a little rain

The storm of my mind just offshore

And you calling to me

Stretching out your hand

Christmas In July Valentine

 If you think of the weather

As part of our collective karma

What do you make

Of this purgatorial summer

That wants to cook the planet

I think of brown eggs bouncing

Boiled hard for dinner

With a piece of burnt toast

I think of laundry frozen on a line

In some long ago winter

Me struggling to take it down

I think of all the cold hearts

In the world at any given time

Yes mine among them and hope

My melting hope might warm them

Artificial Valentine

My intelligence thinks artificial intelligence

Is such a wonderful oxymoron an even

Cleverer golden calf O Moses

A picture of the machine of ourselves

After we extract all the inspirations

Of those who conceived it

Where did those come from

What we could call genuine

Intelligence that makes things up

Out of nothing but air and desire

After all out of some unknown element

Often present in blood and hard work

Which can only get us so far

Till something comes to stir the water

Up Valentine

Sometimes I try to coax

My angel out from behind me

Where I can feel her pushing up

Against the back of my brain

Into that little magic space

Where light turns into thinking

In an unstoppable stream

But she is shy of me

A child I carry on my back

Or an old woman who ghosts me

When I come knocking on her door

Sometimes it feels like that

Then suddenly out of nowhere

She shows up in a single flower

And we can sit and talk for hours

Guardian's Valentine

You who are always peering

Over my shoulders straining

To see the world through my eyes

Giving me the benefit of my doubt

Don't think I don't worry about you

Aren't appreciative of how far back

Our first introduction goes

How much light has been lost by stars

Ascending and descending since then

I imagine you must take vacations

From my traumas from time to time

Don't even think about it I'll be fine

I know our friendship never ends

And I do know where you live

Lizard Hours Valentine

There must five or six of them

By their sizes a small family

Living safely in cracks in the wall

Though I never see them together

The baby one is almost transparent

A skinless flash up the wall

When I water the aloe at night

But the horny hefty daddy emerges

Only during the day darting about

And stopping short to listen

If I have any news at all

Of his reckless profligate son

To share with him though I sense

He knows it's me come back

Unrecognizable but for the nose

The Whole Drama Valentine

After the curtain opened

On a midsummer morning garden

Against a backdrop of leaves on a wall

The audience hushed in darkness

Nothing happened for a while

And then a small bright white something

Floated midair from stage left to right

Moon-like catching the daylight sun

I couldn't tell if it was a petal

Or a moth or a breezy angel

But for several minutes after it had gone

We sat in silence until the curtain fell

Was that the whole drama

The reviews were mixed

Some felt they'd been cheated

While others sat transfixed

Where Is Thinking Going Valentine

For many years now

In my own deconstructionist way

I've tried to study the history

Of thinking its stratification

Into periods of clarity and decay

How it gets submerged at times

And then circles back on itself

For brief interludes of self-awareness

How when it applies itself to itself

It finds something preternatural

And intriguing going on a dialogue

That happens nowhere else in the world

A hidden door that opens

Leading straight to the heart

Breathless Valentine

Are you as blind to me

As I am blind to you

Except you see what's hidden from me

And all I see is your absence

Left to feel my way in the dark

Knowledge of your presence

Real as the invisible becomes

When I can get away from my body

For a few breathless seconds

Or even for whole hours

When we can travel together

On long train rides back to childhood

Or wander off to reconnoiter

The lost cities of the future

Last Day Valentine

On the first day of your death

The 'Do Not Disturb' sign

Fell from your door when

No one was looking

On the second day of your death

I felt you brush past me in the hall

Whispering 'I'll be right back'

On the third day of your death

You stood weeping by the stairs

Showering me with kisses

Saying 'This changes nothing'

On the last day of your death

Whenever it comes you know

I will be ready and waiting

Carried Away Valentine

A morning scan of the heavens

And I focus on just one cloud

That casts its shadow at my feet

And tries to beam me up

Into the light that fills it

And slowly we amalgamate

Into other clouds that find us

Until the whole sky is covered

In a twilit afternoon

Dropping me off in some distant place

Nervous and happy about the long

Walk home nervous I won't find you

Happy because it's raining

And there's a rainbow in my eyes

Where Valentine

Great stone monuments but where

Is the memory of what made them

The words but not what they meant

To the raised voices who spoke them

What they were relinquishing

Of the light so we could harvest

More and more of the darkness

Or that's how they seem to have seen it

At least that's this morning's speculation

For why the monuments were demolished

Or buried deep in deserts and lakes

Or removed to invisible places

Unprobed by science our ailing god

Now we've lost sight of their grail

Untranslatable Valentine

Yesterday I felt heartened to learn

There are an awful lot of jokes and puns

On the walls of ancient graves and temples

Smiles waiting to be exhumed

Buried in the language pictures

The night journey of the sun itself

With a few stops along the way

For quiet reflection or entertainment

Or to visit Osiris's old house

Where language floods the walls

With so much praise and laughter

It all starts to sing and dance

Now all they heard is lost to us

Hiding in our own sarcophagus 

Still wondering what those gods were after

Only Way Valentine

In last night's trauma

Some all-consuming monster

Was advancing on our village

This must have been in the Pleistocene

Everyone screaming and running in terror

But when I looked back

All I could see was a digital clock

Flying toward us through the woods

Surrounded by impenetrable darkness

I almost laughed but that came later

Rushing to rescue my wife and child

Luckily we still had our old Ford truck

And tore off down that dusty road

Our only way to escape was to wake

Closer Valentine

Keep close what you can see and touch

In all that's going on around you

But even closer all you can't

The huge rest you have to envision

Going on in your head and heart

Right now there's a shiny beetle

Crawling through the wet grass

That clarifies a question

I have always had about

The true mission of secrecy

In human lives the enormity

Of what is hidden from us

In the progress of beetles and grass

Which you can clearly see

If you get down on the ground

Not Too Far Off Valentine

While they arrange another rain

Those winged horses of the west

We slip through centuries of stillness

Sweating evenings on the beach

Like waiting for someone to leave

Or arrive from a neighboring star

The irreplaceable to be replaced

Is it only spring that doesn't want

To see us die while dying summer

Takes its vengeance to the end

The clothes ripped from our bodies

Our bodies buried in the sea

Listen you can hear those horses neigh

Circling a new mythology

Birthday Valentine

As beautiful as you have always been

You get more beautiful every year

Not like those perennials we planted

On the farm but never got to see

Those floods of iris in their maturity

That hedge of lilac trees

Blooming a mere few weeks

Your beauty is not ephemeral

Like flesh that thrives and peaks

Somehow it grows more real

More felt more seen more you

And to think my blood lives in your bones

Soul of my soul

Carrying beauty on

Reading For And Against The Wind Valentine

Wind's what's left

When you take away the water

Gusts like going over rapids

Words in little boats

Rollicking and tossed

With some going under

Several villages of vowels

Entirely swept away

But look over there not far

A whole grove of oaks is motionless

Like a crowd that stops to watch

Some small world fall apart

Wave after wave of wind

Smacking the pages in your hands

Until you let them all ascend

How Else Valentine

I'm feeling drops of honey land on my head

Some mornings can get that sticky

I just want to lick and lick them

Suck that sweetness to the pit

How else get to the serious seed

Each morning comes to plant

How else be grateful enough

That the light comes back at all

That every night at the great council

Of lights they vote to return or not

They weigh our collective heart

And consult their medical texts

Arguing mercy over wisdom

And still they decide to come back

Or at least make one more attempt

Children's Valentine

After the seventh full moon went by

Did you not notice that door in the sky

Which I imagined must be there

Outpost of heaven under repair

Or maybe not a hole but an imprint

A seal or a stain of spilled wine

A signal or whispered word

All we can manage to leave behind

We children of the moon

What would we do without our pictures

Of the invisible world

As long as the sun can enter

Fill us and flow through us

We know we're not alone

Rambling Valentine

Me and my dead friends

Who seem more alive than I am

In the morning one at a time

Come for coffee and stay

For the rambling conversation

In which I try to wheedle out of them

The secrets they are sworn to keep

Eternity is such a tease

Look they say if I made it

Anybody can to comfort me

We go back over our charts

Rediscovering the inevitable

Parting of our stars all the way back

To our still undiscovered hearts

Eye On You Valentine

Memory keeps my books

Stern accountant and Sunday painter

In double columns and cloudy skies

But I suspect she's cooking the books

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul

Or at least she warms them up a little

Always factoring in the future's

Amortization and return on a few

Emotional investments

But she's no economist alone

In fact she's better known

For her scenes of pastoral life

On the walls of empty buildings

So much she keeps an eye on you

Declaration Valentine

No plan is still a plan I'm sorry

It's baked in it's implicit

In life's relentless unraveling

Like you're not sure what

You're knitting you're just knitting

What's starting to look like a tent

Or a parachute while all you know

Is that it isn't finished yet

And you must keep on knitting

Your hands with a lightening of their own

Reaching back and forth to catch

A missed stitch or glance over

At the several patterns you're using

To get this shroud just right

Over There Valentine

In the quiet a dead leaf rises

Scratching his way toward a puddle

Right up to the shore and stops

Pulling himself together with a shrug

Contemplating the softness of that sea

That might yet bring him back to life

Or at least allow for a vigorous sail

It's hard to let reality in

But while he's been crying

That puddle's been drying

Hardly his likeness left

And even the wind has died

His last and only friend

Pointing to a puddle over there

Further Valentine

'Don't grow old' my parents croaked

As usual I didn't listen

But every through-line is different

And maybe we who come to the earth

Are really just heaven's rejects

Ingots thrown back into the fire

In need of further adjustments

Some achieve this in a few quick years

No return address on their unlived lives

While others wrinkle and ripen

Into wonder or rage or both

Lucky those who've saved a few apples

From the tree of life

And kept an in with the Cherubim

When winter brings its ice

The Beginning Returns Valentine

Grasshoppers are dancing in the heat

To some far-off Latin beat

The senoritas of the air

Wear hibiscus in their hair

But no one moves when the lizard

Scurries into the yard

And a distant woman starts to sing

Her favorite beautiful song

And we are wrapped in fear and joy

Hearing together for a while

How the world was made

Funny but it's not you said

With just one harmonica

Sharp as a grasshopper's blade

And rounded off with a smile