Occupy Wall Street Valentine

Not enough Obama
to be the Obama
we wanted and still need
but we must supersede
politics for people
and stop pedaling
there’s really even one
real Christian in this sad
country in any sense
Christ himself intended
after fifty years of racist
Randian crap as a rationale
for this year’s aristocracy
(how bedazzled we still are
by bling) it’s back
to the barricades where
an afternoon of fascism
on Brooklyn Bridge
can show up on Broadway
as a new musical or play
by an as yet unknown
poet and martyr the latest
American dreamer
who fed the poor
and sat with the dying
as a free man again
 

A Pair of Valentines

I never realized
how blue my eyes were
until you told me
I never really appreciated
my best features
even when I had some
I would even rather not
have had to grow a pair
a personality
is so cumbersome
except for you and then
I just had to give it up
for some nobler cause
or never get to use them often
at least not with the one
I love most and then
as they say you die

Something's Valentine

How hard poetry tries
to make our lives
memorable and important
to assuage us with its
vanities and the warmth
of its enclosures that
there can be only one being
which is not a swarm
but a whole summer’s
heat come to rest
in an empty trellis
that what rots in the head
ferments in the heart
goes rancid in the gut
I’ve made lists of everything
double-checked the details
it all comes out as poetry says
but still something’s missing
something’s still longed for

Everywhere Valentine

Two pots sitting together
form a heart-shaped shadow
honestly a little before ten
this Monday morning you
know the commercial heart
that shows up everywhere
out of children’s art
but dark this time
whatever plants the two
pots grew are gone so
only the rims’ uncluttered
clean and smooth curves meet
hang out and kiss
behind the school
of light now closed

Desert Valentine

Through my middle years
I hid in a thin wood
along the western side
the darker side
of a gentle slope
among long cold winters
and brief humid summers
during which I hid
waiting for the disaster
or was it my master
to come
of course now
when I look I see
exploded pomegranates
where the finch have fed
outside my desert hut
and you my home
within 

Michaelmas Valentine

In a Michaelmas kind of mood
Issa would see the sea
and his dead mother
always together
O mother he would say
weeping for the sea
for the one with everything
he would feel compassion
as the one with nothing
he would take the time
to form the stubble
on his face or to sit
beside the asters for
an afternoon cold
in the wind you know
the purple ones waiting
by the sides of the roads
bearing the last promptings
of the marching clouds

Farewell Valentine

Mostly feign inclusion
to retain ultimate control
losing an arm
is rated R for violence
so now you’re a one-
armed millionaire
buying back the arm
the good things
are the hardest
to assimilate if they
arrive at the wrong
address a boulder
falls on your heart
as you leap together
and now one of
you must part

Birthday Valentine

I stand here a watcher
of waves their rhythms
and bottle-green lights
waiting on the shore
being able to predict
and run to meet
the ones worth riding
like the short time
I have to speak to you
the curve of your voice
on this side of the sea
a couple came down
to the waves and entered
up to their shoulders
embracing and then
walked back to their
blanket on the beach
and lay back down
without a word
perfect
a perfect wave

Fall Valentine

Breaking and entering
the other world
Sunday morning
no one’s home
the world we
leave behind
still standing there
or totally replaced
a world without
us but made
by us it is not
ourselves the world
but what is not finally
us and cannot
not be us
I ask

Another Equinoctial Valentine

Whether I am
an innocent man
to be loved or

killed by one

man for another
by another man 
or whether it is I
who must be clearer
and clearer with
myself about myself
distinguishing my
innocence only from
my guilt for you
where to decide
is already to
have lost it.
 

Catchers Valentine

Never tiring of making
itself up my soul
moves on along its own
incalculable perspectives
eventually enough self-
awareness leads to
the soul of the world
it just makes sense
but who knew reality
was so obsessive-compulsive
or fantasy so cold
and unforgiving
the clearly sovereign sun
rises and sets
but it’s the moon
our feeling share
that gets ejected
like a ball thrown back
and forth by two
invisible characters.

Trees Valentine

Now the trees are walking out
of the woods to show us how
to come back from the dead
as a daily sufferance
or nightly occurrence
but who needs hope
when he’s happy they say
throwing off their torn-up
loquacious letters telling
of soft summer mornings
evenings languid afternoons
before anyone has woken
or spoken or broken
before hope is all
in the not having
as the trees insist.

Awakening Valentine

Mostly the Buddha is sitting
comfortably relaxed and smiling
while mostly the Christ
hangs there on his cross
and just in these two pictures
lies something awakening
about their similar attitudes
toward life and death at least
from two different perspectives
how evolution moving forward
transmutes wisdom into love
first as a force for dissolution
of the wall between the worlds
and then since even the evil one
knows who wins in the end
as the restoration of his smile.

Autumn Valentine

The air is dry
but it all evens out
despite metal screams
along mental streams
upriver from summer
among earnest mists
and long ermined fogs
far from shore
I found a small
sail-less boat stowed
where your heart
once stood
as tall as oars
against my lips.

Transformed Valentine

When to moonlight
droves of bad dreams
permit dispersed
black parachutes
to swarm as if
to bury you alive
and all your harm
comes home to you
alone screaming
impatient spider
touch me anywhere
moonlight transformed
to light of love
like you.

Metaphysical Valentine

Finger and blue toe
polish or the black
nail clippings
the old eliminated
to allow the new
until the novelty
wears off
I go out to the garden
to cut my nails
how long before they
disintegrate or maybe
go on growing for
a while still hungry
for more touching
more scratching
of you?

Peony Valentine

If you cut it
it will flower
it will suffer you
if you insult
its roots with
heaving feedings
it will remember
it will volunteer
for suicidal late
night maneuvers
it will smell like
someone who has
all the answers
free to come and go
summer after summer.

Maybe Valentine

Sex is always pornographic
isn’t that the point
but when love enters
the room for a threesome
a sweetness and strange
tenderness accompanies
otherwise forced entries
and bullying maneuvers
maybe we recognize the
true life-or-death nature
of our situation if only
for an instant and stop
pretending we’re just
genitals and mouths.

Fortieth Valentine

Forty is enough years
to decide on your parent's
names and predilections
perfectly timed or not
to culminate in you

the danger of too much

planning is that you fail
to notice how little’s needed
the air believes in you
the sun is struck by your flair
for honesty despite
insult and conceit
the days still move
tsunami-like
toward you there
on the beach.

Time's Valentine

Time which is always movement
toward death needs a body
a place to rest some nights
death sleeps around a lot
I should say Dr. Death
it occurred to me one day
out of respect for the dead
if not for pretending to be dead
these are matters of degree
not kind death is not kind
Dear Dr. Death I am dying
please come to me or send
me a sign of your passing
I long for your end.

Life's Valentine

People for whom religion
is not the whole point of life
some other somewhere
there’s a place for us
as students of the mysteries
of life what is the
central and centrifugal
weave right now for you
why is this life so intense
and so impermanent
crossing the street
how far light can fall
your body represents
but the negative of reversal
who stands for that?

Lake's Valentine

The order that is added
to the order already there
disorders it temporarily
forgive this interruption
the stone mutters to the lake
I was almost killed
by a falling boulder
bouncing off my head
when I was twelve
even in the winter
I would climb the
lake and cliffs
sit there till frozen
receiving my latest
and writing it down.

Highest Valentine

Among those things
that have served
their purpose
the poetry is
in the breaking
apart of the words
the washed space
gathering around  
as altered reality
or sky ambles down the
page that same device
and rhetoric time
uses to seduce us
some want to live
some want to die
but the wisest fly
like Francis flies
directly into the flames
to honor and feed
the highest ones he said.

A Leaf's Valentine

Tennyson’s juicy apple dropped
one silent autumn evening
haiku-like plunging
into your childish brain
but had you wanted
to be stirred or shaken
he mumbles so much
behind the stables
when did rhythm begin in Europe
as the forests were leaving
and was the necessary excessive-
ness of the pyramids or
Chartres or Lascaux
just meant to humble or
amaze us Lo! he goes
look adown you idiot
but no mention of winter.

Original Valentine

First we have to
understand the lies
a great many of them
mastered and their
various small town
origins going back
and then today how
everyone’s a show-off
as my mother would say
but why does she speak
in the poem at this
particular juncture
say to yourself rather
my I is the preliminary
work of some great
artist unspeakably
greater than I.

Mostly Valentine

Just admit
you wanted to
suck his dick
kick his ass
that seventeenth
summer of Arab
beauty the poor
children after they’ve
seen Paris on TV
so we can get it
over with mostly
these arrondissements
multiplying in our minds
until what we make
of our bodies
not even a spirit
can penetrate.

Street Music Valentine

Even over the noise
of the war on TV the air
conditioner blasting
and the dog continually
barking next door
any child or I can catch
the calliope creeping
down our street
what sweet music
bringing these last
hot days to us here
in Afghanistan Arizona
ice cream on the beach
even if without an ocean
and the dying in the street.

Daily Valentine

Finally today comes
the long-awaited
the prodigal day
the day stripped bare
by his lovers
the orphan day
the bastard
skinny one
thrown away
by the other days
pushed to the end
of the line the one
you recognize
at once as yours.

Umbrella Valentine

From memory
I designed a small
sculpture garden
in the shade
of two fruit trees
an awning and
fountain
farther down
a winged head
in concrete
on a pedestal
drawn from life
not mine but
someone’s
not this one but
the other one
parked outside
the gate
an umbrella where
the dead can sit
and wait.
 

Karmic Valentine

Once someone fell
in love with me
but I couldn’t
believe it was
so inappropriate
we were for one
another I was
in denial and
pretended not
to see the cruelty
of my refusal
and laughed
loudly and now
thirty years on
I feel that longing
as if it was my own.

Last Valentine #2

To come back
to one’s imaginary
friends at the end
of a long largely
hallucinated life
you ask me to write
down the facts and
basic motives
I listened to angels
some raggedy child
left behind follows
me still and tells
me the secrets of
history in dreams
but no one believes me.

Last Valentine

A leaf clings to
me like your hand
curled on my forearm
what can be said
on the last page
of a hundred page book
knowing you’d look
on the last page first
to see if this all
comes out in a way
you’d never guess
and so must read
it all to find out why
it’s not that kind
of novel is it where
reality has its way
with us yet somehow
we narrowly escape.

Acrid Valentine

The oldest leaves
on the trees
leap first
into the fiery
furnace of leaves
already returning
on the acrid air
it could be genocide
or autumn
flesh is flesh
when faced
with its decisions
let us lean
on the counter
of the horizon waiting
to be served by
that white sail.

Beauty Calls Us to the Earth Valentine

Pursuant to the power
of the most experienced
of butterflies or birds
or any of a variety of
species made visible
for a time an afternoon
drifting on drafts of light
not subject to gravity
never touching ground
but who nevertheless
call us back to earth
fluttering in our empty
heads like memories of
something or someone
really important
we cannot forget
needing our immediate
attention and concern.

New Moon Valentine

I chase the cat
the cat chases the lizard
the lizard chases the ant
the ant chases God
or something smaller
and insignificant as
God may be to himself
having given himself away
completely shattering
into every thing imagine
the God of All Ideas
reduced to petals and
stamens a refined
sense for sky

Man Walk Valentine

The long sentences pee
from the two of them
a man and his dog
as in a modern painting
we can especially relate
to how much reality
needs to be imagined
here artistically
and scientifically
to study hard but still
have to imagine one
another completely
following only rules and
clues never discussed
never definitively
agreed upon.

Found Stolen Valentine

I was wondering
what you think
my dad would
have liked
I never knew if
he had a favorite
flower but he
was an Aquarian
and a drinker
my mother is not
alive so I don’t
know if that
makes a difference
in the color
of the flower?

Rainbow Cloud Valentine

Some great bodhisattva
is bleeding through
this bad weather

a rainbow-riddled cloud rising

out of the Ethiopian darkness
like a new version of the sun

what if you bend he says

the form this way or that
but still little looks accomplished

that after trillions and

trillions of eons the entire cosmos
comes to a silent eternal nothing

that could be a blissful thing

everything finally interpenetrating
every other thing forever yikes.

Wind's Valentine

When the wind perceived our weakness
we were stripped slowly and paraded
in front of cameras
so our humiliations could be
preserved as one of the original
thirteen imaginations how
many have we left
a taste for bee beards
vulture eggs and semen
plagued the nations
but still you refused
to eat your chocolate rabbit
your fair madness
relative and clear
traitor to our fear.

Dried-Up Valentine

I had to pull
it down the sorry
glory of it brown
as deer-hide it
leaves a lingual
sound when crushed
in fingers folded
in hands the long
stalk of passion
vine still cracked
where it was plaited
through the iron
trellis summer
palace hung with
silvery tombs
the butterflies
had long vacated.

Vegas Valentine

Friendless by voice mail
as much as by personal
choice I rest my case
of ruinous love on
your shy shoulders
your brave feet
whoever I am tonight
lay down your bet
it’s not as if you have to
get it right the first
time sweetness
leaps into your mouth
that you exist at all
makes love possible
if not entirely sure.

Blues Valentine

I’m growing dead
leaves in my dreams
of you I’m planting
nameless seeds of
forgotten trees
fallen fruitless flowers
that go on falling
these are your final hours
a knocking on the cell
of my heart but
who’s to answer
I’m out growing
my invisible veins
my soundless pulse
reborn a singer
and a dancer.

Looker's Valentine

If occasionally
I sneak into
the other world
like into a huge house
when nobody’s home
just a little rattling
from a distant kitchen
or maybe they're all
at choir and I slip
behind a column 
while a bright cowl
of sylphs glides by
or open the bedroom
doors and closets
like a thief please
remember lord
I take nothing
yes I look
but I never ever
touch a thing.
 

Another Coming Valentine

Actually ‘Christian man’
is an oxymoron anymore
only Christ is the true Christian
beside whom we have all the rest
the ‘so-called Christians’
just as there are no dead people
in time we discover
only the ‘so-called dead’
who are present all around us
as a conscious part of courage
but unable to intervene –
we have seen that far down
the trail even if too
terrified to discuss it –
but still doesn’t being here alive
in bodies on this extraordinarily
unique planet require something
equally extraordinary from us
or is it just these endless puerile
squabbles this bull moose parade
of disastrous masturbating leaders
history's forced to arrest and kill?

Mission San Jose 1814 Valentine

How with these terrible
and common tasks
the empty future fills us
we who were neither rich
nor poor having nothing
and needing for nothing
we had all we wanted
which was very little
living without legends
of how or when we first
came to this country
but not without our own
rather ridiculous ideas
about the immortality
of man originally thinking
the sun must be angry
with us leaving us behind
until we saw his returning
again and again had little
to do with us nor was it
affected by our offerings
of seeds and penitential dances
which were soon neglected
then abandoned and forgotten
until the Christians came.
 

Ohlone Valentine (Left at Mission San Jose)

I think what the native peoples
all along the coast and inland
with their eight distinct
language groups and mostly
peaceful settlements
were most surprised
and shocked by about
the ways of the foreigners
who came and soon devastated
them with their twin weapons
of disease and Christianity
from which of course
they had no immunity
what most dismayed and
depressed them
was the bullying cruelty
and pleasure taken in
unnecessary suffering
these missionaries we
honor as good fathers
brought to their quiet
villages and their original
lives made out of feathers
grass and sticks.

Camellias Valentine

Like a gaggle of
17th century ladies
flouncing off in their
hoop skirts and crinoline
furbelows stopping
and half-turning
look back at the sun
behind them now
what moved the sun
these leaves and all
the stars and does so
on a 24/7 basis
for which every grown
tree is a question or
at least a question mark
they seem to ask.

Trillium Valentine

Wake-robins in
Wisconsin woods
wake me this warm
Arizona morning
long dead now you
can’t make this up
99% of the story
on each three-
petalled bright-
white table-cloth
a wine stain spreads
as it dies
run of blood
from the throat
rush of heat
from the body
as the cut is made
boiling summer
all nerves and
the sticky joy
of evolution.

Watercolor Valentine

About an hour
after the sun
also rises the
money tree on
the coffee table
in the living room
gets its bath
of sunlight which
lasts slowly
but briefly
the current
eight leaves
gleaming green
and worth their
weight in gold
but only if and
as I watch them
and you are in
the background.

Closer Valentine

Is poetry closer to life
than neurology or aquaculture
bullfighting or whatever
is this a pome
you’re writing to him
(ask this with mocking tone)
so many theories
it’s clear no one
really knows what
he’s capable of yet
except to me
like parking a few
words on the side
of the table a
slow sign or
place to stop
and touch.

Angel's Valentine

Strange noises
outside the gate
of memory’s
Normandy
I refuse to
investigate
which gate one
might operate
as you did
indicate o ingrate
o birch
which crash
in duplicate
you did you
implicate us in
so now we
are late
to our fate
as angels
with men come
ready to mate.

In Music Is the Secret of Death Valentine

From the whippings
and buffetings we get
from the wind today
a tsunami of dust
covers everything
like sheets over the
furniture of a huge house
locked away in some
young Canadian's mind
with vistas for visitors
who claim to feel
wherever they are
a part of that place
without from or to.

Torn Valentine (for the Mother of God)

Plans and projects
planes that perish
it turns out
even the sand
is interested in you
albeit superficially
showing up for
meetings and
cementing someone
else’s guilt at first
not long before
a choir of its own
springs up in air
or wave or flame
the word is in the
movement of the
form come to rest
temporarily upon
a thorn or thought
the color of ideas
torn when in
passing caught.

Every Thing's Valentine

Every thing is in the way
of every other thing
every person in the way
of every other person
and just as we move
one thing or one person
out of the way
other things appear
other people
who are only their disguises
their distractions
because if there’s one
thing we’ve learned
it’s always the same one thing
not several different things
haven’t we come that far
about what’s ill with
us human leavings
too frightened to love

one another but not

too weary to kill?

Leonine Valentine

In this physical world
it’s all about placement
and the movements to
and from locations
out of which the vine
of time and sad duration
naturally flows not
always gently but always
quickly even when still
and a little giddy
or guilty and serenely
reality can dream there
can’t it on and on
but just try to walk
under the pomegranate
tree these days
it bongs you on
the head it hurts
its fruit hurts
refusing to fall.

St. Robert's Valentine (Sincerely)

How many of us often
grow a little bleary
practicing our songs
but not St. Robert Creeley
the St. Francis of modern
American couture poetry
he kept stitching in
the fiery lining of the coat
of light one eye seamlessly
on the naked butterfly
while the other
calmly watched the not
and the not-not
invisible worlds
which he did sing
about as well.

Nanovalentine

I also don’t like the way
I worry about and nag
constantly at myself
it is not endearing
having to bribe and
cajole to get something
done once and for good
in your life but like one
speeding train passing
another speeding train
I could only glimpse
for a nanosecond
your lucid face
in the blurred years
you saved from so
much time
so much space.

Breaking Hard Valentine

What’s past is troubled
what’s past is doubled
who’s your daddy
who’s your double
hello I was just
thinking about you
troubled often by the sense
you’re forgetting
someone that somehow
pressed so hard learning
your letters now
your hands collapse
with words and inky love
that burning coal
how long can I endure
it there eating its way
through the center
of your stare?

Lexington Avenue Valentine

To be in a large crowd
feeling nostalgic for some
group soul as a way of
evading homelessness
like the violinist in the subway
a great artist who once a month
turns up unrecognized to play
for free for all the millions really
who pass this way hurrying
to work hurrying home
hardly listening
but I forgot how classical
the subway can seem
hurling you through
the underworld you
repeat initiate
no such thing
as alone.