Bodhi Valentine #237

Sitting here
under the bodhi tree
I saw you beauty
moving through a cloud
of tourists in some piazza
like anyone else I could tell
you were still struggling
with old lives and one morning
crossing into the city I saw you
running along the still invisible shore
there is something in the world
that wants to levitate us
to suspend us and leave us
floating in mid-air
while something else
some colder thing wants to
pound us right into the ground
to cauterize our senses with
disappointment and regret
but I saw you beauty playing
both sides of that net.

Narcissus at Ninety Valentine

He was always chewing
on a toothpick and would
leave the used things all over
the house you could
step on one walking around
barefoot or sit on a couple left
in the middle of the couch
so he was often yelled at
throughout his whole life and
thereby gradually developed
an intensely self-critical
inner world which explains his
perennially self-absorptive eyes.

Judgmental Valentine

Are we just starting to
wake the fuck up enough
to realize how soundly
we’ve been sleeping
I think not
even if the myth of
history is the history
of myth the chore
remains the same
somehow
to disenchant
our trauma drama
from the thousands
of tiny black seeds
the shy impatient flowers
catapult everywhere
whose cure is itself.

Desert Guerilla Gardening Valentine

My huge succulent flourishes
while the pot it’s in slowly decays
a pile of fallen leaves and shards
forms a small mountain range around it
all in one narrow bed I put
marjoram mint basil thyme oregano
guerilla gardening at night
we fight it out I hose them down
water lashes water bullets
until their fragrance comes
pouring out mixed on the breeze
the water itself creates
a drunkenness in the desert is my soul
inside that soul.

Genius Valentine

Every day some small question
gets rewarded some old mystery
creeps away erased
O that’s where she gets
such confidence O that’s
what happened to him
or some new saint or seamstress
swims like genius into sight
offering us illuminations of despair
but we have a little shopping to do
and no we won’t be able
to do it later he smiles
meanwhile the rejected
pomegranate flowers fall
in a pattern that exactly reflects
my mood and character today
face-down wind-blown
as if a god were near.

Bodhi Valentine

Sitting here under
the bodhi tree
under the new Taurus
moon in my constructed
heaven my childhood
fort that any
of us could matter
trying to imagine
that many of us did
matter to someone
or other not that far
from 1st and 51st
my prison years I
call them because
I was not yet reborn as
the flower of forgotten
knowledge the afternoon’s
sweetheart the twilight’s
last paramour and friend.

Parade of One Valentine

The resurrection takes
at least about a week
to sink in it’s not like
those flashbulbs that irradiate
celebrities as they arrive
for the gala state dinner
you start to see it’s been
there all along but
for some perverse purpose
the higher self refused
to show itself
you start to feel
a swagger in the prose
you identify as poetry
it comes and goes
just an oatmeal day until
a ruby throat sweeps
to a stop before you
bows and turns
humming humming
what have you got?
what have you got?

Early Valentine

Early this morning a rather
large and scary-looking grackle
started yelling at me
from the top gallant
branch of the chaste tree
at anchor in our yard
he just kept swaying there and
harshly scolding me but then
a mockingbird flew right
at him ugly sounds back
and forth until the grackle
flew off and the mockingbird
took his place atop the tree
but when I looked back
a few minutes later on
the situation was reversed
the grackle barking triumphantly
on that last shred of branch
like getting the daily news
and here I thought it was me.

Wedding Valentine

‘Unavoidably lightly
or wantonly’ the archbishop
is wrapped in what looks like
a rug of a cape maybe all actors
after a certain number of
years turn ‘good acceptable
and perfect’ gifts just not in
this world where we marry
at a royal rate and then take back
our troths still amateurs at life
so with all sides dangerously
clueless I side with the
sex chat girl just making
a living playing with fire
who after all the nasty
her job requires she endure
says she still loves men
and mankind yes
and says it with a smile
tenderly totally.

With Or Without Awareness Valentine

I am trying to marry one
awareness to another slowly
or at least to introduce them
to one another gradually
like one of those stretch
bracelets of lapis stones
one rubbing up against
another on your wrist
the way each stone
closes off with its flecks
of gold inside each deep
thalo sky could be dawn
could be sun going down
I am trying to convince myself
of one awareness at a time
and can’t imagine how
they’ve come apart.

Family Valentine

All families are broken
all broken families
stay broken or go on
to be broken in new ways
all families go on
just as the last one dies
a distant cousin appears
carrying the lineage luggage
like the gold teeth of Auschwitz
dug up at night
by the children born
during Auschwitz
they spend the money
on college educations
for jobs that don’t exist
and have beautiful families
all families are beautiful
all families go on.

Mortal Valentine

If you have to say
something secular
about the heart
if you have to be
a coward a piece
of doggerel a twit
if you still haven’t
shat out that last
brown scrap of cruelty
and wiped the blood away
if you are so old to me
and we are so done
with the movies of our lives
and walking home
with even greater vigor then
say those mortal words to me.

Among Fallen Things Valentine

Picking small yellow leaves
and flowers out of your pubic
hair I realize how much I’ve
been wanting to write a sexy
poem full frontal and dorsal
and rear nudity of the poem
that is the male body
and the female body
as Whitman fairly put it
but why have we put a fence
around it to keep ourselves
out or to have to fight
our way through to
the original tenderness
of feeling you up?

Ideal Valentine

It’s not these sad bodies
perfect in themselves
in fact that are wrong
it’s that our souls are animals
who live always in sight
of their prey resting between
kills and couplings leonine
and vulturously clever
in fact a soul can be
any animal it wants
and the body can only obey
but the spirit has to be
imagined even the idea
of the spirit has to be
completely imagined
or the idea goes away.

Stolen Valentine

Isn’t memory mostly instinct
supplemented with pictures
sensations dream-like and
vivid water-color sketches
like the ones we shoplifted
from a tiny gallery in Maine
in 1969 was it the life
we wouldn’t be living there
facing the Atlantic
winters we did want to
that made us do it
take something back
with us not ours to
remind us of our loss?

Easter Valentine

Lord what is it with you
and me why we don’t seem
to see eye to eye I suppose
one is always trying to strike
a certain note with one’s life
whatever kind of life one has
a note like you or an animal strikes
its whole body constructed
to serve one simple desire
over and over and
to have worked out a certain
repertoire of strategies and
preoccupations like the boy
at the end of my block
who faithfully takes his motorcycle
out for a run once every week
tearing through the dark streets
at the highest volume of
exultant screaming
he will ever reach
this side of hell
or heaven.

Earthquake Valentine

Now who will lead us down
into the depths
into the underworld
where we must find
our way back to the dead
we the about-to-be-dead
now the world is a grave
of our own construction
who will come now with
his blossom arms and
his hands soft as petals
when the blood is poured out
the one the earth has eaten
the one carrying the stars?

Briefly Noted Valentine

In pursuit of the
turbulent penis of
happiness a novel
on the rim which came
out in mid-November
not for nothing but
for money an illustrator
of the dead working
on a fourth bankruptcy
sings of his adventures
finished but constrained
in the country of I
if the rest is hysteria
you gots to be America.

Optional Valentine

Must I have communicated
my wish to you subconsciously
where exactly is that first
frisson stored at recognizing
some hidden realm inside
must be there for us to have
a deeper listening level option
not just a chemical understanding
of the history of my involuntary
movements must I have communicated
my wish to communicate with you
only out of the darkest recesses
of your secret life inside me
and not to have passed in the hall
at such excessive altitudes.

Wednesday Valentine

Dear daylight what
are you doing
for me so far
while I’ve been
hard tapping
to weave some
kind of kind
words together
about you and me
I mean if we
met someone dude
and I wanted to
introduce you
you don’t look
anything like
Mercury not
near enough
balls or tats
for all that.

Partly Cloudy Valentine

The force of conscious thought
only lately recovering from
the force of willfulness itself
the strength implanted in nature
set going and intelligently maintained
even a man-made lake
perfectly catches the rays
of a blinding blessing
as could knock you off
your horse were this
the century of the plains
had you the sense that’s in a plant
or the rain that’s in sorrow
or the yellow in yarrow.

The Money Plant Valentine

Every day
one leaf
is yellower
the others
hurry past
not looking
not needing
to be how
green gets
on with it
actually sets
out to fail
to fail and
fail again.

A Different Moonlight Valentine

First thing you try
to write it all down or
hold something up
you have only half
a glass empty of time
to use tragically wisely
before beauty streams in again
with its posse of wintry
presuppositions like
a nail slipping through
a hand or buds built up
by a hidden universe
just the sheer volume
of stuff pushed through
that’s sun-driven green
and kneeling at your feet
the servant god
his fallen flower.

Palm Sunday Valentine

I would like to be of use to the dead
who of course go on being quite alive
and whom we accompany
and who accompany us
(let’s stop pretending)
in and out of matter
in and out of mother we cry
I want a home birth
though this is not my home
but the so-called dead
with their characteristic patience
clearly see what we here
need to accomplish and can
only accomplish here
and will tell us if we ask
though we’ve forgotten how
on this strange-familiar star.

Resinous Valentine

I keep looking at my life
turning it over and over
it has this amazing black resin now
I never noticed before and
how much more personal
it seems though still resistant
to any but anecdotal evidence
for or against itself still bringing
only unreliable witnesses
with unsubstantiated theories
to report on indefinite conjectures
and if you hold it away at one angle
from you the shining resin starts to melt
and run off like happiness into the ground
but if you turn it toward you like
sadness it never wants to let you go.

Little Lonely Valentines

like the shadowy characters of the past
my grandparents and you
sleeping moth

a man is bending to smell a daylily
beside a little girl
frozen there on the frig

all my ancestors gather
when I miss you most
after all I chose them

how can we have wanted
people who can’t talk to us
except through the silence

by the time the notes arrived
the music had already gone
old violin.

Twitter Valentine

The primary task for thinking today
must be how to comprehend
the non-physical foundations of reality
since we don’t believe in them anymore
nor even believe the reports
of those ancient experts who claim
to have seen and experienced them
on an individual daily basis
and therefore like us but
for an entirely obvious reason
had no need for or idea of religion
nor consciously separate world
and nothing to fear at night
but the newly-ejected moon.

Leopardi's Valentine

"I won’t call heartless
who gives me breath."

If night hawks plan
early bird murders
without awareness

(we have no way
of monitoring our suffering
without awareness)

if very high numbers of people
are willing to inflict pain on others
for even small sums of money

if we already know who would be
on slavery’s side today
if 1861 was scrupulously reenacted

without awareness
another spring image from Issa
another Chernobyl.

Window Girl Valentine

In flip-flops and torn
hoodie because
it’s chilly she hurries
and mini-shorts
because she can
she wears with
long pale legs
the Holy Ghost or
cigarette in hand
smoke thrown scarf-like
back with fashionable
bag over left shoulder
red with yellow rings
from my window I
caught you girl
in your quick going.

Sleeping Beauty Valentine

You consciously evil ones
with your millions
of mindless minions
who believe they’re
doing the best things
completely without irony
you can count on cowardice
can’t you crossing the river
of denial and even a refusal
on the part of the poor
to pay attention when
they’re being raped
you can count on them
for that infinity
of waiting can’t you
before they wake?

Mother Arriving Valentine

A wren’s face
in a tidied nest
of storm clouds
two mentally blue
egg-like serpent eyes
boiling and about
to crack open into
the four directions
the fluid future behind
the solid past ahead
till I appeared
that is when you
are all the blessed
this wounded lost?

World Valentine

Isn’t it the pink roses
with the gold frame
and the mauve roses
with the silver lining
you love about this sky
the way it’s bending
over backwards making
plans for us making us
its further mission
its true accomplices
as colors or as moods
and yet we stand still
in fear to watch
our intricate flesh
be extinguished by
this world we’ve made.

Rant Valentine

So Lincoln and Gandhi were gay
and Martin and everyone ran around
and Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s
baby momma whatever they use
to try to bring them down with us
to their level as if their ‘sins’
could lower their value for us
as if it was the human part
that mattered or what we drag up
from the past and not the implosion
of passion the actual behavior
of love they could only have
brought us from somewhere
outside this stupefied world.

Desert Valentine

A gray day
is a great day
in a desert

the first small bean
a little boy’s bud
or a little girl’s slit

the first moon’s wink
a tiny kayak tossed
over pink Niagara clouds

but I’m getting ahead
of my story
as I intended

better a poor dandelion
on earth than a cold
star in heaven.

Gay Valentine

One night in Istanbul
he agreed to go back
to their rooms with two
men for a smoke
one showed him the
scrimshaw on his hard
whale’s tooth penis
while the other went out
for something he wanted
them both but not in a
predatory way
early in the morning
he dressed and left
crossing the Bosphorus Strait.

Train Valentine

On the late morning train
from Paris to Switzerland
we sat staring out the window
searching for the France
of our patchy imaginations
which were looking strangely Minnesotan
when suddenly a sign flashed
Citeaux just a green field
I could see no ruins
no habitation
on either side the train
refused to stop though the monks
kept singing for us I assumed
Salve Regina so fast but that
was in another century
and we in someone else’s arms.

Bald Valentine

High winds that come
as static to us but their nest
doesn’t budge and he
seems confident it won’t
sitting austerely
on their (three?) chicks
the wind combing
his head feathers up
a mile in the air
a rat’s bloodied carcass
waiting for dinner beside him
guarding as much as praying
for his beloved’s sudden return
on such a great day for coasting.

Returning Valentine

Take the ferry to Aegina
when you return at last
maybe at the end of your life
bringing colored pencils
and good paper so you
can sketch the coastline again
as you approach and see
if you can find the Temple
of Aphaea’s amber columns
hidden among pines and scrub
on that hilltop where you
can spread a blanket
on the ground and sleep for
centuries or more.

Before Valentine

In that time
before perception
before sensation
unfurling leaf
even before direction
when you were asleep
just a dead idea
buried in the sadness
before affection
in its flower form
penile and opening
even before the owl
had thought of thinking
in that pale light
before light
I thought of you.

Issa's Spring Valentine

So here they are at 7:30
of a Sunday morning mounting
their mountain bikes as they
mounted their Speedos one gear
at a time into their seventies
except now they’re overweight
and the bikes are skinny but
strong as the backs of the poor
so I’m not worried anymore
even on this fat laughing pair
I make no judgment heap no scorn
cycle round each parked car O spring
on our empty street laugh louder
wake up everyone for blocks.

Psalmist's Valentine

By the waters of Fukushima
Nuclear Plant we sat down
and wept among the gone willows
where we were hung like songs
who required water from harps
please forgive us sweet water
for making you suffer over and over

even if you do not remember us
in some no longer foreign land
as the one who said kill him kill him
and took mirth in your torture
your little ones smashing to pieces
let him come back now to heaven
enough playing at being a god.

Egg Valentine

Who do I dream you are
coming home in the
middle of the night
to boil an egg
and eat it with
a piece of bread and
in the morning crawl
in bed with me
leg up over my
leg more fork
than spoon more
tuck than fuck
asleep to know
I’m kissed?

We Are All Pictures Valentine

Now that all our cast-off parts
are slowly coming back to us
in their original preconditions
inside the consciousness of one
as in a game it’s all about
being in the best position
(we don’t really live in time
just our bodies do)
to tell reality hold still
and smile to take its picture
as far from that picture
are we from touching return
some luggage lost
some pictures to burn
ourselves the cost.

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?