Postcard Valentine

I get how taken you are
with all you have to do
so if you can’t
do this for me
I get that also
but if you could
just read this
and tell me
what’s the first
thing you think of
having written it for me
as much as you
how else could I
have reached you
so far away?

Maybe Valentine

I ate the macaroons
you left for me
or did you
leave them for me
they were light

as marshmallows
but meatier the way
they were left sitting
there on the counter
maybe you just forgot them

on your way out and
cursing yourself now
think of me eating them
all and smiled
and smiling.

Jade Valentine

Slowly on its own say-so
the jade plant started growing
huge and heart-shaped
branches curving down
from its central pivot
until what used to be
a fist-sized planet
orbiting the sun
divided after the war
into four unequal chambers
as you have it now
waking early before the sun
while it’s still raining
carried out into the yard
but by that point
the house’s already burning.

Practice Valentine

To get something
new started
only to see it
fall apart to
wait for it to

and to practice
remembering
its pleasure
finding you
in the dark

just as deletion
the illusion of
deletion arrives
in the trees
barking hard.

Walking Stick Valentine

He called it funk
but then there’s a breeze
of manly basil inside
rampant mint
as if you could find

the flower in a fossil
not the mind
surely got complacent
walking backwards
the painful stick

and what to do
with the bodies of bad
ideas laying everywhere
about before they
come for us?

Pillow-words Valentine

In the 1930’s
turning out
long-stemmed
vases what was
that about
it was Monday but
I could still
see beauty
from my yard
it wasn’t the war
machines triggering
machines phones and
saws all going off
in the world
at once it was
your heart.

Co-Dependent Valentine

Almost everything
depends
on the body’s keen
ability to execute
the spirit

for which it
offers the outline
color merely
filling in
the space

or letting loose
yet another new idea
in the land
where thinking’s
dead.

Poetry Valentine

What was crossed out
is only what was added later
afterwards I thought
better of itself the truth
including lying

careful deception in all
fifty-seven flavors though
there are only nine kinds
of poems or planets
formulaic as poetry

can be like family
of destination where
you line up with
some crazy mothers
and sisters.

Garden Valentine

Can one plant be a garden
I mean if it’s a zucchini
and you’ve carried it
through torridity and
morbidity to three

still budding penises
ribbed glossy speckled green
in the palm
of your mind where admit it
germination is encouraged

isn’t it nor can one love
be a life I don’t think so
not if you’re imagining
your life as something gone
beyond imagination.

My Dirty Valentine

In the late 70’s
I’d get high
write a poem
jack off
the usual routines

masturbatory prose
pouring out in
long streaks
while the real poem
was in the coming

what secrecy they share
still to this day
like when someone asks
what you write and it’s as if
you said ejaculation.

Thumping Valentine

A laugh betrays
an old man sitting
in a courtyard
far below where
I am imagining all this

when a drive-by video
faster than you can
gangster thumping
pulls out the street its
monumental behind

but how can that old man
still remember me
when all these years
I could barely
imagine him?

Historical Valentine

To begin with
there was nothing evil
in the world
all the gods were good
couldn’t not be good

until some were told
deliberately
to place obstacles
on the paths of
their followers

to strengthen them
that something greater
more desperate arise
overcome
by love.

Hospital Valentine

We didn’t say the word
out loud we talked around
it I’d brought
you something pretty
to distract you

Euphorbia I thought
it said euphoria
the planet farthest
from this movement
pale yellow red

it was disaster coming
and you said well
I guess we’ll do
what we do
I love you.

Call Me Valentine

Light behind the bones
looks yellow
darkness behind
the bones looks blue
the rest lies between

if black is not a
color but all colors
clamoring at once
what is the dream
of color

if you think
of it call me
love isn’t the lovers
it’s the space between them
that’s alive.

Unreachable Valentine

Unreachable
as of a thing
or person or
goodness as sailing right
out of sight of land

unnavigable waves of
goodness hauled close into
the wind’s stern
chinny-chin-chin
along with strengthening

our own rudders and those
nearby we're supposed always
to be injecting massive doses
of love right into the hearts
of our enemies.

9/1/1939 Valentine

The leaves on the trees are yellow
but the leaves on the ground are red
if you stand between them and
beside me in this muted light
we could imitate a tree I bet

or a whole colony of oaks
I think or sugar maples left
somewhere in Poland
we could hear the camera
talking to the clock

and the gun go off
in the picture
in the leaves
the invulnerable
fragility of each.

Outside Valentine

At 120 degrees
there are no butterflies
but the bees go on kindly
worrying in the shade
I’m no longer afraid

in the old ways honey
and look to slowly occupy
a secure position outside
the physical self understood
as fantasy at first

but kindness isn’t blindness
anymore than the sacrifice
can be avoided
the one whose promise
only others can fulfill.

Wildness Valentine

‘I got soul
and I’m super bad’ said Whitman
I write in longhand
and then go back
to that time

in my serious moments
I don’t blame James Brown
(the singer) for everything
but his wildness entered even
penmanship and prose

doubling in death like a sea
Stevens sings of words
what can’t be said
can’t be all sad
in a winter of youth.

Li Po's Uncle's Valentine

By ice-light otherwise
I traveled and through
much yellow-red I bled
and was convicted
multiple Waldens ago

no I hardly know
what I’m saying
till after three days
he started to stink
self-knowledge stinks

but it reorients one
in his dark room
don’t you think
we talked remembering
our loves?

Mango Valentine

Why do we let the ripe mangoes
we bought lie rotting in the crisper
why to compliment uniqueness
do we refer to someone else
I was reading a report

about a comet flying
right through the sun
a bullet through a heart
coming out the other side
spattering blood everywhere

but if that happens
you will never be reading this
and it will be as if
the very idea of poetry
had never existed.

For the One Concerned Death Is a Singularity Valentine

I want to pour out
over those worst days
as if it were possible
to do so in advance
my most expensive perfume

but we’re all still waiting here in terror
behind the gate
at a certain angle you can see
the camps through the fence
dogs barking and sirens

put away three months of food
build a shelter
my timid friends
once led to the abyss
we must deliver.

Valentine Equals Valentine

Let’s love
one another
equally
you no more
than me

would I
have loved
you as
yourself if
there had been

enough
for me I
would have
loved you
even more.

Naked Valentine

Morning in its most
immaculate pants
removes them
this Europe must be
feeling us so much

inside and if
I privilege the senses
in this context
it’s not only my childhood
kicking in and up

here’s where we stay
you’re the best
please don’t leave
me any longer
than you must.

Brenda's Valentine

When I compare it to science’s
ambition or money’s angry lust
don’t you wonder about poetry’s
staged performance problems
or her self-respect

as when beauty’s snubbed or tamed
by the mind in favor of
loose matter sloughing off
or striding down toward some
sandy replication

which is always a beach
in a walled garden
where you can sit so still
you become someone
else’s conflagration.

Rachel's Valentine

All love poems call
poetry back (biatch)
to her sweet onions
not in the churches or stage
nor the last mouthful
of self-worship

but in someone else’s eyes
wickedness assembles me
a search party beats it
out of the night the future
forces it to give itself away

my ideals exceed me
by say a country century while I
was passing through your head
reading
your lovely poem.

Player's Valentine

I love it when he plays
the mouse craven and
beneath himself despite
his good looks earning
those pores on his face

numinous and deep craters
his shirt open as he crumbles
to the floor under
the first punch
if even the forbidden

forbids us we want it
still more always
in good cheer
under the blows
as if noticed.

Diana's Valentine

Among the Taurians
or at Brauron in Attica
the equals the similar ones
the river unyielding and
then gently swimming out

isn’t it only a question
of giving in to a god’s demands
a goat as if she were
your daughter or
a cock-and-bull story

half savage half coward
she carries us little ones
both animal and human
while we’re still enemies
to others and ourselves.

Turquoise Valentine

You can’t refuse
the first love
not at first
you’re not qualified
for discounts

but the second
is up for grabs
and must decide
to settle on the third
and only alternative

the most amphibious
of all my children
who carries a stone heart
in his pocket and
the other one in your heart.

Tell Them Valentine

Tell them heavy
on everything she said
over her customers’ heads
that way you’re sure to get
what’s fresh not something

that’s sat around all week
she made the happy talk of the guilty
unless there’s nothing
fresh today a day without freshness
would be like no other day

finally a day
the finals day
tell them
heavy
on everything.

Too Early (Paul's) Valentine

Still in the tragic half
of cozy morning before belief
steps in with its one giant misperception
must be forwarded
separately postage due

still in the darkness that won’t
quite recognize itself cornered
still breathing diaphragmatically
as if nothing will happen
until it gets back

in the earliest thing you can’t
even imagine happening
all we love is but
the shattered picture
of what’s really here.

Love System Valentine

There are only two children
of metaphor
birth and/or death
what part he goes
don’t you get

smartass you know
I love you and
you’ve always used that
in my favor
but the love system

works like that
we its heirs
and ripe falling
to the ground
its hearts.

Student's Valentine

God is simply the evolution
of the human portrayed at the highest level
he worked to get there
what’s so difficult
about that concept

how each wave of children
brings another stepping forward
into the loss of one
thing the acquisition
of another

we are the students of
birth and death
this work
just what the gods
won't do.

Late Summer Valentine

Is there something more important
about personal feeling than an
accurate description of nature
which privileges depiction over caring
if every single poem defines poetry

outside of its success or failure
why is there still an animal several
blocks away who knows
I’m sitting here can sense
me the abandoned tenement

of his heart and several lakes
I’ve managed in several dark places
I would like to see again
mostly the color green though
you and I could never get enough.

Children's Valentine

Of those who cross
some drown some are never found
let me pause here
so you can fill in the blanks
with more empty spaces

or some are beaten raped
flung far upstream
abandoned or shot why
are thousands of children alone
running toward Manhattan

is it just to feed their hearts
with stones and send back
does that make sense
a few dineros
to their families?

Exploding Valentine

I wanted to know how
you could be taken
by something that would
devour you that would
bestow its circuitry

on you so you could
finish your desert
and take me home
later always a little later
when everything is finished

or when a glass
of wine explodes
in my heart
no I mean
your hand.

Stony Valentine

The tiny stones
we carry in
with us
for their final grinding
into the ficus hurled

or the cactus
that must first
bite the tender soles
of our bare feet
so we ascend or leap

shattering
into matter fast
whatever comes
poised as gratitude
or lust.

Hero's Valentine

I didn’t want a crown
or wings on my feet
I couldn’t even feel the infection
but he said the stitches
were purely preventive

I lay on the table and gagged
and gagged making
my mind say our prayers
have left us O lord
I am here all alone

so if you must praise
heroes and the brave
nation we are
look first
to the people we tortured.

Punked Valentine

To pray to ourselves
as if to a god or goddess
that kind of reverence
due benevolence
wherever it happens

and in the morning crowded
with dew and forgiveness
the deft alertness
of the light
spun from ourselves

into the darkness behind the things
clicks forward
to the midnight sun
sung by June Christy
not Julie Christie.

Scary Valentine

Valentines are only things
for sieving words
like paintings are to
color alongside of
and despite the seascapes

of abstract humanism
what’s moral is what
it means and therefore
generally avoided or
traduced by whatever

flowers
it is the heart open
alone and alarmingly
red that serves
our purpose.

Vellum Valentine

Now we live in the day
thinking starts to think
about thinking in less
intellectual less
brain-bound ways

in which thoughts
make use of their own residue
to heft a body through
the crumbling vellum
of some greater mind

who wrote to us long ago
the current episode puts it
letting them move us
all the way back
to the original mood.

Strange Drapes Valentine #54

On the luciferic side
of the issue the drinkers
and talkers and other kinds of
ecstatic folks I go back and
forth between the Vikings

and the monks of the kells
the holy inlets where the
elves and pale sylphs
were last observed
and written down

and those who don’t trust words
lost in the art of sailing around
them and the plunder of time
and place the more violent
side of the argument takes.

Ripe Valentine

I have taken a skilled saw
to my ego it wasn’t pretty
but now it’s a useful piece
of furniture festooned with
geegaws and gorgeous peaks

and three wrinkled pluots
grown near Mount Tamalpais
staring out of their plastic box
when I think certain thoughts
or open the frig too quickly

why have I never tried one before
they look sour but are probably
quite sweet ripe often
as sweet as it gets
out here.

Enough Valentine

A life lived between
two deaths spent walking
but if you have to visualize it
it’s a lot less
contemplative than that

that would be enough
if not the permanent as such
who or what experiences
the permanency anyway
that would be enough

that the light come
with you through the door
whether you are leaving
or just getting here
that would be enough.

Nothing's Valentine

What can’t be thought
can’t be brought to the table
except as a category of emptiness
only imaginable within
some greater fender bender

which goes on and on
creating out of nothing
where some new thing
comes fully into being
capable of devouring

mere you and me
being mere you and me
nothing meaning the invisible
something meaning matter
you meaning me.

Neighbor's Valentine

He knew she liked
his garden when her
husband mistook
the plan of it
he talked daylilies

and roses between
us and our teeth’s
vast wisdom
a storehouse of desire
for all things

when he began to see
how the world had to be made
something had to come
from nothing
disguised as us.

Hungry Valentine

Blame the shallow
gate between
the doe’s
and the daylily’s
gardens

the wild inhuman
and the cultivated
weeds between
fog and coffee
animals feeding

on dreams
and a woman
in a seaside room
who’s already
bloomed forever.

Wall's Valentine

Where a pale wall
with some pull
and some dusk
in it blurs
the shadows of its branches

can you tell it’s a
pomegranate tree
can you see where it’s
sitting sketching you
as visual poetry

and aren’t you excited
to be living now
when we’d rather have
the apocalypse
than to have to care?

American Valentine

My need became
so great it became
a right my rights
so great it became
all your wrong

painfully it became
unconstitutional in
the molecular sense
I could see the bombing
the dollar was dead

and the people
soon upon the disease
so who do you love
take them
hold them.

Calm Valentine

As many dead
flow out with the dawn
that many newborns pour in
with the next full moon
light ferries

them out that last
in either case
few yards
where often
one can panic

and feel like turning back
catching a glimpse
of the immensity
of our lives
so calm.

Trouble's Valentine

Big big trouble
have you ever been
in big big trouble
since the fourth
grade dude

no dude I mean
serious prison trouble
death trouble love trouble
you have no idea what’s
going up your butt trouble

no you haven’t have you
but you think
that’s somehow
all your doing
don’t you dude?

Eclipsed Valentine

The muse is paid
to tell the truth
not merely to amuse us
but what is that
from his vantage point

as a being of air
and light but these
dark baggages
our thoughts
mine of you

yours of me
how not when at this
very moment
everything we
touch is moral.

Evidential Valentine

Sometimes I can feel
the speed and chill
of the darkness all around
us as it leaks through
some opened door in space

floating back
at a certain angle yellow
cycles into life
a breathing system
an exculpatory system

and a set of wrenches
with which to tweak the heart
love pounding
and pounding
just to make it go.

Wet Valentine

Catching my sandal
on the lip of the sky
of the abyss I tumbled
forward down
into a puddle

into which the blood
from my turned
knee flowed out sweetly
into the delta I thought
of a new day

but some other trip
or bird of fate
it will take
to push me
from this nest.

Barbara's Valentine

Only by chance
did I remember
to look outward
through a clear
clean window

only by chance
did I remember
to find you again
the tell of new
laughter

only by chance
did I remember
my life in
the act of
giving it away.

Money is Made on the Moon Valentine

Money is a moony substance
a mercury the more you hold
on to it the more it scalds but
if you let it flow right on through
you bringing it forward and letting

go the more it harbors you
starts to heal you from within
all these your children
your sisters and brothers
you can help

no one so special
as to be above
another
or refuse
to share or shine.

2009 Valentine

A long rap of violence
which the myth masks
of a kind country
a godly and a free
while you were running naked toward me

reading a long frog poem
about what destroys
is death and death
is winning all of us
tools of the banks

the greedy who fear
death most buying
death off with more death
or at least we who do little
keep letting them think so.

Wave's Valentine

You mean to
make something
particular with no
particular
meaning out of

grasps at meaning
lunges at it
as against great
darkness a wave
breaks in and out of

meaning rain as
wind ensembles
under my hand
I could feel its hand
slowly expand.

Driving Valentine

Hi-jacking the obstruction
of justice charges with
reality TV and then parking
the same thoughts as
at a higher level or lower

we were driving and came
into a beautiful new part
of the city but coming
back a few blocks north
it was all rural poverty

this is what moves us
what a profoundly costly
and materialistic time
for those who love the body
more than the soul.

Human Valentine

Wherever a body appears
it’s like a bomb goes off
just a crater and shouts
where the spirit exploded
into visible form

Of course we see
one another’s true bodies
and historical feelings growing
from our hidden
places despite matter-

created space anyway
to come to a certain
end it pauses
and to imagine on
from there.

Leonine Valentine

What I know of you
so far looks leonine
in stature how far
back to the original
landscape do you go

can still be strolling
abandoned hills and
laughter ever after
not to defend oneself
or to get angry

and no forgiveness but
what is asked for
all the new mysteries
are mysteries
of love.

Valentine's Valentine

Piled to the eyes with words
and still not enough
words to say this world
and every surface
of my house and shelves

of buried self under
forests of words never
enough cemeteries for
written to death or
endlessly listened to

to survive which words
are written down
and crossed-out
the list of our lives
on ‘to do’ hearts.

Flight Valentine

Even when the best
or worst is there
who will
seize it
make it

make adjustment
reactions on the level
of despair repair
and so arrive
at surrender remember

you only have an
hour between stops
hopefully some
presence of mind your
only purchase.

Human Mirror Valentine

To mirror back
what one wants
to see or can
see of oneself
tucked in here

a tennis ball hit
from the inside
to the outside me
both and
neither

a traveling being
carried to actual
appearances and
the long heroic
way back.

After the Storm Valentine

In the slave cemeteries
of our minds
where we’re buried
with our masters
by our better thoughts

she walks gathering
the scattered palm fronds
depending on her sturdy
red wagon so much
to carry them all

a grown child
to the compost heap
while her thoughts
go on thinking
us continually.

Hands Valentine

Hands that Isaac had
musical a painter’s
hands Martin has
a worker’s paws
hands night had then

pierced and brilliant
day’s hands bitten and
chilly your hands too
worn on me like clothing
like children

hands cloven
hewn from
precious stones
hands that lift me
from the dead.

Philosophy's Valentine

So I said to the
other worlds
look let’s hug it out
you need me as
much as I need you

when all the forms
are shattered
and we wake up
in the chaos
of something higher

you’ll see metaphysics
can’t be overcome
but sometimes love
surpasses what remains
of Being.

Leaving Valentine

How the pitch of childhood sails
toward the conquest of narcissism
that dragon-livered country
one comes upon alone
in dire revelations

but if you can’t believe
yourself you won’t
believe the dead
or whole families of them
working invisible skies

or swimming upstream
against our comical bearing
some word
or wail or laugh of theirs
rushing toward our mouths.

Blessing Valentine

Ever notice how every
blessing welcomes
every other blessing
but every evil
stands alone

actually we’re
outnumbered
by the good guys I mean
who are always weaker
in the beginning

was the secret
the gods kept from us
so we’d stay awake –
what destroys destroys
itself just wait.

Walking No Dog Valentine

Fallen coat
of the body
everything sags and
scatters in the wind
on long walks

and the hedge
making a giant M
sagging
in the middle
of its leap

where was I
in my life
erasing mountains
or striding
the upland plain?

Waiting for Cavafy Valentine

Waiting for Cavafy
to come out
on the English stage
and start
postmodernism

at the deli on fifth
and farrago
the drugs alone was
Whitman the last
sober poet or

Kerouac who loved
men and stayed a
Catholic
no one forgives
like we forgive.

Eclipsing Valentine

To lament the praiseworthy
fictional facts of
our lives I put my tears
my onion tears
into my starter dough

that you may eat from my hands
and I from yours take up
sweet substance what
little crumb must not
be loved back

but who put the body
in charge of the soul
and the soul in charge
of the spirit he’s the one
we must lunch with now.

Hammock Valentine

What is bigger
than color
a room half
inside you and
half outside

so that as soon
as you enter
it you’re drawn
outdoors again
must find a mid

point to momentarily
rest breath rest between
floor and sky
between tree and tree
suspended in ascension.

Marilyn's Valentine

The purple works fine
alone with the green
the yellow feminizes it
thus the glow of
anger or passion

suddenly I saw her
Marilyn Monroe at sixty-five
as we would have been
her painted face and mine
motionless above

strange drapes
fluttering empty kimono
hilarious the
sandals she leapt from
when she fled.

William's Other Valentine

The spirit can never be sick
though it can put on sickness
we call it the body either
we have come through
to thinking’s no accident

or we have further bleeding
to go so the body’s a radio
ready to transmit
purely and sternly the static
of love’s northwest passage

and most chronic scenery
a new Hoya whose flowers bloom
only on last year’s stems
probing the air
with tiny umbrellas.

William's Valentine

O the bihilarity the bifocality
of it the prodigal returns but
as all the rejected evil you’ve
also ever made and done
coming home to be loved by you

O to be loved by you
in a great hurry
in so deep a hurry
forgetting whatever
happens is just a test

of our courage
O Tamino
from our past
the price of the realm
of nothing to fear.

Imaging Valentine

In the visible regime
paying the light bill and the effects
of scintillating scotoma on
subwavelength photodetection
devices in a single fiber

a speculated density left
lower lobe as above suspicious
for malignant neoplasm
a focal infiltrate
cannot be excluded

history shortness of
breath cough
no prior studies
the heart is normal
in size.

The New Valentine

At least it will be scary
in the retention of better than
of getting worse we who’ve
abandoned all judgment
just to enter here

where our instructions for the day
in sudoku code
await our unflinching unraveling
I have no idea
what this shit wants

in my poetry where there is only the will
working it can sometimes feel like calisthenics
but wasn’t the machine a way of
avoiding feeling human
scary enough?

Zero Valentine

Here in the summer
in the desert
it’s like your
conscience
on crack

and what the human body
drained of blood
looks like is
your soul being given
artificial respiration

by the whole cosmos
being given back
everything carefully
mineralized now
quietly dissolving.

Swearing Valentine

I am not Christ
Christ is other people
he is patching the holes
in hope the idea continues
the idea of another Christ

a slow growth rate
they can’t possibly keep
up with the simple
pleasures of discreetly
listening in on him

the Christ I am
he said
Christ I am Christ
I am and then
he washed the garden.

110 Degrees Valentine

The love that’s left
after you subtract
yourself the dividend
is called the unconscious
denominator in the old math

but in the newer glimpses
we’re getting of the strength
it takes to hold it all together
in your mouth the taste for what
would otherwise spell defeat

looms largest among these steep
hills and narrow valleys the flavors
of these last pale flowers
for with them the wrath
of summer cometh.

San Francisco Valentine

I killed a man
in San Fran
almost
my blue
and windy mind

we died and went
to China it’s still Chinatown
but much wiser
than I thought
you said it would be

on the map you would
have to paint this city in red
a mouth with braces
blue-eyed and wearing a war-bonnet
of tiny redwoods.

Healing Valentine

To be lowered
through a hole
in the roof
of your heart
another heart

slowly edging out
the older hordes
of feelings with
felt pictures of
others as oneself

that wound
where we were torn
from one another
and imagined ourselves
alone.

Sibylline Valentine

I’m considering a sibylline series
of haiku on my kitchen
in which is revealed
a whole new avenue
for glass and expressionism

my kitsch-end
what makes you
say that
but yes I mean
what you see

always oracular
but never too much Cumae
in your hummus
kind farts for
old folks.

Unsigned Valentine

To keep going
even if you fail me
or I fail you
and I will
fail you

will you
fail me too
I will I promise
I will and will
keep going you

right then
when I fail
promise
to keep going
toward the fence.

Independent (Sic) Day Valentine

He who bets on the shore
has a distinct
celestial advantage
when it comes to waves
bridges human beings

we are walked on
as a species of water
merely by ourselves
without enough notice
or concern

but that’s my report today
help me stop
pretending all this
and just focus on
my love for you.

Blue Tulip Valentine

When I showed him
my crayon portrait
of a blue tulip he
laughed out loud
there’s no such thing
as a blue tulip
then I said what
do you call this
unmistakable marine
the squeaky leaves
I’ve captured
too incoherent
for you too royal
a cross between
your new bruise
and the bottom
of the lake?

Rainful Valentine

The pain runs vertical thick rain
if you’re going somewhere
first you have to stand upright
a bladder can only hold two cups
the way a migraine cups a brain

some rain tries to hold your hand
while you run on ahead
but you forgot to close off
the first line of escape
when you made that promise

not to return or be
sent back to the old
earth outlines complicit
fields of chalky veins
where statues also ran.

Formless Valentine

What repeats itself
betrays itself
something moves inside it
or behind it
summer rolls her autumn eyes

and by the light of the hair
on her chinny-chin-chin
place-holder for a better
box of paints
she draws the wind

flooding the house
with fragrance and noise
searching everywhere
for a new form
to fill and rend.

Aloe Valentine

I finally see it spinning
blind for twenty years
how the aloe does it
from the center clockwise
a quarter the first stem turns

making space for a second stem
to step up right across from it
leaving room at the center
for a third to fill in there
between them and so on

turning and tightening
each time at a higher place
just above where the first stem
took up its intractable form
with such fleshy grace.

Beach Valentine

One day he discovered nothing works
you know the difference often a Tuesday
you can have your cultural feelings
but when will the waves stop analyzing
our love affairs

this too much of a good long dream
simultaneously decaying
and building itself up
so we went down to the beach
where I heard my conscience singing

my conscience throws like a guy
as if he’s above all that
but not in a snobbish way
as if saying yes we will see to that
and yes we will see to that too.

Riddling Valentine

One flower has broken free
of the tree of power
one flower joined by another
separate but in wonder
or in harmony that’s sweet

or incomplete and sour
joined against itself
a leaf sewn to a face
to restore some place
of power

but our free work is free
we flutter and our shadows
dawdle in the dusk
hey look another tree
has entered me.

MJ Valentine

Whatever he was it wasn’t fifty
more like a permanent fifteen
dropped off from some celestial
circus truck whose voice
never cracked

because he carried his own music box
around him spinning at the center
of it whoever sang and spun before
causing dancing to happen
happy tragic years

study being able to exist
only for four or five minutes
at a time but flashing and brilliant
before falling back
into a stupor.

One-winged Valentine

No one not unhinged enough
would notice the dreamy
nature of all we feel
for one another
as for the earth

would take pity on us
would buy our lives back
for us out of the goodness
of his courage or the courage
of her goodness

but those days are done
now the helpless author
must sit in the audience
with everyone else and laugh
and weep at his amazing life.

Coefficient Of Valentine

I was noticing that pleasure
in jumble and willed ignorance
where does that word originate
hold on I’ll go get it
then I have to leave

actually I haven’t moved an inch
since fall of 1943
whether due to life or death
I am trying a way to find
what he was sent for

all fathers are in heaven or else
they disappear all children
fall from there the coefficient
of reconciliation rises from there
see what I mean?

Marin County Valentine

Having adopted early on
the agon of the aggrieved
abandoned goddess
virginal in its conception
as a barren amphitheater

all her life flicking back
her hair long and oval yellow
sad Madonna of the doll-like poem
and sundown walks
hurling thunderbolts

at her last lover
when it’s really her first
she misses those horses on the shore
and the sea greater than the darkness
of her love turned hate for him.

Team Valentine

What an ant seizes
or an imagined angel
recognizes of our mineral
world having let
death in they can

only imagine what only
we’ve arranged
a personal death
full membership
on death’s team

as a token of our esteem
for what cannot die
but tries to every year
living already what we
have to prove again and again.

Blog Valentine

Gone with rain
the lake sleeps
so soundly
we’re gifted
momentarily

but did I need to
tell you that out loud
or just post it to my blog
how excessively gifted
we all are and how

if I wanted someone’s
foot on the back of my neck
I’d get a massage
not a new dictatorship
O clerics.

Divan Valentine

In the very process of being formulated
right in their first motherhoods
lies become ants and bats
sent out to gather in
the dead ends of things

to pretend and push
when you aren’t even pregnant
my blood crawls
when I recall my own
abortions and adoptions

to be as lonely as an ant
but a hard-working missionary
for the queen deception
we aren’t one
we aren’t free.

Mystery Valentine

The mystery of the human will
buried under its own particular soil
of physical movements and whims
past the islands of desire
spends its summers here

in the ocean of the human heart
on the northern shores
of its southern seas
whoever thought humans
should take up thinking

lands here in winter
in the shape of a palm tree
a brain carried in a basket
a head with shining wings
flying off forever to itself.

St. John's Valentine

The shiny residue
of dreams the foam
of washed-up kisses
your feet swirled around
by minor coruscations

so you described your drive
along the shore your dream
by my side half-submerged
laying down on the road
to sleep or die

in the dream you’re sure
it’s death but when
you wake you’re certain
you will live
forever.