Historical Valentine

In the library of what
has yet to happen
I sat down and wept
I wouldn’t find you
 
when of course I found
that we would never finish
what we started and along
the way there were

squalid beasts and visions

of a powerful ogre
living inside our guts
visible when we were
 
drawn and quartered by
the world just another body
our souls would long endure

Heart's Valentine

My heart remains bucolic
though my brain’s been urbanized
suburbanized ghettoized restored
and nobody’s planted there
 
for years and the woods overgrown
burn down every now and then
which only encourages the ruin
to be eaten by the green
 
but my heart remains ruined
as any castle in Provence
and only growing more so
it never had a chance
 
one morning it just ran out
like a snowflake in an oven
sobbing for everyone

 

Orange Valentine

To really fill out existence
flesh becomes both necessary
and fatal or how else
would I be savoring

the sweet juice of this tree
I call mine barely
able to intuit any of
the alchemy by which

its daily lifting to the sun
and stars manages to
bring forth the blood
of this great deva

surrounding and enfolding it
like drinking cheerfulness
and then she taps your cheek

Lizards Valentine

Creatures of a certain
range of warmth
which like kindling
burst into flame now
 
and then under friction
or like love or hate
from interest or inattention
sail in and out of view
 
we come in twos
but go out one or more
lizards in winter who
dream continually of war

Blind Valentine

Freedom has always been corrupted
by slavery that some with power
subjugate others to do the hard work
and to continue the animal traditions
 
of brute force as winners or losers
the illusion of freedom in big houses
the entitlement of property on the ocean
all this cannot be countered from inside
 
blind to its own faulty presuppositions
but we must seek an improved premise
from which better realities can proceed
 
whose only law is love
or something like it
if freedom is to succeed

True Valentine

The truth is as far as it goes
as far as you can throw it
until it runs into another truth
they just live up the street
 
but actually the truth is all
that exists outside of things
I mean only a mind
could believe a lie
 
like when truth sees a red or a pink
does it recoil in terror or joy
isn’t it always blushing
but no that’s what healthy
 
looks like on a child’s face
or on a mother’s hands
she does free us but only
into herself in the end

Bathing or Drowning Valentine

I tell the birds
in my neighborhood
not to shit
in my birdbath
 
but then they sleep
in the branches above it
I say this water
is for bathing and
 
get quite political
about so much shit
accumulating actually
it’s not just for them
 
but a mirror I set up
to catch the other
side of light

Nursery Valentine

Tell me street
where you lead
tell me tree
what you need
 
tell me moon
on whom you feed
tell me sun
am I your seed
 
(blink once for no
or twice in need)
 
tell me love
what in your eyes
I only read

World's Valentine

Photography fools us
how the world is only
a painting or an ongoing
series of paintings

so don’t get caught in
the world’s selfies
neither narcissistic nor
scientific that sell

themselves for millions
we have brought our
memories all the way

down into matter
but our words remain
the only thing we’ve got

Emily's Valentine

In face of divinity
we grow weary
of sublimity
we look for nullity
preferring nothing after us
 
in face of eternity
we feel bullied
baffled and small
silently agreeing
not to think of it at all
 
in face of power
we pontificate
and cower in a corner
or else we defecate
on it and overpower

Jess's Valentine

Under your full Cancer moon
I had a dream about you
when you were four or five
and I could still sweep you up
 
and carry you in my arms
in this dream you were sleepy
and quiet but taking it all in
and for some reason I wanted
 
to get you a pen to draw with
so here we were in a cramped
and crowded tourist trap we
found walking along the shore
 
but not finding what I wanted
to give you just as we were leaving
you still in my arms
heading toward the ocean
 
a stranger said something to us
that left us both in a wonderful mood
though I can’t remember now
a single word he said

 

Soul Cab Valentine

I stepped off the curb
and found myself in the soul cab
but this was not New York anymore
 
and yet it was uncanny how
I could tell by the way people walked
either bent into it or looking around
 
as if asking if it’s the job
of poetry to confound
you now you’ve found it
 
how something of you
just by reading it or hearing
gets trapped inside it forever

 

no matter what city
this your final $300 question
forty blocks to go

 

Cassandra's Valentine

What isn’t dithering
or blithering or worse
the crookification
annual and perennial
 
of our purse culture
actually they’re called bags
as in bags of money
it’s rarely funny
 
but what’s the screwiest
thing you saw this week
as if we were all
in this together
 
one more river
went extinct
one more city under

Annunciation Valentine

When I first understood
I was an I
a separate unique
human spirit-being
I felt bereft
like one cast out
and yet I knew
it was true
I was an I
and I had always
been and I
would always
be an I
and that this was
true of all I’s
a composite
flower conscious
of its flowering
fruit and seeds
a waiting hut
fashioned of reeds
a god was here once
and may come again

Left Lane Valentine

A pain in my elbow
a hummingbird zips past –
a sense of some connection
 
the Goodwill next door
to the Miracle Store –
‘memory laundering’
 
let’s drive to Florence (Arizona)
the cool breeze will make up
for the missing David
 
out of the unborn we were born
out of the death of matter
we were born again –
 
what’s next
star text

After-life Valentine

First the coarsest
lusts are peeled
away to reveal
a veneer of woes
 
as one longing
after another
abandons you it gets
easier to let them go
 
so much to relinquish
every pleasure every pain
until even the idea of
relinquishment flows away
 
until by the end
only what you really are
is left

Impatient Valentine

I could not wait
I walked right up
and tore the veil
from the statue
 
I yelled ‘bullshit’
from the back of the room
I sought out the audible
and inaudible gasp
 
I chanted for war
and ran away
especially as a child
I advocated for divorce
 
for all of which I suffered
and died for my sins
but look I have risen again 

Arriving Valentine

Chicken-wire butter
and a juicer are all
I need today who
could want more
 
the promises of America
are vacationing in Bermuda
‘self-love is no love at all’
scrawled on the side of their truck
 
well excuse me for oversharing
the blue sky repeats and repeats
they’re called pansies colorful
thoughts on a walk in the park
 
I almost didn’t make it
I was running out of flowers
but here I am

Words Valentine

The clumsy surgery
of words the corpses
or discarded husks of words
the words of love
 
words spoken only on Tuesdays
apologetic words about
the weekend the laughter
of words not spoken
 
words that never become flesh
and bones and learn to walk
across the street or field
and keep going
 
words without ends
words without virtues except those
only my own wanting will impose

Identity Crisis Valentine

Of what spiritual
lineage are you anyway
are you a shepherd
or a king do you

see storms brewing
or gods in the distance
do you see around the heads
of each of us pictures

of the dead or the dead
themselves who gather
singing Bach and Monteverdi
or doing covers

for Beck and Mraz
were you a monk or a knight
a happy victim or contrite

Epiphanous Valentine

That I am not
of one mind
or of one mind
but of two thoughts
 
who disagree for
the sake of disagreement
brother thoughts
sister thoughts
 
I grow up inside
their arguments
their decisions
the third thought
 
who can be steadfast alone
who can be hopeful alone
but who cannot love alone

Sophie's Valentine

The way Raphael loved
his madonna and child
painting them over and over
as they appeared to him
 
against the background of
the beyond when the curtains
were drawn back and there
they were in their splendor
 
and yet always with a new
tenderness in the same way
did Novalis love his Sophie
whose purity could not
 
long endure the cold earth air
but like an apparition or a sky
take up its distances of sun
here in your willing arms

Singing Valentine

Mineral plant animal human
in the physical forming
these most ephemeral arise
but only thoughts survive
 
thoughts that surround the ruin
of Rievaulx or the flight
of a sparrow into dark woods
or the old cities of thoughts
 
their rich and poorer neighborhoods
their canals and empty warehouses
beside the great oceans of thoughts
torn loose from their moorings
 
raging or exhausted drifting alone
or my small thought of you
forever singing some tune

Self-punked Valentine

Somehow in the night
I lost the next day
I skipped over it
I slept through it
 
so when I woke up
I was certain it was
a day ahead of what
it actually was
 
and got ready to go
to work before I
woke up to my error
laughing to discover
 
I had the whole
day ahead free as
they say no worries

 

Blind Valentine

That we could more
clearly see
the consequences of what
we think and do
 
that we could really think
them through to their always
sudden outcomes or is
creation just arrangements
 
by derivative composures
still so few who want to accept
and talk to the so-called dead
who see and work hard
 
to penetrate the nervous
obstinacy of our thought-matter
with their constant wake-up calls

New Year Valentine

Would you renew the year
for me my prescription
has run out I mean
my resolution
 
not my love that you
will warm your cold
hands on my hot feet
and let me drift
 
more often but that
the past too gathers
nipping at our toes
always trying to trip us up
 
and that we float forward
now I see only by pushing
against its flow

New Year's Eve Valentine

Right now go out
fertilize your roses
scatter some grass seed
over the faces of  your friends

that they become meadows
or maybe just small patches
of green in the otherwise
driftless valleys of your life

as you drive through hillsides
of naked trees even before
the old leaves had fallen
the new ones those betrayers

were already formed
and the ruined cottage by the sea
is just now being born

Blissless Valentine

I admit all along
it was the bliss
I wanted though
that’s not the whole
 
story but it’s because
if you’re old you
should be praying
for everyone else
 
now you know
what they’re in for
this was not
the first world I felt
 
but which soul
did not share
my existence

Wardrobe Valentine

If it survives the next
one hundred years
it will appear on some
televised antique show

with the original finish
of gloom on its French
oak wave-like grain
formed after all by slow

absorption of nameless
streams and eddies
so we can see what life
was like in those days

when the wonderful events

of today were only dreamt of
and gave them hope

Etheric Valentine

Lifting up out of my body
I drift over the endless city
over the highways and houses
strange how no one notices me
 
but then there are a lot of us
aloft today some dead peering through
and the usual sleepers and children
like kites trying to escape
 
I come here often to keep
the paths clear between the worlds
you’d be surprised how many
line up here to be recycled
 
or to be rekindled
torched again
with that vagrant fire
that makes life possible below

Follower's Valentine

Look at these seeds
what an amazing idea
how did we forget it
I soaked them till the shells
swelled and broke
a tiny penis emerged
from each the stems
of everything to follow
they were following the light
seed leading to seed
but why this round and
round why not straight
on to glory as in last
night’s dream where
my angel said to me
why don’t we go in
to business together
become partners
it wasn’t until later
in the day suddenly
I remembered this dream
further from me now
than my angel

Innocents' Valentine

If you think of the farthest realms
beyond Saturn and the animal circle
and how they go on and on
filled with the greatest beings
and then you think of the earth
here in its little blue puddle
every day its mother the sun
bringing in the dead light
for it to eat having to leave
it alone unprotected for hours
at a time it makes me think
of any little town no one
would ever have heard of
except the youngest son
was born there the one
who turned the light around
aiming it back out into the dark
depths of love no one before
had comprehended

Christmas Valentine

Having murdered the messiah
now we move on to
murdering the earth itself
seizing only today
we have forgotten the gods
and their great thoughts
now they stand aside and watch us
go about its certain unraveling
not cherishing how the whole
is seamless together and falls
apart when carelessly
the threads are cut
now we've given up on time
and want to live only for things
filling the empty spaces with things
as if the child could be born
without the mother
or the world survive
without a father

Christmas Eve Valentine

Where's dad
out talking to
the pine trees
where's mom
out back smoking
a cigarette
where's sonny
out fighting
a useless war
where's baby
out singing in
the local bar
every year
Christmas gets
smaller pretty
soon they'll
be back in the
cave with the cow
and the donkey
few spaces left
for the choiring
throngs

Heroic Valentine

Maybe the wolves in the middle
of chasing the buffalo herd to take
the calves from their mothers
heard the death words of the old one
who had gone off by itself to die
because as soon as they heard
or felt something they raced off
in that direction abandoning the herd
to where it was still standing
inside a small copse of aspen
wavering and about to collapse
the wolves held back waiting
like a tree for it to fall before
they started tearing it apart
here I am dying anyway take me
thereby letting the herd escape

Family Valentine

The humiliation of poverty
is what the rich fear most
and what the poor are
struggling to survive
no more could Louis XVI
hear his own thoughts
in that roar approaching
the guillotine than could
my father when my mother
kicked him out because
revolution is family life writ large
but what happens when the sons
are worse than the fathers
and the daughters worse
than the sons of bitches

Just Asking Valentine

Isn’t it the experience
of the mind itself
that proves the existence
of a spirit world
where consciousness can
continue without a body
and isn’t it the mind itself
that proves the indivisibility
of the body and the mind
as a bridge where the spirit
shows up now and then
to inspire or cajole his creature
and isn’t it the mind itself
that must be thought out
all the way to those high beings
for we are not the source
through which we come

Moral Valentine

It’s often not possible
to make things better
but it’s always possible
to make things worse
it’s often not possible
to make things worse
but it’s always possible
to make things better
it’s better if it’s worse now
so it can be better later
it’s worse if it’s better now
so it can be worse later
for better or for worse
as if there was another hearse

Twin's Valentine

My burial was quiet
and quick as a leaf’s
or a chrysanthemum
petal’s thinner               
and thinner the
air between us
till we are breathing
with the same pump
they call it
time is usually
more specific
I stay my distance
I hear the buzz-saw
approaching
I see how close
you can come

Hunted Valentine

What if the hunters
went out into the woods
without their guns
to sit quietly on stumps
and wait for the deer
or the doves or the elk
to pass by or come near
and not even to take
their picture but just
to see them there
and what if the poem
was a deer would you
still hunt it and kill it
and eat it after all
we have to live
and the deer offer
themselves to us
the way the fields
and the woods are theirs
 

Glass Valentine

Out washing my windows
in the morning sunlight
you can clearly see
the evil encroaching gray
scum from all we’ve done
built up on the glass
like a cataract
or a defense mechanism
that darkens into
a disease whose seed
in childhood disappointments
unresolved takes root
and slowly spreads
its wilt of soot

Birthday Valentine

Getting to 70
means you don’t
entirely hate
yourself or life
in fact you’ve
been given more
than your fair
share as if you
had some mercy
on yourself and
even though one
still feels watched
at all times now
and then one feels
it was a blessing
to have known
and loved even
if often wrongly
and alone

December Valentine

I insist the last
three dried-up
pomegranate skulls
come tumbling down
I miss you that much
and I have even less
patience for the leaves
falling down my open
shirt in the process
of dislodging them
as if they could be
your hands
feeling their way
along my face
a thousand kisses
falling on me
not a thousand
leaves

Brave Valentine

Death ages one
up till then we’re
all too young
the years
it takes to get
past beauty
it uses almost
all the faults
one’s saved
for just such
the right occasion
to get you through
to be brave
in moonlight near
an open grave

Brother Louis's Valentine

Emily’s envelopes remind
me I once knew a monk
the monastery’s cook
who’d tear the labels from
bean and tomato cans
to pencil on the backs of
his jokes and visions
he’d tack to the kitchen wall
with scraps of prayers
it is his doing it I recall
more than what he wrote
out of the silence
of his vow not to waste
and not to want

Body's Valentine

If you had a cloud
for a body or a mind
like a cloud like mine
and could drift and merge
with other cloud bodies
and run through
the catalogues of forms
and faces gesturing
helplessly to the figures
below on the earth
never staying still
always on the march
to the next body of water
or the next feeding ground
keeping out of the way
of the white bear
and curling up at night
next to the warm
bodies of our brothers

Your Names Valentine

The workmanship of love
The hardiness of tremors
The injustice of irony
The foolishness of fruit trees
The mechanisms of mercy
The sophistication of ignorance
The absolution of disaster
The melancholy of ochre
The sacredness of kissing
The selfie of self-pity
The exhaustion of terror
The glamor of both hands
The moon of morning
The sun of the midnight hour

Worker's Valentine

I found a worker bee
drowning upside down
thrashing in a birdbath
was I to believe this
was important I gave
him my finger to crawl
up onto the rim
dripping and turning
in circles dazed shaking
the water from his shame
his indignity at
having fallen in
so I went on sweeping
trying not to notice
thinking whatever bee
by this time hasn’t
found a home will not
ever in December
thinking that was no fall
that was a suicide attempt
but by the time I got there

he had already flown

Reaching Valentine

Years later I
discovered I
had been living
in a crouched
marsupial position
but that all changed
in a single day
in a single look
and no one could
remember
my former life
or hold it against me
I was free of all that
in reach of you

Earth's Valentine

Not seeing
a soul in
someone else
is the root
of all the creepiness
on the earth
not to have fought
one’s way to feeling
past oneself
is behind all
that would end us
if we would be ended
and our earth’s
great quest
to become a sun
with its very own
complicated planetary
system and everything
go down Satan’s
black hole of boredom
and disdain

Holderlin's Valentine

Always the world is near
but the gods evade us
have already been here
and moved on
and their woods have moved on
the varieties of longing
the trees stood for gone
the caves and temples
of stone the talents
of their earliest years
lost if not carried
through one can’t
go back to one’s
first surrender
if after all
it was everything

Unsolved Valentine

Still the fathers bring death
to kill the sons
but the sons overcome
them in the end
with new life
and one star sails
through a hole
in the clouds
to renew our hopes
in the nothingness
through which
still unsolved
we come and go

Ferryman's Valentine

What suffering love
has in store for us
as part of its plan
for self-science
and the alonenesses
at the heart of
being specifically
you through which
everything else
is poured the
drunkenness of it
as opposed to the
sobriety of friendship
in which need is
transmuted into
the gold coins I take
if you would cross over

'I Lived For Art' Valentine

I can’t say
if I’m a poet
that would be
presumptuous
disrespectful
it would be
like calling
myself a hero
or a curandero
why would I want to
I would have to
be delusional
in delightful
or arresting
ways and what
I cannot tell you
I would be
compelled to
blurt out finally
in the most
inexplicable words
every day what
I dreamt for
every night

Ringing Valentine

Like a huge bell
thrown into the Grand
Canyon and bouncing
around hundreds of
times before it completely
shatters and comes to
several kinds of rest
it’s crisp outside
but if you’re in the sun
it’s perfectly hot and
cold in different places
on your body
that bell

Somehow 90's Valentine

To use my phone
early tomorrow morning
you stay overnight
but sleep in and miss
the time window and
so you have to stay over
that night too
but sleep in again
and every day thereafter
you manage to stay
we laugh and eat and
walk around the lake
or go for coffee
argue and read
as if this was the life
I wanted as we did

Fabulous Valentine

Today’s real knowledge
is tomorrow’s fairytale
so I must tell you quickly
about today before
it is no more
it’s no fable though
permeated with magic
as you already know
what happens inside
the pomegranate tree
and the orange tree
what the clouds are saying
to me as they slow
the magic down
to intolerable levels
this lovely day
how the sun runs through
my veins and down
the street searching
to tell you about it still

The Comforting Chilliness of the Night Valentine

An orange before its time
is yellow and before that
green as a lime
how did they go on
growing past the lemon stage
the first ones who had
the crazy idea to be sweet

Advent Valentine

Everything’s more formal
as darkness descends
the diplomacy of disinterest
must also take its place
while everyone stands and waits
until he’s seated
slowly into his throne
thoughts go off like birds
into the west
but the feelings stay behind
unborn on the shore
they are all
that keep us on the earth