Noir Valentine

He likes to wrap himself
around my ankles
to prevent me
from getting up out of bed
he curls and whispers
it really isn’t worth it
no one will mind your
inexplicable absence
lie back here and hold me
tell me what you were dreaming
with such a smile on your face
I can’t sleep for the pleasure
of watching you sleep
I feel like a spy
on the subway of love
stalked by a private eye 

Credo Valentine

That the earth has always been a virgin
we ourselves leaving innocence behind
constant hunter-gatherers of happiness
that the earth has always been radiant
favorite of the sun doted on by the moon
that the earth’s grandfather was courage
and her grandmother the tiniest thing
that before the earth was this earth
it was just a ruddy flower
at the edge of a precarious whim
that after the earth is this earth
it will all turn inside out
the light will be everywhere
so nothing will be hidden
it will happen all of a sudden

Still Valentine

In the monastery of old age
where one is cloistered hard
by blindness and stiff rage
in the monastery of the mind
where one remains celibate
to all but one idea
in the monastery of embrace
where one returns to the medieval
sources of harmony and order
in the garden of the monkish mind
locked away as we are in the skull
of each individual cell
even after all the dark woods
we’ve been through there’s still
something inviolate about humankind

Twilight Valentine

Years ago a mayfly fluttered
lighting on my knee
emerald green wings holding
a tiny green person prisoner
between them staring at me
I remained immobile silent
as it began to sing strangely
a kind of hip-hop symphony
avant le lettre I swear
I had no idea what it meant
and told no one for years
who would believe it anyway
that to me a white man in a monastery
with absolutely no musical talent
the spirit of rap appeared in 1963

Night Garden Valentine

In the night garden
voices grow long
shadow flowers
the wind won’t
let stay in one
place tossed
about the dark
yard carried along
in the night garden
I gathered a harvest
of light years still
smelling like carrots
just pulled from the ground
remember when you dangled
a bunch of them between my legs
just as the picture was snapped

Penetrative Valentine

In thinking itself we have a bridge
back to the true spiritual world
from which thinking has estranged us
now we can think our own thoughts
once we’ve learned to think
not emotions posing as thoughts
not perceptions or opinions
but a thinking that penetrates
to a full awareness of itself
as an intensely spiritual experience
and conversation with all
that surrounds and contains us
which is always present
and from which we no longer
need to exclude ourselves
if we would be intimate with gods again

Mephisto’s Valentine

Things I would change
about myself next time
do not include you in fact
you’re the only part of me
I wouldn’t rearrange without
hesitation no I’m thinking more
about not being courageous enough
not calling me on my bluff
we all maintain a certain persona
behind which the real self
beats like a prisoner on the glass
I would change the terms
of my agreement with Mephisto
let him serve here the power of love
and we will serve him forever after

Directionless Valentine

In the west of my mind
I live in fear of forgetting
the most important thing
while in the east I have
compassion for my forgetting
in the south I remember
you have no idea how much
but keep going until the islands
avoiding the north side of my brain
with its penchant for snowy nights
whirling in every direction
thus am I drawn and quartered
to the heights and to the depths
trying to fit this square world
into this soft round head

Iris Blooming in the Woods Valentine

We headed north to catch
spring  come to the mountains
following the dark hull of a great
thundercloud always just ahead
climbing like a rollercoaster
to get to the high mesas
but when we looked around
by then the sky had cleared
and vast empty forested hills
went on for miles in all directions
we seemed to be going back in time
and yet everything had been replaced
where has the mountain gone meanwhile
the mountain of our memory
how long has the wildness been gone
into the wildness of memory

Crocus Valentine

In my old age
I imagine myself
poking around
the yard searching
for the first crocus
imaginary crocus
here in the desert
while you in the north
prolong your blizzards
here the great man-like cacti
put flowers all over their heads
semaphoring spring to one another
I have traded the endless winters
of my childhood for the long
hot summers of my youth
years of shame and joy

Theory of Colors Valentine

Things are either black and white
good or bad for some people
they forget about all the colors
in between but isn’t it medieval
not to say adolescent to ignore
where most of us live dreaming
while we’re awake and trying
to wake up in our dreams
for example I dreamt Nietzsche
was the reincarnated Judas Iscariot
because of something deeply similar
in their pain and sense of betrayal
each ushering in a new age
one ready to be the first martyr
the other ready to be the last

Unhealthy Valentine

When thinking becomes unhinged
or has it always been by degrees
what are the signs and symptoms
by which we can mark the disease
in progress in world earth patient
perhaps complicit in its own betrayal
it all depends what meaning’s meant
I have in mind an old portrayal
when virtue was considered moral
what leeches needles little green pill
will pull the crazy notions from the soul
and prove that thinking is our only tool
and that the first healthy thought
must be awareness of our own
crying need for intervention

After Valentine

The method of death
I had chosen
as we all must chose
our poison
remained a mystery
to me until the end
I think I chose life to kill me
or I made certain
arrangements with
unforeseeable events
not to show up as planned
in the end the method
doesn’t really matter
the point is we come here to die
and only learn why after

Behind the Rain Valentine

Even the dead things
look better rained on
the bare fields richer
the empty streets shinier
catching all the lights
and always that sense of relief
like something being forgiven
a small error or a great sin
depending on the wind
and the vindictiveness of the lightning
that what has risen up to heaven
as a gift has been turned back
creating a certain sorrow
the earth weeps with the rejection
those tears its resurrection

Tree’s Valentine

After it rained this morning
I detected a hummingbird
had built a nest in my head
I meant to say tree
the one they call chaste
while mine decidedly
isn’t up for it anymore
but the lost custody of my eyes
everywhere like rain
means I haven’t lost all desire
nor given up entirely on beauty
which must bleed through
and that I celebrate the idea
of a hummingbird resting
in its nest at the center of my brain
exactly the way I celebrate you

Only Valentine

Love is the only word
in a sentence that
can remain ambiguous
despite the clarity
all around it the clusters
of simpler word-sounds
that accompany a face
or hand that word
the scientists and scholars
have finally abandoned as
unclassifiable whose thousand
theories only prove
they don’t really grasp it
the closest they’ve come
is ‘joy in life’ or as one
said feebly ‘light’

Corner Valentine

If you get into a tight corner
call and we can get together
and discuss how you knew
though you didn’t want to
how it would all work out
you knew and had no doubt
but knowingly deliberately
threw yourself into it frantically
but only on the inside
while calm covered the outside
like evening coming down
life always wears a frown
while inside dreams unwind
the pretense love is kind

Body’s Valentine

To be confined
to a body for
a certain period
is a hard time
for all of us let’s
admit it not
that we can’t
make the best
of it while we
remember the long
hauls back and
forth before the soul
could fly on its own
we treat life lightly
if we ever think
we’re alone
but the body
is the closest we
ever come to alone

Lunch Valentine

Under every paunch
there’s still a size 30
a flat part still there
the residue of youth’s beauty
about to depart completely
not that this causes me worry
Goethe teaches the leaves are
the flowers in waiting the flowers
are the seeds being formed
always the outer is discarded
to reveal another life inside
and inside that and so on
so much depends upon the nutrition
both of the caterpillar and the soul
which just talking about it
makes me hungry as hell 

Camera Ready Valentine

A great day for weeding
and for nose-scratching
and for catching up on my ogling
and rubbernecking letting go
of my blank staring and all
the visual arts I’ve been neglecting
too often I treat the world
as if it were only a body
so preoccupied with my own
I forget there must be someone else
traveling alongside objectively speaking
that the body is only a selfie itself
we took and keep updating or not
but who’s the idea behind the camera
he’s the one I want to talk to today
that one crouching behind the weeds

Marital Valentine

Perhaps technology aspires to become
as prolific and sublime as nature
in all its myriad forms and features
slowly designing to replace
a human future with
the frozen comfort
of manufactured expectations
technology is to materialism
what spirituality used to be to nature
the primary expression of
this is my thesis he said though
I’m not sticking to it which was
of course her whole antithesis
until they finally married
and had a little synthesis

Anonymous Valentine

Having filled the world with books
now we can fill the clouds with texts
the only anonymous thing left is God
there is a file on everything
the names of the thieves are nailed
to the walls of governments
awaiting canonization
we’re like siblings fighting
while our mother lies dying
it’s September in the calendar
of the soul when the grapes
perfect their color and the caterpillar
disrobes revealing a gold locket
which when you open it
flies forth your soul

Refugee’s Valentine

What do a sense of efficacy
so vital to one’s sanity
and its shadow sense
of utter helplessness
have to do with a sparrow
flown too soon from its quiet nest
into the hard reality of cement
the only burial my solemnness
could handle I took to the compost
and laid in a yellow hollow
of hollyhock leaves remembering
all over the world this morning
there are refugees like these
whose parents sit on the line
watching and mourning

Darker Valentine

What the Manicheans knew
was that the shadow of the tree
is the tree’s death always
standing alongside defending
the tree from other deaths
not its own it’s what’s left
after the light is trapped and held
by a body or a tree
and how the darkness is a door
the only safe door back
into the light which for them
always meant the great sun god
who like a child bent down
to rescue his dark brother
a cinder among the stars

April Valentine

If thinking is a seed
buried in the brain
a seed formed by
an invisible flower
fallen into the soil
of human bodies
lying dormant there
through the harsh winters
of endless willfulness
then spring is the first free thing
trying to think its own thoughts
go its own way
up from the seven conditions
of deadness I form let’s say
the living thoughts that form me

Distant Valentine

One Sunday far away
very very very very
don’t pay it any mind
what a  mockingbird can say
the world can only repeat itself
until it comes again
to a certain day
you had perfected
a piercing timbre
so the air shivered
unpolished silver
from hierarchies of song
you descended to treetops
the operatic was born
the heart knelt down

Doting Valentine

The mind is an eye
that sees itself
though sometimes
it must turn away
it cannot look
too long at what
it sees prefers
to believe rather
than perceive
to dote on itself
to linger over
nothing and strangely
finally imagine love
at last something
simpler than itself

Leaving It Valentine

I am so dissatisfied with myself
and yet that seems the perfect place to be
and to come agonizingly to the awareness
that all this is of our own doing
and that we must stop our damn blaming
and thinking enviously of others
comparing and contrasting
and yet it’s like a process of elimination
and each is left alone disagreeing
with the majority who are gone
about how to continue on
a new path of understanding
to leave it to the world
to take care of us while
we take care of the world

Part Valentine

The part of me
that pretends to be
what I would be
but am not yet
that healthy inadequacy
as a stage of me
how the solution of a problem
becomes another problem
not readily apparent
but I still want to learn how
to build a quiet space
grow things there
roses perhaps
so I can imagine it
when I can’t get there

No Fool’s Valentine

Aesthetically the flowers
had to come first
merely as a means
of running up against death
and being overcome by winter
it was the bees who thought of the seed
a container in which a secret life
could escape death’s notice
by assuming the appearance of death
who is such a brilliant materialist
I mean the whole idea of snow
when ice was already amazing
filled as it is with the stillness of death
laying down all the forms of flowers

Semi-Retired Valentine

Bullied by sparrows from my own yard
which is really their intimate sphere
and I the squatter carpetbagger
whose first act upon arrival
was to expel the pigeons
shitting history from the rafters
of time above the patio
and to set out woven chairs
with cushions and small tables
as if this was not a struggle
between life and death
as it obviously is for the sparrows
actually for all us birds these days
now we’ve agreed there
are only two realities
the real one and the one
we keep making up

I Forgot To Remind You Valentine

These bodies that are built to last
wholly out of past kindnesses
which being alive live on
into the armature of a curve
or the hollow of a neck
but to what use put
one body building another
a hut to camp in
before returning to the stars
with our specimens of nymphs
and sylphs and salamanders
children of a cosmic dream
who drove cars and had jobs
who beat rugs and slept poorly
who kept forgetting their home

Floating Valentine

An accommodation is made
an adjustment for death the father
like a wheelchair ramp
or a donkey to carry you
to where you could float
above the center of the world
as proof death is the surest way
to resurrection and then on
to the ascension and to joy
in the evolution of each day
and night an exception
is made a pause between
the beach and the breath
now when you run out of body
not a moment is lost before
someone says you’re welcome

Suffering Valentine

Now I see I could have done
any number of things with my love
is there anything more flexible
than the human being
yet so slow to reverse course
when heading toward an abyss
think how many close calls
there are in a single day
you’d think we’d get used
to anxiety and desperation
but that love keeps coming back
what does it want love
to be tied to a post and whipped
yet what beautiful thing
has not come from great suffering

Happy Deathday Valentine (Easter 2016)

In the end we laughed at the idea
that a god could come to earth
and where exactly does he come from
or what difference has it made
that one dwelt amongst us
first as a child reared in antiquity
then as a man transitioning
to a god baptized by a God
he called his Father his Beloved
all of which grows more
mythopoetic every year
to us confirmed materialists
who keep trying to commodify
the truth and love and freedom

Partial Lunar Despair Valentine

How long do you think
that unit will last you ask
it’s like your old jalopy
or either of us I say
who knows if it
won’t soldier on
for another thirty years
just replacing parts
and patching leaks
is this how the soul works
slowly running down
always under repair
or does the spirit
finally rescue it
from endless despair