First Grade Valentine

What makes death
such a great teacher and friend
besides his general brilliance
and comprehensive command
of his subject is that
he lets us play truant
to our fates for a while
because what death teaches
is that we don’t need
what he teaches
that we can love life absolutely
but we have to pay to go there
to his private school
to find that out
and that we can deepen
our sincerity about everything
as an equal in the seven worlds
if we just try not to pretend
to be so selfless all the time

Naked Valentine

I think of it as quilting
literary quilting
the long poem

I can only manage
a small soiled napkin
coveting one sneeze at a time

I once sneezed nineteen
consecutive lines I was
completely naked inside

neither by association
nor by dissociation
but by what inspires both

my motto: what a shit
you are sometimes
I often say to myself

what a little
shit I am
going to be

but to see I
can’t take even my
little goodness with me

if I would behold a true
objective picture
of myself

or anything else
but must leave my
own opinions behind

Traveling Valentine

From a certain mountain
my body is a prison
I mean a prism
a vision buried
in a vision
driving past the backyards
of prior lives
unexcavated lies
trying to fade
into the landscape
as it hurries past
four times as fast
leaving us in the dust
alone at last

Silvery Valentine

Stalking a dead
leaf I came to
a dead flower
I was being tortured
by the hour
silver blades
slipped under my skin
peel back the beauty
to the plum-pink
throbbing pulp
I live within
a certain mess I made
the blood runs down the arm
totally astonishing at first
and then you feel responsible
for the whole world 

Objective Valentine

A poem must be
not only a refusal
of the cold tone of voice
and brusque business
attitude of prose
but show how
words can push
as far as they can
against the blank
spaces to their right
on a page or screen
how you can feel
this happening if
you take the time
where things get
technical or tender
and make-up is applied
backstage for your births
and funerals

Next Please Valentine

Is it a test
of hope to order
80 black ink
cartridges
for the fountain
pen you still
write in long-
hand with in
lined notebooks
just because they’re
available at
bargain discount
these days
the skyrocketing
price of a poem
my lord you’re
getting this one here
for nothing

Eventual Valentine

I consider death
an event in life
important yes but
certainly not final
that makes no sense
we’ve come that far
picture it for once
from the other side
when you really do go on
the excitement
the sense of triumph
and if you really didn’t
believe it or want to
the sense of freedom
from a physical world
of false assumptions
bad faith and starving
millions for a while

Shining Valentine

Our garden fairly glows
after the storm
the sun rises too
over its dripping glory
and astonished
immortal flower-faces
such peace saturated
with peace as only
terrible war produces
here is given freely
the coin of another realm
in the making
where we are grown

Silk Valentine

My cactus
wears a halter
of thin
       silk strands
to hold him up-
right in the pot
he’s so far
outmaneuvered
escaped from
so many times
I keep lassoing him
until he blooms
no I say
though you wear the sky
for a shirt and the sun
for a beating heart
you too must flower
and die

Hard Valentine

The one who prefers
this to that
will never understand
the world
she will never
face the truth
when he meets it
or rather when it
meets them catches
up accosts and
slaps me hard
once on each cheek
so both cheeks hurt
and both hands

Non-denominational Valentine

I believe the rain is not
having anything or
staying put somewhere
but traveling and staring
from windows that the eye
is made up of millions
of tiny eyes all of them
weeping and laughing
and that sleeping or
waiting at the station
we are always moving
steadily toward some
lifesaving assignation

Thursday Valentine

It’s Thursday already
in the history of the world
garbage pickup day
I remember in the country
my grandparents threw their garbage
right out into the backyard
where it piled up stinking
even as a child I was amazed
it’s Thor’s day by Jove
the day the Lord gave
us our orders the day the colors
arrive in nascent eyes
a rainy light descends from
a cloud across the street
on a Thursday of my feelings
wandering toward us all

Resurrection Valentine

Through my body
I have the sense
I am not my body
I am not anyone at all
I am these thoughts
that are thinking
me-you-us-one-
I-love in order of
situational appearance
that out of the temporary
elements I lift up
my permanent self
for the first time
out of my own perception 

Bloody Valentine

The percept ‘thinking’
belongs to the concept ‘I’
but the percept ‘I’ belongs to
the concept ‘bodiless idea’
(which exists in the guise
of ‘life-death-happiness-evil’)
but actually the percept ‘I’
belongs to the concept ‘Christ’
or ‘Yahweh’ or ‘Allah’ or ‘Elohim’
if you take those to mean
all you wanted anyone to be
the idea of a kindness
which bleeds not so much
that you won’t have to
but that when you copiously do
the percept ‘blood’
belongs to the concept ‘love’
as it once did for you

Museum Guide's Valentine

What I want to happen
as you read these marks
on the faces that you see
behind the screen
is for you to turn
the sun of your eyes
the other way for once
and peer down
with that narrow
flash-light’s gaze
inside your cranial
arch and down
the perilous throat
rappel with your
sure words we are
too full of ourselves
and finally reach
the place where we
metabolize ourselves
where we take one
piece of the world
at a time and turn
it back to nothing
once again

Vacation Valentine

A lousy businessman
a superficial scholar
a nervous botanist
a sycophantic chef
a skipping pebble
a new-growth forest
an unrepentant summer
a repressed executioner
a gutless lover
all these had gathered
in the vestibule
of one of my dream
mansions but of course
I wasn’t sleeping
I wasn’t even home

Missed Valentine

I let the rain
wipe the dust
from my head
I cross the road
before the road
crosses me
my truth is in Wisconsin
but my heart
is waiting at the curb
you are there
whole days missing
from my face
you were always more
lyrical more seasonal
than me

Earthly Valentine

Helplessness is not
so much the problem
as the point
of earthly life
to go there in order to
surrender holding glances
to give your life away
and searching always
for some greater god
than yourself to serve
to find the one in all
everywhere and nowhere
the last two places
you would look

Rolling Valentine

Isn’t the heart
a kind of oasis
after the desert
of the brain
after all the thorny
abstractions broken
furniture sudden
alarms it comes
as a relief to hear
it suck and spit
knead and fold
the helpless blood
tasting even the sun
on its skin saying
almost indifferently
roll me this way
then roll me back

Agoraphobic Valentine

Some of me still
isn’t sure you’re
there waiting
beside my death
as I am for you
even if all around
me the evidence
of love accumulates
and deepens
turning into my body
and the world still
why should I trust
it if even now
after my thousandth
disaster survived
I’m still afraid

Bathtub Valentine

Will you let
knowing how
the story
ends spoil
the story
for you
or preserve
the child not
as a fear-struck
mummy
or a heartless
tyrant but
the freshness
that you will
never be that
sincere again

Slammed Valentine

I love the drama
of the slammed door
the storming down the
street which at least
gives me time to
listen to some bird
where could he
have learned such
sorrow or see
each tree or plant
as some variation
on the personal lives
of the beings who
perform and reflect
their cold thoughts
strolling through
despair a park
of you for me

Pluto Square Valentine

God you better
get over yourself
get ahold of yourself
I know your true
potential but no one
likes to be lorded
over as one must
be to know you
and to become
you the one
gene in everything
in every individual
being in the
universe 

Fresh Valentine

The fresh beckons to
the formulaic the fine
boasts a finish of
I’d say woody notes
if I was a hermit-
thrush how could
Amy Beach be
less appreciated
I’d ask if I was
the evocative kind
if I knew how
to kiss you sunlight
mountain spring
of my life
your hand
in my pants

Silliman's Valentine

Even if the poem says
everything in the world
and knows the name of
everything in the world
which even an animal
after all can do
it’s not enough
not to have made
something out of
all that knowing
of the world
a question asked
some expression
of comfort or concern
an exasperated sigh

Irreversible Valentine

I love you
but that’s
no excuse
the words
that came
just before
working our
way backwards
to the one
you were
promising so
much more
you were
touching but
not so brave
I jumped
on it I was
so young
and fragile

Missed Valentine

I really didn’t want
to miss a day
early on I
could see a day
would be missed
here and there
understandable and
yet incomprehensible
to me what day
could be missed
omitted from memory
not mine but the
great memory
that misses us all

Hot Text Mess Valentine

Is personal texting what
the new writing is all about
now there are no trees
not archived nor deleted
not permanent ourselves
but we can experience
permanence from time
to time in spurts like semen
or roses expiring in the sun
you have to pull it tight
so it shuts behind you
or else the whole damn desert
comes dust-deviling in the door

Red-Headed Valentine

Last night in a dream
I slept with a red-headed beauty
I was amazed but happy
someone so lovable
was loving me again
with joy and pleasure
as old as I am but how
many scraps from our bodies
pieces of flesh torn away
will we have to leave behind
to be able to wake up
on the other side
without fear or shame
in the very bodies after all
that taught us how to love?

Morning Valentine

The first thing I do
every morning is
eliminate any evidence
of yesterday of course
there are leftovers
grandfathered in but
the rest are executed
buried in the old graveyard
of memory next door
to where it reinvents
itself we call today
that come not just
the walking dead
but some new lust
I pray instead

Unintentional Valentine

Misspoken misdemeanor
misconstrued misbegotten one
come here to me
let me be like
your new language
the sudden mystery of
malformed sounds
evolving on their own
into the delicate
relations in things
instrumentally
whose words make mouths
to speak them
for their pleasure

Spanish Valentine

Someone left some music for me
I had never heard before such
Spanish songs on a CD
I just happened to find
on my shelf searching
for something else where
perhaps they knew I would
come across it at the right
intersection of longing and corizon
of a whole people a whole new
inflection for the direction
of passionate sorrow to take
more new world heartbreak
for the fountain of youth to slake

Returned Valentine

Originally I learned to die
from watching people
dying all around me
this proved unsustainable
keeping them long enough
to retain some significant detail
when you really comprehend
the impermanence of the world
housekeeping becomes irrelevant
to make art or love you die to
come into the world
you die to get out
but only finding someone
to take with you can give
you a reason to return

Lost Valentine

Whose only real life
is the true film he’s making
in the time of films
after the time of books
before the time of no
go-between no mediator
an unavoidable knowing
of oneself and others off
in the discordant future
truth lies like a drowning
son who walks out too far
to rescue him from
rescuing his star fallen
but if you think of this
as sad you’re lost

Devil's Valentine

It took me half
my life to realize
the devil was only
half my size
the necessary
older brother
in the story
and really a nice
guy to talk to
friendly and witty
with words a natural
and with the body
a lover passionate
and controlling
half my life
my unnecessary cover
and sweet teacher
to finally get
your game

Blood Valentine

A surprise (that a surprise
could still happen) but
the plumeria bloomed
what can I tell you
plum-red as a wound
not the usual
yellow-bellied white
one of us predicted
as in the life of every stem
however vagrant
one day there’s a picture
of the wine-dark mind
where we sail out from ourselves
looking back at the harbor
our house there on the cliff
the wind coming up
the lighthouse of our deaths
casting its wide arc
but now for real
a red you can remember

Sibling Valentine

I hardly make an effort anymore
to be poetic in my poems
or even that intelligent
proprioceptively leaking
it’s the self-consciousness
I find in everything
and everyone around me
that I try to emulate and honor
they seem so sure of themselves
as must I to them when
we’re all so intermingled and
entangled blood and bone
you’d think we’d recognize a sister
or a brother now and then

Visitor's Valentine

When the god Apollo
returned to Venice recently
in the form of a tornado
wearing his yellow star
with its know thyself insignias
no one was waiting either
at the custom’s steps
or under the lion’s mane
though it was still raining
according to the stores
a godless man who loved
the men who loved the gods
a foreigner where the forms
of beauty kept their familiar names
on this island in a bottle
what could be ominous to him
what grim?

Teachers' Valentine

A reversal of the roles
of the world we have
scratched out the word
earth by erasing nature
she was cutting on herself
whispers of an early rape
whose purpose is distraction
out of which you make reason
or you don’t how many
times can you take
high school thinking
as a form of government
or what’s an education for
all these ignorant children
grown up now and beating
on their hapless teachers

Notebook Valentine

A strange death and
uncertain resurrection
as if he had known
it was coming
which he couldn’t have
he had no warning
but he’d lit three candles
on the coffee table
and set a bottle of water
on the table beside him
a few favorite books
strewn on the couch
where he was found sitting
slumped a little forward
as if listening intently
to music or a distant voice
or reaching for his notebook
to write something down

Incense Valentine

What is as pathless as sorrow
as roofless as light –
two leftover lines
from last night

to deal with in the morning
so I imagined commercials
for home thuribles
to bless the whole house

once a month it would
soon catch on with juniper
frankincense and myrrh
to drive away the dragons

praise the spaces
where we eat and dream
the walls that hold us
day and night

praise the corners
where nothing is
the fragrance settling
where the light first comes

My Feelings about My Memories Valentine

Are you crazy or just fricking
(add to dictionary) stupid
my therapist asked me one day
we had reached that depth of
confidence and despair in one
another not in the body
but the soul which had
so identified with refusal
and pride he had been forced
to slap my feelings bitch
so I could find them
and go and look at them
from across the street
their gait more clouds
who pretend to sublime
indifference while being
most intimately involved
with every single thing
above and on the streets
beneath them

Writing the Numbers Valentine

The way 8 is or isn’t
a gifted (belly) dancer
or 6 an abrupt refusal
a complete dismissal
or the way 7 changes
the subject completely
or 5 finally goes there
to the wedding of 10
the divorce in 4
the stroke of 1
the death of 9
leaving us 2
alone with a third
not me not you
no word
no clue

Working Valentine

Hell in the sense
of suffering and not
knowing why
purgatory in the mind
amid the failures of will
heaven in the heart
knowing you’re here
and there on the earth
so we can get on with our work
the mind refusing to
comprehend the heart
and the heart refusing to grow up
to seize its unenviable position
as regent of everything
and king of the sun

Relative Valentine

One of the things we had to do
after eliminating the monsters
and the giants was drain the swamps
first on the physical level and
then metaphorically to think
was still relatively novel starting
out as a pure flood an amazing
flowering and reaching forward
into its sources until we personally
got involved from one nation
to one family to every individual
thinking has come down
like an old armoire or mysterious
cabinet or medicine chest
we carry everywhere with us
but refuse to open or even
remember it’s there

Desert Valentine

I too grew those lavish gardens
of the northeast and west
their peonies and Oriental poppies
wet springs and dry summers
under a spruce tree cathedral
laid floors of spreading ajuga
now I get to use ajuga in a poem
now I get to grow the invisible
desert rose with its single thorn
get to water it with my blood
one drop a day get to carry
its rainbow body through mirage
after mirage the morning we call
earth the evening we call air
and only maybe someday see it bloom

Mountain Valentine

If you make it past seventy
as tragically most don't
that far up the mountain
you start to notice things
there all along but tragically
so many don't look
up and out over the vast fields
and wooded rivers below
you lose your bearings
a little on the thin air
the omniscient light
the dying warmth
finally seeing there is nothing
and has only been nothing
everywhere you look
all this time nothing
but spirit was and is

Forgotten Valentine

The thing I went to get
at the store I forgot
though I did get several other
useful items and remember
now an aching sense I was
forgetting something walking
the aisles of frozen goods
but couldn’t think of what
until I got back here it’s
a picture of my life
what did I come to get
with such urgency and yes
a certain amount of joy
and then along the way forget
and have to go back for with regret? 

Ten Dollar Valentine

For ten dollars
I could get ten red roses
or a dime bag
or two extreme coffees
with change for a cheap tip
or half a movie or the used book
it was dismantled from
to be read alone sipping
a plain Americano please
at Big Mac’s or the San Remo
of my memory half-
convinced as you were
the cure for doubt
wasn’t faith but thought 

Dangerous Valentine

If the greatest danger
was not to be found
beside the greatest pleasure
why would we go there
what would it prove
not to watch the deer’s eyes
as the lion devours him
like a radio gets switched off
at a certain point
desire has done with him
eventually we must look away
not to be swallowed also
not to let our own insignificance
blind us to the great fortune
of someone’s love 

Legendary Valentine

From a goose wounded
by a falcon fell
three drops of blood
on the snow a red
that spread to a pale
blush on a face
hidden in the heart
of a dull soul
suddenly appearing
in the outside world –
all is lost
to that moment until
a thought is thrown
over the form
of feeling’s hold
so longing and longing
through sorrow and joy
can finally be moved
by reason to love