Thanksgiving Valentine

If thought
is the father
of feeling
who’s the mother
if not desire
holy desire
herself who
made us
which is why
poetry isn’t
about you
or me but
something or
someone we still
long to become
an approximation
of divinity
an open field
after rain

Walking Valentine

I grew a tree
just to watch
its shadow on
the facing wall
naked or clothed
climb up over the
neighbor’s roof
I taught it to walk
right down the
street it taught
me to speak
and when
not to speak
so now without
it to mirror me
or without me
to mirror it
neither of us
would long exist
or persist
in this world

Song's Valentine

Didn’t I dream I was
speaking to a large group
when suddenly a bird
burst into song right
outside the window
like a knife
though our ears
and I asked
what bird is
that a mockingbird
mocking me
mocking my petty
ecstasies and gross
manipulations
but afterwards I learned
it was my friend’s
cell phone going off
we laughed in wonder
how many would know
that’s what truly sang

Human Valentine

Once because of
unclear wording
in the message
of instructions
two speeding trains
head-on collided
once because of
fuzzy thinking
by a few men
in the highest places
two civilizations
were destroyed
these connect us
these world wars
we start to see
humanity not
just ourselves
to stand up for

Stolen Valentine

Holding with all things
the same identical intensity
as my love for Lucifer
my love-hate for Lucifer
my beautiful bullying older brother
because he makes me look
my cowardice in the eye
when his friends come round
who are wolves scavengers
so well shoed and scarfed
they pass me round
like a broken doll
no not my body anymore
my soul fighting harder
to take back what he stole 

Vacillating Valentine

Usually I’m moving
in two directions
at the same time
going back
and forth constantly
in consideration
of an intensely private
inner world of plumbing
and experimental
philosophy mixed in
with certain socially
unacceptable tastes
and smells
and an outer space
in which I perform
myself as monomanically
if not majestically
as I can on a regular
daily diet of bliss  
as a being living
in this world today
who would like to be
a poem in his next life

Predatory Valentine

Capitalism is predatory both
by nature and by inclination
why won’t we finally admit it
the simple fact that in a system
where money rules bodies
things power more money
how can that be good
for anyone yet obviously
everyone seems willing
to be killed under such
terms of sale as long as
they don’t have to share –
in this we have not yet
gone further than wolves
or lions nor as far even
as penguins who apparently
would never put their
own people on the street

Quantum Valentine

Curious how string theorists
while faithful to materialism
do perceive another dimension
even if it turns out to be only
a further elaboration of materialism
but that forces are not material things
the will separate from its activity
they refuse to consider seriously
even though they’re eager
to abandon their own
evidentiary requirements
in this exceptional case
pretending that’s somehow different
from believing in unprovable gods
or God our sciences our religions
still refusing to take the obvious
next step off the cliff
of time and space
past words to seeing

David's Valentine

Don’t you find
yourself grinning
that among
the myriads and
myriads of details
from which life
here on earth
unerringly
is woven there
should be the
word TEST
pops up on
the screen
whenever your
mother calls?

Drifting Valentine

A tiny loop in the middle
of the thin line
of the dried-up body
of a worm I find
I can’t shake
a tune in mind
from yesterday
in which a piece
of cellophane
is drifting
down a street
often I have
the premonition
someone is killing me
while at the same time
someone else
is saving my life 

Stern Valentine

I need to turn my tree
so it faces my star more
and can look out on the other side
just to remain vertical
feeling the downward pull
as the light ascends
into that infinite gentleness
often mistaken for indifference
where glimpsed through matter darkly
the stern divinity of myself
marooned stares back
bestowing its cosmic disapproval
but smiling still expectant
I may eventually catch up

Forty Year Old Valentine

I think we are all very excited
and critical of ourselves and
struggle to maintain a healthy
amount of self-dismissal
pity which can flare up
painfully as with any story
with a ribcage and a spine
at certain moons you see
yourself the thing cast off
and to be honest must
reject yourself as well
to get us to despair of
ever returning to the sun
our true home furthers
nothing and yet we must
for a time be free to dare

Shanghai Valentine

And then the camera
follows Dietrich
to the Peking train
station where Anna
May Wong is waiting
in her compartment
smoking and sultry
a dog is seized
from an old woman’s
frantic arms All
Aboard then the
phone rang and
into the country
where time and life
have no valley
I mean value
Marlene offers her
hand to the doctor
the chickens scurry
ahead of the engine
into the night of Clive
Brook’s pasty face
I mean smoky

Lord's Valentine

Like a child
I come to you O Lord
not like a man
I don’t want
to be a man anymore
now I want to be
what you wanted
me to be what
was it you wanted
me to be
not you right
I could not be
like you
I had to be free
I had to be
someone else right
I had to be
your child

Chilled Valentine

Because my mother
would put me out
in my baby carriage
on cold winter afternoons
for a nap all bundled up
now I love to go outside
on cold mornings to walk
or putter around the yard
and stay out until I’m
really chilled and then
come back inside
to warm up again
only in childhood
can we get what
we need most
in our last days

Existence As Valentine

That we exist at all
as conscious creatures
means that existence
itself exists
existence itself
did not at some time
exist and at some other
time not exist
the math is inescapable
existence did grow lonely
that much is known
about the origin
of a feeling organ
an infancy of longing
starting to mind
what happens
what’s clear
going forward
we were constructed
from the ground up
to a point where we
could either sink
or swim our choice
of the next existence

Nice Valentine

You’d think we’d all know
by now what ‘nice’ meant
how it derives from a Mongolian
mispronunciation of the much
longer but unfortunately lost
name for a small woodland
gazelle-like creature now extinct
in one version a Dionysius-like
figure tricked out as a wild woman
is brought before his doom
and then rescued by a very nice
person in a gazelle disguise
simple foolish ignorant
up until the 17^th c.
pleasant friendly attractive
since the 18^th c.

Cloudy Valentine

Some gods were lounging

on the clouds when all
of a sudden a 747
droned through
loaded with the opposite
of honey some more of
my relatives from earth
I often think of us clouds
however separated off we
manage to impersonate
one another as all parts
of one body one living
spaceship floating between
the radiance of the gods
and the constant thirstiness
of mankind for more
trying to mollify both

Cold Snap Valentine

Now the old gnome
sits alone smiling
among vanquished leaves
in his ceramic heaven
staring through me
so I hide behind
the dead asparagus fern
I think I drowned
with too much sun
to lift back up
this collapsed
world you have
to clean and refill
the birdbath on
a regular daily basis
you have to learn
to speak in several
plant dialects at once
you have to have loved
thousands of faces
none of them yours

Foundation Valentine

Who can think through
every single thought
to its unwavering conclusion
like the thought
of thinking itself

to its earliest beginnings

as radiance from

clouds observed approaching

filled with spears

of lightening hurled

by unseen warriors
and to come to the end
of matter and stand
at the brink of the abyss
unwaveringly
who can step across
to truth?

All Souls' Valentine

As I am under the spell and
sentence of death as you
I know are also let us
speak out against
the unjust nature
of our confinement
how all the churches
are abusive families
how our worst enemies
are who we love most
but not in a good way
how it’s still basic
sharing stuff or not
or what is the world for?

Virgil's Valentine

Keep the sacrifice fat
but the muse slender
close the clearings
in the woods
set bounds to love
stand the sea
wind-becalmed
be black be blond
be mad to leave me
keep them for me
all my sentences
that end
with your name
there take it
the reed pipe
why should I
speak of him
from that day?

All Hallows' Eve Valentine

In the days when asking
was still in its dormancy
lightening bolts in the blood
offered perhaps the first
question marks to be developed
by the gods as conscience
but Odysseus only went home
when he had no where else to go
the unfaithful half of his soul
presented itself
as usual in disguise
afraid of getting hurt
(maybe that’s what all
these wars are really about)
and then years later
Parsifal finally
forms the question
of what do you suffer
which spawned
all the rest
 

Still Life Valentine

A painted Mexican bowl
holding one Asian pear
a red American apple and
a pomegranate of so distant
an origin it had never had
a nationality unless you mean
Paradise pre-Big Bang
aka ‘the spiritual world’
but at first I didn’t notice
the different nationalities
at first it was the explosion
of color in a dark corner
of the room as their forms
and names returned to them
with justified pride and sadness
from prior civilizations
prior creations
when I could stare at them forever
as I did

Human Valentine

A man is a vine
covered by time
leading the only life
that could endure it
that could distinguish
it from leaf and day
having to die having
to be the only thing
to have to die
so talented with dying
every thing else returns
leaf and day and sky
to their immortal places
without his human I

Traveling Valentine

Are lingonberries too
trivial to mention
every region has
its bittersweet berry
its folk-spirit omens and
cures for its particular
space-extended family
and abiding therein a
palace may be even more
of a tent than a tent
but how strange that
in every country there are
only the very same people
one meets the species
as a whole still at almost
the sixth grade level
social-emotionally speaking
even if intellectually
off the charts

Creek Valentine

Even this little creek
is a part of a great network
of resignation and simple
total acceptance which
water as a whole reflects
and which can also land
with crushing force
on the objects it resigns from
abandons turning aside
all that it calls back
to itself to be dissolved
to be absolved
all that it refuses from
within itself to build
another earth

Ariel Valentine

To cast one’s soul adrift
into a particular physical
configuration flawed
blueprint of a body
with that nobility
only twilight fathoms
those eyebrows and
perfect feet it almost
becomes mortal again
for a certain number of years
in a certain number of places
as one might pursue a lover
across continents lifetimes ruins
how little credit I gave you
when you were there all the time

New Valentine

Because only human beings can die
death becomes our central feature
though we love what is immortal
all around us and struggle daily
to reclaim it for ourselves
by setting our lives in close proximity
to animals and minerals and plants
but to have your love rejected
even if with no unkindness
forces all that love inside
to abide as longing and
the knowledge one is alone
and still dying despite love
actually existing in the world
actually having created the world
for to live apart from love
and make a life in opposition to it
turning bread to stones
out of boredom and the need
for something new 
is the true evil

Pruning Valentine

We’ve all got to cut back
I murmur to the bodhi tree
pruning carefully myself
myself I have so carelessly
involved in my own leavings
and aspirations I too
got suckered into narrow
summer postures mocking
winter gestures
must I not feel myself
as my own spring
or go back to being you
sweet murmuring of leaves
the next best thing? 

Ridden Valentine

With what will we replace

these wounds a wild and
mournful cry the sky
of rubble over the isle
cultivating the fields
we started to think
and of ourselves as
separate crucifixions
on different domes
rose different suns
how freely the earth
under us between
our legs we rode
as far from home
as we could hope

Praying Valentine

Sit the fuck down

and shut the fuck up
the garden turtle barked
at me this morning
now we all talk like the TV
and the toad that brownish
lumbering piece of shit
could only smile quietly
we three praying for rain
in this garden I have given
every sin its space and
hearing every volunteer
an earnest welcome
every refugee a home
this is the only world we get

Hip Hop Valentine

It’s a terrible feeling
to feel one is just
going through motions
like a robot or a puppet
wasting life but isn’t that
a lot of what life demands
of itself who would ask
for a meaningless life
if one had a choice
I’m out with existence
on the left bank of resistance
made my peace with persistence
but tell me when
did we ever really
have a chance

Scorpio Valentine

A rod comes down
across the town
the chastening begins
stripes of frost
the sun can’t reach
at the far end of the lawn

and if the world takes it all back

and begs to be forgiven
and throws around itself
masses of huddled ice
wishes of muffled snow
to walk out on

like a mystic on a lake

through which a line sinks down
to the depths where certainty
is found eating its own frown
then this is also love methinks
make no mistake it breaks

Symphonic Valentine

Sitting outside tonight
right-field of the moon
suddenly one of those spontaneous
city symphonies occurred

incredible French and English horns

great whale underbellies of sound
swelled deep and faraway
from down the street

against a woman’s

almost tender screaming
as if she was being murdered
like a great aria

accompanied by the faint

drilling sound of a thousand
strangled tires in the alley

and then silence

unaccountably
 
for a few eternal
seconds
 
I don’t want to live with anyone anymore
I heard myself say

sometimes I want to believe that lie

but not today

Channeled Valentines

And while it may be both
too early and too late
to proclaim your perfection

every morning when

I come out the ants
have rebuilt their sand village
on the patio bricks
which every night’s hosing down
washes away

through the whole meeting

she sat
having to pee badly

without laughter no moon

only existence could have

invented existence

and then we lay there
in a swoon

World Valentine

O world stop being silly
does anyone care
if you are one
self-sustaining world
your market share of you
you live on
you know you need us
just as much
as we need you
world within world
tree within tree
your problems
a huge harvest
waiting in the fields

Turandot Valentine

How will we tame ourselves

without becoming whipped dogs
Let no one sleep
a ten year old angel
belts it out on TV
to a roomful of wheelchaired
nodding blue heads
if we abandon our children
and set our old ones adrift
I am like two plumeria grown
three feet apart one inside
the other outside the house
how opposite air and light
weave leaves of totally
different green and heft
how I’ve slept
through most of it
catching only the drift
of what’s fading fast

Dragon's Valentine

Today I walked all the way out
to the periphery of my skull
I looked longingly at my toes
who were grinning at the light
when they didn’t think I’d see
but I stood my ground and lay
quietly waiting for you to wake
watching words in the shapes
of plants and words in vestibules
of colors and words in bird-voices
drifting in from the street
a stone dragon’s head
hangs above the gate
every October something
knocks it to the ground
we never hear the sound
we stay in bed late
some days words come to us
in the arms of suns and stars

October Roses Valentine

And finally October light
lays me on my stomach  
 
starts massaging my shoulders
as small a thing as that
 
to let me know I’ve died
but I still have to lift my shirt

to wear the fiery robe

of failure and defeat

again and carry its flames

across the narrow strait

of weedy yard to where

a circle of roses once

reminisced themselves all

the way back to complete

invisibility a scent

that haunts this bare

patch in the garden where
their hearts were spent

Breakfast Valentine

Raspberry rhubarb butter
on a cinnamon raisin bagel
is sublime at nine
on a chilly morning with a light
vanilla latte sometimes
it is permitted me
on my Carthusian diet
to enter the cloister garden
always gaining heavenly
ground at the cost of
the physical body
but evolution never asks who
or what is moving forward
in those temporary drawings
where the footsteps trail off
into what looks like our own
and the spirit never wavers
asking what can’t I become
see how even now
it’s sketching out a new
configuration for the future
subtly based on you

Arriving Valentine

Every year enlightenment slips in
with its grave autumnal mood
making a little clearing in the wood
if only we had the vigor
to fathom it or him or her
do you have any idea how long
I took to get over you or it or him
they say as they undress
in the dark and chilly cabin
of my over and over heart
enlightenment arrives
at peace with all that dies
in love with all that won't

Distant Valentine (for Paul)

Illness which is code for suffering
suffering which is code for love
does it help to think of them
as payment of a debt
you no longer recall incurring
what fun we must have had
I remember you once lustily
riding a dying apple tree
in a park near the lake the year
I cast the family adrift
or was it they who drove me
all the way to the thirteenth
century and a monk’s life for
whatever it took to be alone
as it was with our grandfather
leaving the old world behind
knowing he would never return
never be forgiven for going

Annoyed Valentine

If you turn your head
and a mockingbird outside
the window is looking at you
cocking his head first one
way then the other so each
eye in turn can pick you out and
grasp you as you hold his gaze
you sitting on the green couch
him perched in the green trellis
why the hell are you always
writing about birds
annoyed she asked
they carry the world’s thoughts
into the heights when they die
I say and what falls to earth
from that is love or fate

Separate Valentine

I am sending you
under separate cover
a copy of my soul
the study guide
and favorite suggestions
you will be surprised perhaps
on seeing your first soul
even a little insulted
by the frailness of
the future therein laid
upon its diadem of hope
but touched I trust
by the ring of red feathers
around their throats
these sparrows with epaulettes
still bloody from the wars 

Dream Face Valentine

While we slept last night
the full moon in Libra
was cooking up our livers
and kidneys for breakfast
with onions for eyes
sunburnt and sand-whipped
our souls were being
scoured blinded stained
by a world so much
more alive than this one
free of time and physical bodies
with access to hidden things
where we can fly individually
like Superman or angels
who dream themselves awake
and learn to love
our own true face

Shot Valentine

Precariously perched
above my head
a boulder just where I had
left it years ago
in that dark and narrow
strip of sky between two
roof-lines the fullest moon
a silver bullet chambered
toward the heart
of every human being
who sees it pulls the trigger
lets the boulder go
just one that had ascended
that soft autumn night
but oh the shot was slow

October Valentine

One day in the year
the prince of darkness
hangs out with the prince
of light in the streets
like sisters or brothers
stepping for a few moments
around the unforgiveable
history between them still
sizing one another up
while smiling smiling
true admiration between them
and here we are
in the narrow sling of color
between these two goliaths
making love

Crackling Valentine

A tree is for a bird
to land in and a cloud
the rest is decoration
in which the stars at night
play a crucial part
through the millions
of little mirrors in the soil
causing a copulation
of chemicals the sweat
of great beings
intermingles underground
we stand upon
the privileges of a flower
the majesty of Lucifer
we have just an hour

Velvet Valentine

Everything comes wrapped up
in itself and must unfold
or be unfolded
all we know now
was once a worry
hidden in our hearts
for which the lotus has become
the symbol and the testimony
a picture of how it
could be arranged
white against dark blue
velvet water which
seems to be sleeping
dreaming of you

Primitive Valentine

Compassionate objectivity
fleets and fleets of seedlings
primitive organs set out
on waves of self-feeling
the undeveloped shoreline
of a new sense in view
my Columbus soul expands
waiting for a taxi or a plane
can this be the Ithaca
of our destination and
the sailing done
still living the hero
in everyone
but the healing
in none

99% Valentine

A fresh sprouting
of fall nasturtiums
floating on the grass
a flashing of minnows
the ambulance is coming
but it goes right past us
we the people are always
in an emergency situation
requiring thoughtfully organized
assistance and relief
from those who are able
and from those who are most able
most
as one family at last

Background Valentine

There’s so much bread on the ground
so much bread thrown out
for the birds though I’m
unfaithful to them though I’ve
forgotten their true function
in the great sand-painting
of Everything I love just
to hear them in the background
basically because I’m always
searching for new songs
in my head if not for some
real reason to sing
even if I couldn’t carry
a note to save my life

Guilty Valentine (for Franz Kafka)

I’m not accusing
you of anything
so why do you look guilty
I look guilty because
I look guilty
that’s how I look
no you don’t I’ve
seen you smile
yes but it’s a smile
smeared over guilty
a bad varnish
a bad end
there is no other start
awaits us all a
cabinet of horrors
a private Dachau
which we could see
as children under the beds
but no one listened
no one believed us