Wrongest Valentine

Regardless of the caginess
of the labyrinth of my life
I secretly recognize
the architect and fabulist
who thought to stump me
with my sins a sinner so-
so brilliant in the aesthetic sense
everywhere I turn someone or
something desperately in need
and hardly ever knowing it
so bravely I cry though I save
my weeping for my own crimes
certain I remain among
the wrongest cases.

Valentine Raisonne

My last masterpiece was you
but I forgot to sign it
so the attribution
is lost the early
sketches drifting off
into unexpected
collections also lost
to exist but not be found
to have no catalogue
nothing to authenticate
what was held
as inspiration even then
my genius completely
to have captured you.

Human Valentine

And then one Sunday
there are swelling tubes
of orange-red lipstick
hanging from the branches
of the pomegranate trees
and some have opened round
diaphanous skirts the life
of a flower is our space on earth
all the rest the roots
and branches the fruit
that follows can take their time
all the time they want
as prelude and postscript
it’s the flowers alone
reflect the human stage.

Unborn Valentine

The world is cruel and expensive
but then there are books
and for a while it stops
torturing you with its
unreflective eyes
which you did read
and tried to answer
back to politely
back up it says
put that book down slowly
on the table
and step aside
it was not your life
it could never be your life.

Farewell Valentine

I love you but it’s time for you to go
I would rather be lonely than afraid
more and more of the time with you
wondering where you’re going like
a deer running in the dark toward
a parked car or a tree running toward
him at an even greater rate of speed

but all in slow motion finely nuanced
not because I don’t know where it
will end up but because I’ve come
to hate the journey more than love you
and I have loved you some considerable
distances further than I recall
ever even dreaming I could run.

Voices Valentine

Was John Keats only an afterglow
of Shakespeare’s sensibilities
a nineteenth century reprise
of that range of royal
and pedestrian voices
lifting their own words
like a beautiful long coda
echoing briefly in Hart Crane
like a lifesaver or a lover
and for me at least
never heard from again
until John Wieners
blessed it and released
it somewhere in Wien.

Beautiful Valentine

Right after Liz
they talked about tumors
epidermal growth factor receptors
remember that buzz
it will certainly be on the test
the testosterone’s roster
as aging ages and one mythological
religion continues to battle
another mythological religion
in some lost region
down the street
but then her smile returns
to stage and screen
beauty is the queen maybe
beauty is the only thing
we can agree on
something we can all
agree is beautiful.

Intervening Valentine

I picked off all
the ravenous caterpillars
from the passion vine
and re-gifted them
to the compost pile
so this year for once
all the flower buds
can open fully
without holes in them
or half their heads
eaten away and the
new tendrils can climb
and leaf out a little
before winter comes
to carry them away.

Sendai Valentine

This longing for perfection
in the cherry blossoms
don’t we have that too?

with the simplest words
the geese are welcoming back
the spring

at a certain definite point
its perfume turns into
tiny green cones

super moon
behind a scrim
of ghost traffic jams

maybe today was the first day
of the end of the world.

Epitaphic Valentine

It turns out as James
Wright would put it

sleeping next to
someone is the least

risky thing you can do
for another person as

far as radiation goes
that breeze which if

it came from heaven
we would call a glory

and a blessing not the
nuclear dragon we slowly

or not so slowly releasing
let extinguish us.

Joe’s Valentine for the First Day of Spring

Yes you’re right the evil one
is green and more beautiful than

the other one in the sense
of attractive exciting thrilling

wave or hill or body ridden subdued
surely you admit the concept of

either having no material parts
requiring the existence of the lyric

the orchid on the table in its plastic
pot I got at Pick ‘n Save and it

has attitude an archive of ambition
the blunt beauty of pure force

having digested good and evil if
allowed to dry out between watering.

St. Patrick's Valentine

Like you my lovers
have always been plants
trees shrubs flowers
green annuals
the mimulus and centaury
knowing somehow
the seeds will be saved
carried into the future
trusting in yellow
for my intelligence
knowing nothing
to be afraid of
unconquerable
and immortal
a life fraught
with luck and risk.

Ancient Valentine

Because I still may have
the possibility of waking up
inside your attention some day
not as an object held up to the sun
admired and discarded
but as someone who has remained
enthusiastic about hopeless things
you might as well invite
a block of granite to become
a statue out of its own inner sculptor
or not believe that when the statues
spoke in the ancient temple
it was something a god accomplished
not the deception of clever priests.

Po Ho's Valentine

Among the sparrows
classes/clashes
like the poets

po ho
in the whore corps
high broken heel

at the hot springs
lizard skins
and new pig petunias

(It’s a bitch.
What?
Everything.)

overhearing the world
you grew up embarrassed
for everyone around you

never yourself
never anybody else
among sparrows a sparrow.

Kissing Valentine

The connoisseur of kisses
is a collector of lips
tulips eclipses ellipses
tight lips thin as paper-cuts
muscular lips moist as a snail’s pod
πούς (poús, stem: pod-) "foot" hence
stomach-foot so it feels like
being kissed by three tongues
in several extinct languages
licking sucking swallowing
pressing nibbling stretching
the connoisseur of lips
is a collector of kisses
hesitant words on the verge
of entering lips that will
never speak again.

Memorable Tree Valentine

This old tree has a crutch
for its crotch a small platform
to rest on the whole rest of itself
like it’s genuflecting
at the place where it changed
its mind from categorical refusal
to vertical as sent a stem can

after all refuse ascension
an unalterable conclusion
it can repent to be an animal
too soon and lounge in vegetative
splendor perfecting boredom
listening to lucky photographs
of happy but unlucky futures.

Behind Valentine

Behind the bird
the work
of the bird
the bird as paradise picture
of the neon air
faithful migrant singer
first gardener
to dare to thrill to kill
in this case a pileated
pecker
misapprehending a roof
for a forest floor sex for love
a garden for a soul
a man for an ant.

Glittering Valentine

The garden is still glittering
from this morning’s ablutions
one bean plant has wound
one tendril around its trellis
the sun is too hot for my head
would you go get me that hat
golden dragon the flower tag says
keep moist its feet and ways
let’s go inside I’ll show
you my retching whining
it’s when the wind enters
your mind you’ve trouble
everything remains except
the irreplaceable connections.

Nicole's Valentine

The explorer the witness
the slogan the surprise
the moving the question
the sentence the unleashing
the greediness the violence
the sensation the emotion
the lover the change
the anger the information
the thought the haunting
the cry the breathing
the constraint the swim
the calamus the affection
the animals the words
the water the pages.

Your Valentine

You will always be somewhere
even if I can’t find you even if
you can’t find yourself even if
it only sounds paradoxical you
may suddenly think so to yourself
but I will be there with you
though I have no hope of ever
seeing you again and now
wouldn’t know you on the street
you will always be somewhere
I could find you if I tried
to trade absence of space and time
for this sense-centered life
I could find you on either side.

White Cat's Valentine

That white cat who shat
in my yard I saw her later
road-kill flat – I take it back

the night the orange tree
bloomed - for whom
was that perfume wasted

of course I stepped in it
but only cross-legged later
did the smell assault

overhead the flowers
sighed their forgiving
antidote and smile

I left my shoes outside
a sprig of white blooms
filled my rooms and cried.

Aloe (Spring) Valentine

At night it frightens
you brushing against
your waist as you pass
but now you can see
how it leans out
objectively to catch
the sun’s narrow passage

over the path so
when the hummingbird
and the hototogisu come
to drink and sing
like you it’s ready
waiting
on the brink.

Mother's Birthday Valentine

Today’s all blustery full
of excuses and wrong cloudy
addresses forced entries
to no exits and on the wall
to the right my own private
Guernica in black and white
flashing shadows of new-leaved

branches gesturing puppets
of no plays and to the left
a naked stick standing erect
urgently waiting to bloom
and all the while the sun
whipping in and out of the
yard chasing the curious wind.

Goner Valentine

I left my Mina Loy
out in the sun and boy
only by accident
sometime later
did I find it there
on the chair where
I’d left it to think
things over and I’d
be back old and grateful
apt to dash off
when awed
or cheered
whether for a walk
or afternoon swoon.

Extinction Valentine

The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service
as it was called
by the Inca and
the roving tribes of Khan
cordially invite you
to the funeral today
of the eastern cougar
a catamount once
widely hailed by poets
of those parts who
thought that cat
had been incorporated
by man centuries ago.

Future Valentine

When everyone can see inside
everyone else their motive and intent
nothing will be hidden
particularly not the future
to see where we will be
if we go on this way
the immediate effect

which we can’t not see
maybe what we need to learn
doesn’t require intelligence
despite what was given us
but another line of sight
another and another until we stop
thinking of ourselves as isolated bits.

Lettuce Valentine

Arrow to the heart
may it penetrate
seeking to come
closer to love first
in its simplest
forms gazing down
upon the smallness
of a mind
of mercy for all
mad things
the grave of death
next to the lettuce bed
the earnest graceful sun
considering us again.

Windows Valentine

I thought if I could
just wash the windows
the filthy blinds
and hang the two blue
curtains back up again
I would have done
something archetypal
in this world for a change
but who could have imagined
the blackness that would
come off that glass my soul
exclaimed or found this
Palo Verde sagging with bloom
behind it on our sunny lawn?

Variegated Vinca Valentine

I can see you from the window
this year your purplish pinwheels
fill the bed under the orange tree
in a manner reminiscent of you
and me in an earlier century
I’m forced to say a garden is
a memory of a dream except
in the lower half where we
burn the bodies dig for their gold
I didn’t mean to go there
till I saw you had already
suffered enough among these
flowers your blood still green
with leaves edged white as new.

Yolu's Valentine

Yolu thinks this will all
just go away like a book
or a language a species
of frogs or nationalities
as so occupies the past
singing is a part of speech
the way speech is a part
of no one knowing who
we are becoming despite
our own best interests
if you go behind the sense
what Yolu finds is something
that can only be dealt with
with things we loved here.

Haiku Valentine

The time to repot a haiku
is when the roots come up
over the rim of Mt. Yoshino
trailing clouds
an exploited haiku
is an exploded haiku
after fifty years
still surprised when they bloom
as if it involved me
dead or alive
why won’t you tell me
I simply can’t say
the child sways
as was said of this old tree.

Returned Valentine

Yesterday your orchid flowers returned
from their long inwardness
the same flock of nine
drifting out over the lake
of the old table they seem
to be peering out
to the other side of an abyss
to the oak rocking chair
ruined by being improved
perhaps or possibly further
to the iris outside in the
returning cold how its
gesture is a sketch of us
in our early days.

Pierrot's Valentine

Many persons of this day have no conception
of what slavery was, and how it was regarded
by very many very good people.
W. G. Eliot, The Story of Archer Alexander


Those two oranges
on the compost heap
you think they can’t see us
only out of a genuinely felt
and freely won sense of equality
can a true brotherhood come
pop quiz who said that or who
could you imagine saying that
I want your words in my mouth
their warmth more than their light
but every night to get home
I have to go past that bar
dragging my thirsty self
my loneliness my star.

Bargaining Valentine

We can count on nastiness and evil
showing up for work early every day
no one more conscientious
willing to come in weekends
do you have any idea what
it cost us to get weekends off
building these social constructs
with our fingernails and knuckles
to have arrived at least notionally
at the genius of family and fratricide
at almost the same moment knowing
whatever you say of someone
consider it coming toward you
whether it’s a blessing or a curse.

Natural Valentine

Sweet pea seedlings
rubbing their eyes
as the train goes by
overall the nasturtiums
seemed to be heading north
when the frost caught up with them
are you going to drag
that compost pile over there
or come inside and kiss me
we’re afraid because
we’re fallible and so often
mistaken courage gets
wasted by being unfairly
divvied up between us.

Your Valentine

Yes we are getting your rain
I was trying to work on a longer line
no I knew you were busy quite
the world traveler everything’s
shrinking as services expand
back at Madison West High
where you were last seen
driving by at 1 AM with a friend
or to a friend’s or for a friend
a stray like you must have felt like then
I remember the first time I knew
I would never be alone
seeing how completely
you had moved inside me.

Numbered Valentine

29 million dollar bonuses
53,400 of the tribe of Naphtali
the third trimester
a billion dollar baby
from a month old and upward
the firstborn of the cattle
fourteen dicotyledons
a return of 56 per cent
halfhearted subprime
the doom both of them bring
redemption for the first 273
to the south the frontier
from the brook to the great sea
all this given as a legacy.

So-Called Dead Valentine

To only know something
by becoming that thing
having no skin
to return to no hide
and seek but roaming
from thing to thing
still essentially yourself
as you were in the flesh
striving and dissatisfied
but seeing now seeing isn’t
in the eyes tasting not
in the tongue each
word’s terroir and chagrin
to manifest here
something to take
with you there
and bring it back
renewed again.

Leonine Valentine

What the moon sees
when it’s full and staring
right at you taking it all in
is that the heart is
neither poor nor little
no matter which
of its twelve sides
is being considered
for seen from the moon
the earth turns into
a gleaming dodecahedron
and because the moon
is our mother she sees
only the strong heart
of her worrisome baby
beating back at her.

Epistemological Valentine

Knowledge is marbled
quarried sculpted
corrupted or
smashed to pieces
we don’t know how
they did it how their
mood and atmosphere
were thicker or darker
than ours or how they mixed
and conferred with gods
while we try hard just
to imagine how a god
would have anything
to do with us.

Afterwards Valentine

The morning after
the world ends
I want to sit in this
sun-filled room
with you again
I mean in the after-
world to come back
to this room on this
particular February
morning wherever it’s
recorded with its east
wall of windows
the sun pours in
like a warm bath
it’s so cold outside
but the tulips
on the table
audibly slowly
open again
in their sparkling
crystal vase.

Vespers Valentine

Bad oranges
my gold
to the compost god

gray cloud heads
we’re not high enough
for rain

a sparrow threesome
I wonder where
he goes

another wolf dream
this time I let
him eat me

waiting for rain
waiting for rain
after supper laughter.

Prophetic Valentine

Dear American people
you must be as thick
as bricks as captive
as slaves to have allowed
Europe to come over here
to your continent with
all their oligarchies intact
setting up shop right under
your bumpkin noses so now
America you’re even older
than Europe in a way more
calcified and ruined than
some dissipated young man
narcissist poet of machines
Whitman refused to seduce.

Isenheim Valentine

Every separation is for union
at a higher level. Goethe

After the massacre
of the starving workers
he blinded himself
from shame and grief
neither the leaves
nor the light
but strange in what
doesn’t last
what does is always
getting caught
a lizard hunts there
in the darkness
between the walls
between the thoughts.

St. Valentine's Valentine

Lyra barbitos cithara
the epigonion and the
epigonion triangular
the phorminx and pandouris
the hydraulis and pipes
horns and drums of course
a complete ancient orchestra
to play outside your room
slowly awakening you to
a new life a new song
may you sleep less
than the nightingale
your nights and days
filled with love.

Casino Economics Valentine

The degree to which
we think we can deny
these disasters
how far we want to push it
until it destroys itself
you shall not take
my illness from me
my freedom to be ill
seven homeless wraiths
have gathered in the square
they’re waiting for the rest
of us too-numbed-out
on lies or liquor or sex
to wake up and join them.

Egyptian Valentine

Even in early darkness
the hummingbirds come
to save our lives

the birdbath
at low tide
no freeze warning

oranges gather
cheerful
even in the dark

when I walked into Chartres
I thought now this is thinking
to build by a stream of stones

tonight that spider Mubarak
has caught a million beehives
in his dripping web

the moon was so new
I couldn’t say a word about it
when it asked me

they want to wipe
the slate clean and start fresh
even if with their own blood.

Just Ice Valentine

Catching air
nothing compares
to continents
the continence of inter-
locking systems the rise
of the lord of light
over an inland
sea of passionate
nooks and crannies
can you imagine yourself
having a center where
you would put your
finger on the weight and
justice would be Jesus?

Egyptian Wake Up Valentine

Orchid surgery first thing
this bright morning it’s
so spring of you
to hold me speechless
how much exists simply
because we can talk
about it between mindless
goodness and mindful evil
or is it mindful goodness
and mindless evil we can
sleep right through it
or we can watch
the Egyptian people filling
Tahrir (add to dictionary)
Square how truly interested
in one another they
look today and how
the value of each
single person has incalculably
increased overnight as if
they were just waking
up to one another
after a long sleep.

List Valentine

It’s a new moon Monday
7th of February in ordinary
desert time they’re reading
Genesis to Rachmaninoff’s
Vespers how to get beyond
merely associative memory
in composing my list poem
repot Hoya haircut oranges
clean bathroom under the
window they could hear
men digging stones for
ammo that he would have
forced himself on a child
for some religious purpose
a wild beast lives inside us
which our better part
must deny or tame.

Chiron's Valentine

I had to make room for him
the way myths are enforced
you were laughing down here
while I was buried up there
on some (earliest?) vases
he’s depicted clothed
with human forelegs
but in others he’s a horse
from the waist down and
a man from the waist up
in some accounts
he’s the teacher of heroes
who ride on his back
Achilles his favorite
in others he’s the killer
looking out from
every human face
in any event to avoid
endless agonizing pain
he surrendered his immortality
to Prometheus for which
he was given his own
constellation and all we
got was this T-shirt of fire
to wear forever.

Wonderful Valentine

What I wonder
about great wonders
is how there’s always
a greater wonder
just around the corner
sooner or later all
we know’s provisional
nocturnal the path
up and out unless
we turn back to
gloat over dead
emergencies ingratitude
remorse and how
I loved you of course.

Farewell Valentine

On a branch above the window
I can only see its shadow
daubed on the sunny opposite wall

flocks of fish schools of birds
finally just a few left
in the newly-made garden

no time to be late
forgive me for touching
every part of you

I could lay my hands
on in my mind
it was that or die.

At the Remains of the Monastery of Santa Maria de Ovila Valentine

The stones we found
around us but the steel
we had to make
from what we could
put together into something
new to the earth
not seeing how as
the earth condensed
so did we separate
ourselves out to lord
it over all things
not seeing how matter
only consumes matter
only life brings life.

Sam's Valentine

Do we look party ready
have our souls awakened
actually Godot did show up
recently at the Maricopa
County Court House or
at least one of the Godots
on charges of deliberate
ambiguity and unprovoked
falsification of certain
spiritual realities
very fourteenth century
the dead are invisible
because they live inside us
feeling everything they
try to teach us how to
love all living things.

In The Event Of My Valentine

If you come over
some day and find
me dead first please
close my eyes
nothing is uglier
than an empty body
and know that I
am with you and
watching you not
from the future but
watching you right
now as you read
this and wonder
what the hell to
do now who to
call first don’t be
frightened I am
with you I will
always love you.

World Valentine

The way of the flowers
and forms of heaven in
an oriental rug wanting
to risk becoming faces
of animals humans
or birds through the
flying air of your un-
biased attention
works equally well
outdoors on streets
or miles from beaches
why are you surprised
it can all be found
in some simple equation
yet to prove sound?

Nameless Season Valentine

Water dissolves
what the fire hardened
earth holds what
the air gave up
red finches bathe
where dead oranges fall
in the nameless season
are not the rich
your oppressors
are not the saints
your neighbors
and friends
the rain rages
all morning
the sun snores
all night long.

Wordless Valentine

Sometimes I manage to rehearse
the two remaining scenes
where what I love is taken
from me or I am taken
from what I love
sometimes I do it in Spanish
which is the language I
would pick if magically
I could be given one more
language I mean think
of a wordless world as
against a world where
every word has its own
unabridged dictionary
of memory and change.

Haiku Surfing Valentine

Whether it’s
your booty shaking
or the winter rain

streaks on the eighth
view of Edo
the windows sigh

as if it was psychic
the evening spoke
of your departure

forty truckloads
of clouds carried
the train away

a monthly rose
late with
her rent.

Ordinary Valentine

Those contemptuous of time
about which we know
nothing at the time
any teaching that disdains
or makes us feel
ashamed of our lives
today in ordinary time
to shed light like
leaves the night trees
to roll over against
time another body never
more held than known
held to be forever
unknowable and held alone.

Egyptian Valentine

This nation needs
a nanny to stop
bullying the world
smoky clouds
slide between
warm fronts
of vehemence
forcible rapes
result in
free rent
even our speech
refudiates
the language
of the fires
it burns in.

No Place Valentine

When you lose
your body you
lose your place
in the line
of things
there’s no place
like no place
but is there a
you still there
a remnant or
shred thereof
a shore of
conscious sand
waves of
light rush
over stroking
calmly or
is it just
you sun
you stars?

Virtuoso's Valentine

Some get Kerouac
lodged too far up in
them or Ginsberg
stuck in their throat
whose work if it had
arrived first would
have far surpassed
their teachers but
coming after repeats
and repeats in my ears
you were sick your
whole life you never
could win for dazzling
technique prodigious
prestidigitation note
for note only itself
with nothing to say.

Leaf's Valentine

A blue pail
of water a
pail of blue
water a yellow
leaf floating
spinning slowly
lefty loosey
is it the sun
sipping it up
dog star and
fallen dirty
cities of air
thrown off from
the center
who cares?

Springs Valentine

Selling Christmas cards
with a masters degree
one has to put up with
these things these days
but then one could like
what one liked which
now is in even worse
decline Proust to Joyce
once we visited all the
artists of San Sebastian
compulsively thoughtful
not by personality tell
me but did I get it done
the work the fun.

Doves' Valentine

Cut that out
a mourning
dove over and
over seems
to be saying
not speech
nor song but
then another
goes I’ve tried
that I’ve
tried that
back and forth
insistent
and tragic
as comedy
or art.

Nastic Valentine

Where the horizon
of this flower
goes at night
is it closure
of a muscular
kind or a pre-
nerve empathic
death of molecules
resulting in a slow
pivot of petals
a corps de ballet
as night leaps
onto the stage
the audience gasps
the horizon folds up
into its original dark
stitch and itch
a vertical line
I guess which the
dance unwinds.

Palm Grove Valentine

Every mind is an island
in a sea of minds
even if no man is
let’s face it
I'm no Hawaii
nor are you
but a cloven atoll
upon which has come
to rest all those
endless migrations
mental inflations
we began but you
who know me best
know when I look
at you I’m missing you
and yet among you.

War Valentine

If our true nature
is to scrounge
and hoard
to grab and run
our gratitude
and wonder
on a horse’s
head or hand-
tooled phrase
about your country
or my country
slouched in a
no-name bar
on the painted
edge of this desert
valley floor then
let the war rage
on till we’re all
done for and
can start again.

Trellis Valentine

Then I designed
a trellis to
look like you
or some falling
star or the wide
wings’ curving
of an albatross
or green heron
landing or motionless
coasting along
between two
rivers two rippling
beds of reeds
and tall irises
on either side
can’t you imagine
it when they bloom
you could you said
and did me too.

Momentary Valentine

In my last conversation
with your statue
an argument it won
though I’m uncertain
how you couldn’t
look more thoughtless
than I or more
inconsiderate of
winter’s gloom
in this sunny room
your gaze loving
its momentary
lapse into stone
and peace alone.

Eros Valentine

That feeling
for a healthy
body or an
unhealthy body
consider it actually
a creature
or a being
in its own right
and realm yet
tenderly a thing
of the earth
a figure of
our own making
recycling used-up
elements ancient
the ways of
being mastered
by the world.

Art Is Not A Natural Thing Valentine

Now oranges
will always
owe something
to Cezanne
blue and yellow
live in awe a little
of Van Gogh
the irises for sure
and for my part
I’ve hidden
a Rembrandt
a la Rothko in
my kitchen
their green
darkness against
my blue bowl
of lemons for
which the world
unconsciously
is always thirsty.

Goodbye Valentine

Look at me
when you love me
look at me
when you crucify me
look at me
when you talk to me
look at me
when you fuck me
look at me
when you have nothing to say
look at me
would you just please
turn and look at me
when you walk away.

Shrinking Valentine

Have you fallen
in the past
twelve weeks
for anyone
or anything
maybe more
than once or
what’s it for
for the same
bland speech
on the same
cold beach
when every year
two days more
slip off the
calendar soon
we’ll get to
one long day
and one long
night per year
forever.

Mistaken Valentine

For mantle woven
I read gentle waves
only a few alone
hours I have to
tell you this must
seem eggshell this
reality so brittle
when it breaks
it will look the
devil in the face
seeing he is as
real as I could
make him or we
have co-created
someone another
out of nothing
over and over again
longing to be
angels together
for good or ill.

Postcard Valentine

Redundant
flint with some
rag-stone
steeply pitched
clouds acanthus
leaves woven
on a young
girl’s grave
strange as Suffolk
with its quaint
font and Norman
doorway at the
end of a track
by a disappeared
village.

Economics Is All About Trust Valentine

What the rich
fear most
is the poor
what the poor
fear most
unarmed as
they are
by thirst
and hunger
is survival
perhaps a
middle class
is too fair
an idea
on what
basis did the
congressman
deny brotherhood
but with the
simple religion
of brotherhood
evolution is that
local drama
of learning to
share (again)
and to live
and let live.

Last Minute Moon Valentine

That point
where the star
has passed
the basket
both hung up
on the trellis-
shadow always
a distortion
of the moon’s
total refusal
to absorb
but just return
the sunlight
nothing hidden
nothing revealed.

Immortal Valentine

Even if
there were
no human
brains to
think them
the thoughts
would still
exist wouldn’t
they thoughts
not attached
to brains
bodies or
wills like
the freedom
thought
calling out
for someone
immortal
enough to
think it.

Idle Valentine

There also Aloe Vera flowers
bring the hummers
to sip on our nation
our little window on alleys
and clouds a buzz-saw
piles into cords
where the mockingbird
swivels his tail-feathers
the way you do
your foot sometimes
legs crossed face
knotted on some
text as if it was
the Bhagavad-Gita
and you were holy
and I had found
you idly sipping
coffee after years
of searching for
someone else.

Thinking's Already Spiritual Valentine

And so
all this
is lost and
sparkling
grass the
broken comb
all this
thinking which
goes into it
passing go
each from
scratch as
from a coma
come forth
all that’s you
is thinking
even as I am
here of you.

Jiggling Valentine

You just
have to
jiggle it
the key
to the world
the face
of the sun
strangely seen
something you’re
doing now
I feel as
the eternal
silence of
the future
leaking away
but if you
jiggle it
it stops.

Earth Valentine

Through these
beautiful stones
capillary worms
under the skin
what would be
a new sense organ
reveals how dead
the world we
regard as all of
beauty but an
animated corpse
not that even
this residue of
higher worlds
can’t be sanguine
fragrant even
modern at times
like any living thing.

Two Valentines Smashed Together Valentine

Are there more
ways to lose
than to win
I mean overall
they wouldn’t
be the same
number would
they you laugh
often it’s the
children who find
the dead first
I gaze on green
sip reliable
herbal teas
what do you
suggest I do
sir it’s 9:04
the evening of
a lovely day
in the valley
it only wanted
to be seen.

Timely Valentine

Right on time
for its medicine
the disease arrived
but it refused
to take it
tried to run
a rod of light
had to be driven
through its brain
the visions could
start again a hand
or a tree returning
you to your real life
already in progress.

Bad Idea Valentine

The idea you
must believe
what we believe
or we will kill you
once we have
the power to
kill you is an idea
that has never lost
ground since its
inception among
the very first
ideas that go back
so far in time
they assume a
god-like structure
we call history.

Early Valentine to Joe

Isn’t that the idea
to step away from
ideas a stain
painting or
a mood out of
formed color
when words become
too recognizable
too representational
except by this
magical example
all I might possibly
believe is to keep
working it.

Tween Valentine

Who are we when we’re
between incarnations
when we’re the outside
waiting and watching
old self dissolving
into new self is there
awareness of this even
if interrupted by long
periods of dreamless
sleep or nightmarish
or riven tearful by
fractal lifetimes spinning
out of control even if
we’re awake for only
a few moments passing
the crab nebula or
loosening Orion’s belt?

Candle for a Killer Valentine

If I passed you on the street

if I went to that school

if I knew you from the hood

if you were my student

if I knew your father

if you had been my son’s

friend or my son himself

if the death you brought

could be a signal from our

enemies ranged against us

greed anger delusion

those three poisons

if we could love our

children enough so

they could love too.

Epiphany Valentine

I see a mockingbird
a mockingbird sees me
but it’s not as real
as you might imagine
to be seen anymore
by one another and yet
our lives our very
depend upon it
the way everything
else in the world
depends upon a wish
to do better
not to be better
than anyone else.

Eighth Christmas Card (Madonna with the Goldfinch) Valentine

Just a technician
(of the sacred) the
restorer said of
herself that the
mother of the lord
should come to me
the painter at twenty-
three living in a time
so far away everyone
knew immediately
what a goldfinch
meant which John
is caught explaining
to his dreaming cousin
while Mary who is
the soul looks on.

Orchids Valentine

Is this how
they express it
roots up in the air
streaking away
from the sun
while the leaves
and flower stem
lean outward further
toward the light
as if offering us
our three choices
roots on one side
leaves on the other
and the flower stem
thickening between them.

Seventh Christmas Card (Madonna mit dem Fisch) Valentine

Dark green curtains
behind her pale blue dress
and the luminous skin
of the always naked child
reaching here for the fish
a young boy has brought
but in this detail
there’s just the mother
and her curious son
the way she holds
his chest and back
restraining and restrained
the way he points and
pushes to be let go.

Sixth Christmas Card (Madonna del Granduca) Valentine

I’m sorry my lady
I always came late
to your feet those fish
that swam the moonlight
now you’re so sfumato
in the earlier paintings
and here he’s moved to
your left side and you
seem ready to put him down
but your eyes won’t look up
as he goes on
staring right at us
still interested
and waiting.

On the Coldest Day of the Year the Ice Cream Man Comes Down Our Street Valentine

Is it ever too cold
for ice cream
too late for
an earthquake
too far for love
too late for lunch
is it ever too much
for you too out of
touch for you
all of us encased
in our high casements
that’s part of it too
and then the abasements
the abasing and being
abased is it ever too late?

Frozen Valentine

The proof is in the ¼ inch-
thick slice of ice on the top
of the rain barrel
in the morning
I wrote down all my debts
on a large legal pad
leaving little room
for poetry
gratitude impossibly
tries to square
arrivals with departures
but even in the warmth
of the narrow band of love
time freezes too.

Fifth Christmas Card Valentine (Bridgewater Madonna)

Again that loving gazing
at one another she’s
about to get up
but he’s resisting
squirming in her lap
is it time for bed
is this the painting
at the center of
the struggle
she could be Venus
he her Cupid
in another telling
just by looking at them
you’re better somehow.

New Year's Valentine (2011)

Snowball moon
yet quicker
the sun escapes

promises broken
write one hour
revise fifty

the sad fuck kitchen
four legs and a flat back
I just want to watch

come to the hall of desire
I’ll rustle up some grub
remind me to stab you

to have thoughts drift off
like friends dispatched
for success and curing

the supposed-to-be-sleeping gene
screams in the middle of the night
its bloody slaughter of the rest

at 440 rps the official pitch
for pianos I lay me down in
the snow’s glamour of hopelessness

the spiritual way a year burns
what shall it be this time
a litter of turnips or flowers?