Empty Valentine

I grew these from seed:
two wonderful arms
two wonderful legs

and wonderful how two
proved the basis for
everything I grew

and killed and grew

imagine traveling miles
for a particular color

an idea with childhood
written all over it
as if it weren’t

a red and purple
sea hustling
a predatory people

but an eggshell you
gave me to care for
a spear of celery

and a cold sunny
afternoon’s three wasted
wishes we will build

new bird houses and
they will come back
three days they cried

circling the emptiness
where their hedge had stood
where they had nested for years

and that was just one group

Hazy Moon Valentine

A landscape of quiet dust
under the glass dining table
as the sun passes by
creating and destroying spaces
we have only accumulated
into matter for a while
as a barrier against sadness
is built or a dam against some
flood bound to rearrange us
but not to be carried away
or get enchanted by
material freshly emerging
from the stitching of millions
of tiny invisible elements
under uncertain conditions
we misrepresent as ours
our river our time
but to get intelligently lost
and sleep in a strange bed
and wake among stars

Gracious Valentine

Hey cadastre
hither line by line I’ve
set this least easement
in higher indifference
in the metes of love
and bounds where they
kept their original t
the forerunner of more
modest languages
unmarked by monuments
as how you say eagerly
similar and specious
in our anytime going
from grace to grace

Risen Valentine

Especially beautiful tonight
is the sleepwalking wind
through alleys through creeks
a cold psalmist in cloaks
of living silk
a cellular succulence
in the density
of the god of darkness
driving the moon
out of sight singing
I have something to say
but I have no one
to say it to

Choleric Valentine

Even there at the level
of bacteria
a signal to stop
swimming and
lodge in the walls
of the small
intestine a terrific
readiness to respond
to radically changing
chemical environments
to return to prior
conditions and impulses
no longer relevant colonies
angrily driving out
all moisture and life

Ear's Valentine

You were sitting
in the sun I was
sitting in the shade
the hearing in my
left ear is going
going where I said
don’t you remember
you didn’t hear me
it was always your
insouciance I loved
most about you I
heard you clearly say
the sun was warming
you the shade was
cooling me off
can a heart have
tinnitus mine was
ringing off the hook
don’t you remember
you didn’t hear me

Whisperer's Valentine

If our better angels
are as far above us
as we are above the
animal kingdoms
the composite flower
each so intricately is
I try to imagine their
profound frustration
infinite patience as
our trainer-teachers
whispering and
herding us through
our lives toward some
harvest like how
today my angel
told me to inspect
my hands every day
and ask myself if I
remember how I
made them and why

Martin's Valentine

We do what we love
and we love to do it
we love evil and we do evil
thinking because we love it
it must be good
or we love to do
whatever and call it
good because all these
preliminary questions
must get discussed
among our incipient selves
but then the audience
goes blind and silent
the curtain opens on a castle
an old man is knocking
at the gate

Not My Parents Valentine

A very old couple at Fry’s
staring at the heartburn
remedies display
their effortless calm
in the face of
the diaper aisle
how they hold still
as the cosmetics section
passes them by trembling
I meet them again
heading for the exit
him holding a clutch
of yellow freesias
her hugging a fifth
of scotch

Mani's Valentine

Today I turned to Mani for help
he of the Manicheans
whose name means the jewel
who was flayed alive
by those who came to believe
killing someone ends their life
forgetting their home with the gods
just an idea among ideas
among streets and bridges
how can we still not speak
to one another as light
to light still not know
ourselves as children
of the sun and moon

Your Valentine

From the gleams
in gems to the colors
in flowers and wings
to the fires in eyes to
the light in minds
to the seeing past
bodies past brains
to pictures in the past
from the beginning of
memory to the sense
of a future self the true
long-prepared-for one
but for what for
whom if not you

Misunderstood Valentine

On second thought
there is the other cheek
half-empty twin
the double and
the object subject to
incomprehensibility
which is not merely
a misunderstanding
or a compensation for
the one who loses you
half-way through
the conversation
but the one who finds you
in his eyes

Alone Valentine

The sunlight through
their tail-wings when
they’re at the feeder
in the morning is
lovely and ferocious
but do you really think
writing in crumbling
columns is a way of
imprisoning their songs
it seems I have
encouraged a war
that can only lead
to their destruction
then my own
the afternoons
are calmer when
the feeder’s empty
I’m alone

Lily's Epiphany Valentine

Maybe you have
just one more
day inside you
have to shed
before conclusively
without pretense
you’re dead
and start to
stink as dying
process calls out
to dying process
along the stem
your five arms
into ashes shrivel
what was petal
what was flame

Twelfth Night Valentine

Losing warmth
to gain precision
as soon as there
are two there are
edges gathered together
in our names
bird seed for the birds
gone to war for
isn’t that itself the canary
I know how you’re stalking
me no not you clear reader
of the secret script
a forest of nasturtiums
the trees of paradise
in our ant days

Sleeping Valentine

Is it still hard
in heaven
to get used to
the decontamination
of love from
rage when we
really see how
narrow how nervous
we were on earth
what is reasonable
treatment when you
glimpse driving an
old man sleeping
on the side of the road
our sorry stories
even in heaven
still hard to hear

Overheard Valentine

That first night
orange trees blooming
one huge silent bell ringing
how it shakes
what is greener
twenty years later
a few drops of water
dribbled on the tongue
all we could swallow
of one another
I was dying of you
in the next bed
it was something you said
cut me dead

Neighbor's Valentine

I saw death
pass through
my yard on his way
to my neighbor’s
last night I
dreamed death
comes to each
of us in the form
of a tiny spider
three days before
our actual death
which we brush
off quickly with
perhaps a shiver
a thing so insignificant
no one remembers
afterwards
getting tagged

Habitual Valentine

As long as
you make a habit
of living you
have to break
it however tomorrow
distantly pain
takes up the refusal
to change why
else are you
dancing to gather
lift and contrail
mouse-tracks in
the snow up to
a certain hush
of wings

First Day Valentine

The fortune
left on the table
but the cookie gone
I keep moving
around the room
until the sunlight
fills it the guest
has arrived then
I lie down and let
his warmth roll
over me the tips
of the trees are
illuminated first
then my toes
he holds me
to the fire of
his love I had
to say it or
have we not all
come to be
extinguished
on this earth
not air to breath
but light

Resolutions Valentine

To bring into
my sleep
the whole tree
of knowledge
like a rabbit
from a hat
and to bring back
into here now
a new love
for small things
small movements
of perception in
the corners
of your mouth
when you do
what you do

Certain Valentine

At a certain angle
of love the sun’s
rays penetrate
to the deepest
part of the cave
and gather
themselves into
a luminous
pool of white
awareness
that can shatter
at least once
the darkness of
this place before
it moves on

Struggling Valentine

Morality can be a play
for coping with fear
the melodrama of matter
and of mattering
knowing for sure
you will be killed
since nobody dies
willingly or to have
seen the littleness
of our nature in its most
grandiose schemes
and to maintain
a mountain range
of equilibrium and poise
a warm breeze when
cooler hearts freeze

In the Museum Alley Valentine

The trail depends on
whoever walks it
the way the water-walkers
reflect the contrails above
this year’s Jesus
was a laughing
baby on YouTube
who made us
laugh and laugh
it's mind-wrenching
and heart-wrenching
what we’ve become
since Dickens
Christ the ghost
the ingot
come little lambs

Museum of the Innocents Valentine

Natural to the mortal mind
is a noble heart that doubts
not merely the love it generates
but all its other parts as well
when love is absent or forgone
beings who learned their logic
listening to their parents quarrel
tend not to discover what is noble
kind alert fearsome quiet
except in libraries or alleys
in open fields of snow
watching the sun move
from the woman’s face
to the angel’s face to
the man’s with only
a drop of it falling
on the child below

St. Stephen's Valentine

Suddenly a pomegranate
crashes on the bricks
so loudly I come to
check it out and find
the sorry brain
a nest of rubies and
a brown stain on
the inside walls like
creases on the cheeks
of saints and all the while
in the back a manic
mockingbird’s grinding
industry of song
troubling but untroubled
keeps on keeping on

Christmas Valentine

The enduring versus
the endearing
though not from eros
do we learn
to go on living
the seed of love
is buried in the head
packed tight as
a pomegranate’s
blood seed
thoughts dripping
on the snow
an end therein
of all we know
and sing

Orange Valentine

I’d look like I just got off
the boat an expression
of my mother’s wearing
those shoes ah
the slurs of yesteryear
where have you gone
how July’s warm gesture
gets refused by November’s
brusque turning and
walking away
in December I wait
for you to call
watching the oranges ripen
to their juiciest point
the colder it gets

Between Nazareth and Bethlehem Valentine

All lives are solitary
all lives are salutary
all lives aren’t set
among quietly falling leaves
on sunny empty streets
all lives are cautionary tales
all cautionary tales are alike
but not all lives are alike
after busily fallen leaves
now I see that plastic owl
is still sitting on the roof
all this time I forgot OMG
to take him down

Solstice Valentine

A consciousness
can only be built up
on correspondences
if we can agree
in the final picture
that there can only be
states of consciousness
in the universe
starting with logic
as it exacts its
rough penance
first as foretaste
of real suffering
unconsciously self-imposed
and then as the true
realities of the world
assume their places
the sun but not his surrogates
who appear to be real
but distinguish themselves
as clear illusions
in the fields of light

Beauty's Valentine

When young
I was told
my long earlobes
meant I would
live to a ripe
pear’s age small
splotches and hairs
would bloom
out of them
into that field
but when the flower
arrives it means
the plant is dying
self-immolating
which we mistake
for beauty artfulness
or the evolution of
color as the secret
element behind
all creation
not the flag of
surrender and the
lifting out of matter
as it waves farewell

Simple Valentine

Was he a man of war
or a man of peace
or someone undecided
I mean did he carry
a hatchet or a book
in his left breast pocket
a book of prayers
or a book of poems
it’s a simple question
with an answer that can
only be another simple question
only a narcissist cares
about his own opinions
ours is to ask the questions
and having woken up to
the emotions they unfold
draw out their implications
as our youth foretold

Angels' Valentine

How much joy
can the world contain
how much sadder
would we like it to rain
that the universe shrink
to this soft mass
of heart and brain
brings pain unless
we let them pass us
out to the peripheral
stars and back again
and let them return
let them consume us
for whatever nutritive
value we may possess
and let them think us
all the way out
to the end of shame

Christopher's Valentine

Regardless of your name
I must insist on the story itself
its inherent originality
and literary value its
touching verisimilitude
as proof of authorship
by some intelligence or nous
arranged in layers ply
on ply of metaphors
until the question itself
becomes a religion
but the point is not religion
it’s about the metaphors
one thing being carried across
and laid into another thing
the non-material world
populated with its own
calm and isolate beings
three candles gold
and green and blue
set before a throne

Performed Valentine

From our safe seats
way up in the gallery
we can watch the end
of thinking unfold
way down there on
its miniature stage
as if we were the czars
for whose pleasure it
was all being staged
or outcasts sneaking in
after it’s dark and started
it’s all such a performance
most of which flies by
or over our heads
how the concept
comes home to the thing
and the thing
returns to the concept
a whole new thing 

Cloudy Valentine

You must chose
to be a person
of some constancy
or a cloud-
person the effect
of other forces
that can flip
you pancake
sweet person
that you are
in any event
the clever idea
to be good to
one another
doesn’t mean
there is a god
or words are clouds
and I am not
a falling leaf

Advent Valentine

A red bird rests
in the evergreen crotch
of the Christmas tree
I mean no meanness
to speak of birth
how it happens
once a year
on earth but what
did it mean to the gods
to have one sent
to betray the mystery
of death by dying
as a man in whom
a god still lived?

Beak's Valentine

The day the hummingbird
broke his golden beak
falling on the floor
I was not about to freak
I’d already surveyed the worst
the money plant was dying
one leaf at a time
from some unknown disease
the sun was illuminating
our hearts more and more
powerfully every day
where was it all leading
what would happen next
would we be pounded
the harder into the earth
or borne away helpless
into heaven’s airless lair
we woke to trembling
the bomb of our life
having just gone off
which somehow we
survived to build again

Petitionary Valentine

Help me angel mine
find the karmically correct
way of meeting
these fears which undermine
my sense of self-respect
this ravenous child inside
who will remind him
of his innate good sense
in the time before the
separation and the rape
let's see what happens
with the idea of freedom
they said does the slave
select the master does the
stone become the bread

Child's Valentine

Let the sun
sit down
in the pail
full of rain water
a charming
three year old
splashing child
under corduroy
clouds not
the heart of
the king
it means
but the king's
way a street
in every heart

Questionnaire Valentine

Haven’t we had to fight all our lives
against the disapproval of others

but who cannot say that

is it really our plan
to dispose of one another

don’t we all belong

to several civilizations at once
however contradictory

are our lives still a secret
we keep from ourselves

isn’t every life about failure

as a sibling of success

I refused to let my parents raise me

don’t blame them now for my excess

December Valentine

Something happened
to our love after
we had lived together
for several years
I could feel
someone seeing
through me I could
sense someone thinking
my thoughts as one
of their ways of touching
or perceiving through me
we seemed to be able
to give this someone
back and forth to one
another and as long as
he was with us
we were safe
and home

Cold Valentine

Let the cold reassess
the crudities of young men
he saw his throbbing
sorrow was not the word
joy was not the feeling
though the world was reeling

ripe oranges reach over

into the dark recesses of the
pomegranate trees
in my Granada mind
but their spirits come down
only as far as the rain
 
picture our thoughts
completely woken up
as if regaining the original
ground we call magic but
don’t believe in anymore
except as flesh and blood

Ashen Valentine

Once a day
I try to say
in a written but
informal way
what the pond
also rises to say
or the trees see
in the fires of
winter we are
of one mind
on this
accumulation of ash
love's residue
as me as you

Transparent Valentine

The way blue senses
red backing it up
in all its endeavors
which the old stained-
glass windows achieved
those first paintings
using transparent light
as its medium
outside of rainbows
if you’ve stood in one
or the flight of a thousand
Amazonian parrots
casting an orange glow
on those below
amazing as you 

Will's Valentine

We must not
worship furniture
and yet we do
the furniture of your
bones as they accompany
your softer parts I do
of overlapping weather
systems arranged as
organs of pleasure
and perception I do
try to build a daily
temple to and feel
that enormous will
passing through
as breeze as you

Praise Valentine

Life is a page-burner barn-turner
film-noir thriller
starring Rita Hayworth-like
heroes and complications
you think of as friends
I want to be left alone
in a completely different movie
sometimes one of the floors
mutters to an end-table
but notice the humble hyphen
neither letter nor punctuation
emulate the hyphen
yea in the morning praise it
our words holding hands
sometimes their only connection

Reading Valentine

Books about the end
of the world
you know
fiction
in a los Algodones
dentist's office
where you were
cleaned and
crowned
with a too-white
porcelain one
taken back
for yellowing
slightly
to match
the sawdust
of our days

Sunday Service Valentine

All these complements
that make a life
my hand-made love
I can’t carry
the one you across
without the other me
coming along
 
at seven I was a real saint
which was fine for a year
but as a career
it left something
to be desired
and a long hangover
 
pretending is what
we’re still sending
so terrified to be you
I must continually
construe and cling
to this me

o practice me

god of imperfection

Moment's Valentine

Poetry is the moment
of recognition in you
that occurs in
the act of hearing it
which is reading it
the spiral action
of its unfolding
its unwinding
as if you swallowed
some new drink
tasting it on your
lips as it rushed
past you into you
hurrying to find
some new truth
like unto itself
in your depths

Teal and Amethyst Valentine

Two faces press
against the sides
of your body
so it carries the outline
of lips smiling
another face
rolls your head
in its mouth
until you dissolve
in tears or laughter
and finally a fourth face
marries your feet
to back and front
from underneath
until you’re surrounded
by faces not in
bodies anymore
suddenly you see
how love gave us the right
to punish one another
because we promised
we would never
use it anymore

Eventual Valentine

I think a clear thinker 
today is someone who
hasn’t entirely gone over
to materialism yet
but whose ideals
still make him lazy
with respect to the
pragmatic principles
upon which this nation
was founded lest
everything become
merely a business deal
but militaristic
religions don’t think
that way democracy
is not some cult
of freedom
but a caring
of each for all
and yes a sharing
in all by each
or else it’s just
the same old slave
master thing
eventually

Indigo Valentine

The oboes are over
like a man
without a distance
it was not as if
the secret returned
to be told another way
‘secrete us in reality’
(Wallace Stevens, p. 310)
a convulsion of evenings
one of whose sparrows flies
over the house dressed
as the moon the white stain
of our sin since we were
still children
an invagination of sparrows
you friends who wait for me
to slip out of my body
into yours as the oboes
approach and start
munching and reality
secretes us

Feathery Valentine

How a feather is made up
the top button done up
so that when they die
gathering together in one
place each year’s worth
they release into the
universe a call to all
they’ve left behind
to follow them here
into a hidden woods
lifting every particle
of memory back
to its secret nook
and cranny
in them air
is taken back
to light
then slowly
very slowly
light is taken
back to love

Pigeon Valentine

I know how Virgil felt
standing alone between
Homer and Dante
his two prized goats
whose horns made
small incisions in the air
on market day
I know how responsibility
felt standing naked
between free will
and biology its fate
I know how the drink
felt between the bottle
and the mouth
and the bullet
between the chamber
and the revolution
until a pigeon flew down
and shat on my sophia
in a country of pigeons
I know how it felt

Language Valentine

If all that’s left to read
in your own language
is an amateur fragment
of a poem an address
to an unnamed lover
full of startling obscenities
and broken narratives
of cruelty and love-making
meant to remind us
of who we really are
of course you would
read it over and over
you would memorize it
you would write it down
on your skin if those were
the only words you had left
in your own language

Leafless Valentine

Red-faced ranunculus
you are part
of the amorousness
of the earth
whereas I am only
some person who plays me
so far beyond metaphor
as to have established
a residence in reticence
as when I say I
and yet you would
come to me so
much sooner than
I would totally giving
yourself up to me
and to our poor
rented afternoons
again and again
until starving finches
had eaten alive
every pomegranate
their empty shells
left hanging
on the leafless tree
outside our room

Money's Valentine

What happens
in a heart
is what happens
in a home
or happened
in that first home
though there isn’t
just that one home
that’s a lie
whose adolescence
returns under
an assumed
name Money
who wants to run
everything
for its own sake
not as a tool
in the transaction
but the master
of the outcome
you its slave
rich or poor
bitch or whore

Retrograde Valentine

Slowly I turn
letting the sun
circumnavigate
my body
its warmth
spinning me
like a child
like a flame
like the lines
on this page
once a fence
holding in
the spaces
now in the park
we come on
large flocks
of mourning
doves grazing
on the hillside
grasses
intermingling
with smaller
flocks of
blackbirds
trying together
unsuccessfully
to spell what
looked like
we don’t love
you anymore
as we sailed past