Unmoving Valentine

She's a loner outdoor cat
Whether it's cold or hot
But when I go out into her world
She runs to sit in my lap
Weaned too early and
Thrown out in the alley
Her trust was broken in two
But she sits and stares at me
With ambivalent adoration
Lover and betrayer her eyes say
Begging a simple question
Who are you for me to love
Her wisdom is the silence of a monk
My only purpose is not to move

World's Valentine

Happiness is the gift of the gods
But the suffering is of our own devising
Let me count the days and ways
Ravaging our goodness until it's
Almost gone and the fever breaks
On one side or the other
Happiness is the suffering of the gods
When they damp bliss down
To all the world can stand
When suffering comes to meet it
Without their infusions of joy
Often arriving at the last minute
The world would not be worth it
Nor we worthy of the world

There Are Only Second Chances Valentine

If theatre alone and music
Don't prove reincarnation
The embodiment of someone
Else and yet still you
How may we take on
Someone's deepest desire
To suffer the spectacle of oneself
And overcome the desire
To be anyone but oneself
Friends and family are almost
Everything except for the freedom
To be one's so-called self
Whatever that may be

40th Year Valentine

When farmers write poems
And children paint sunrises
Something happens in the valleys
Where the ice never came
The young and old of the people
Who lived here long ago
Feel they have awakened
And start to stir in the creek-beds
And the empty snowy fields
Take on the color of homecoming
The steep cliffs are burnished
Again with remembered wonder
From what the stones have suffered
Becoming a spirit in the trees
Becoming a glow in the eyes
Of the families who have gathered

One Day Valentine

One day frantically searching the skies
For my wayward sense of humor
I happened on a cloudy planet
Where a gloomy forest lived
Without ornament or wit
I could only walk three trees away
But when I flew up above it
I could easily see it covered
The whole circumference of that star
Orbiting there night and day
For centuries without the sun
To break the fog illuminate
Its lifting branches so completely
Was it lost in sorrow and despair

Roaches Valentine

I went to the store for one special item
And came back with ten other things
Forgetting what I was sent for
But unwilling to return
In the middle of the night
I'd found a cockroach in the kitchen
But when I got back with the swatter
It had already escaped
I figured I needed some roach motels
Where it could safely sleep
The way it reminded me of my sins
As soon as I awake
The part of me I want to remove
But unconsciously love to keep

Into Our Hands Valentine

Our lives are trembling hands
Placed into the wounds of the world
But proof's not necessarily belief
Where no proof's needed
Evidence of torture and murder
But the killer goes uncaught
And the body we examine
With tentative fingers
Feels like touching stone
That is still suffering
Its dissolution into light and air
As if the dying would go on and on
The crime unsolved
Until the wounds release the hand
And place it on the beating heart

In Time Is Triumph Valentine

The future is what moves us forward
While leaving us behind creating time
The reflection of a rhythmic repetition
Of a music stilled to the drone
Of the past pushing against it
Time devouring the eternal
Which is why it doesn't last
Whatever's outside time
Arrives inevitably inside it
What we have in the common season
The vortex of the stars and sun
Settling into the form
Of so many possible futures
Out of so many impossible pasts

Hidden Valentine

Who reads the hidden histories
Of what didn't happen
But might have and almost did
So much more voluminous
Than what squeaks through
And actually occurs
It's like there's a tiny pin-hole
Into which many vistas
Are crowding but only one
Breaks through speculation
One particular grain of sand
Among the trophies of the real
While all the others wait their turn
Until finally there is nothing
That won't happen

Bedtime Valentine

In the time before records were kept
For which no shards or jewelry are found
Absolutely no physical evidence
Emerges from its sifted sands
Of what only existed in the mind
Of a great sorcerer and a little girl
Or so the scribes translated it
Who found themselves together
In a deep forest one day
Writing up a storm
You have to be a child
To really understand the story
To hear it many many times
And slowly build its memory

The House of Crickets Valentine

In the hard heat crickets creep in
Under the door searching for water
And crumbs I drop on the floor
Which means soon enough
The house is full of crickets
Who make me their king
And teach me how to croak
Applause at orchestras
Of saws cutting strings
I grow thin delicate legs
Angled like safety-pins for leaps
But they keep me enthroned
As they facet my eyes
So I can see the world like them

Desending and Ascending Valentine

The long headaches of wisdom
For which love is the medicine
The churches are wrong
The body isn't the problem
Poor slave framed
For his master's deeds
As if it was your own
And not a temporary loan
A gift of elemental magic
Which appears and disappears
Yet only through it can we learn
How to bring light down into our senses
And give them their ascension

Present Valentine

My thoughts are mostly filler
Foam pellets engulfing
Some bubble-wrapped idea
I am ripping to unravel
Who knows what
Like I know you
My half-solved mystery
My heart's killer
Who saves my life
On a daily basis and this
Great box just sitting there
Ready to be opened
I can't go on like this

Inherited Valentine

What the father lost or squandered
What started as a lark he said
His son would rescue and restore
Freely he would bring a freedom
His father could only imagine feeling
Watching over his son
And she is also watching
Because he is also her son
She who could comfort God
And know when to take his hand
Was she too close
And the father too distant
Except she knew how to let him go
How the goodness she had given him
Would only grow and grow

Nothing But Grace Valentine

I've got to send my double to the moon
For re-education and re-deployment
He's disobedient and insubordinate
He bullies me with scorn
And cutting contempt
When I try to reason him to calm
When he cries on my shoulder
Repeating he's a failure
And we both break down
In sobs and laughter
I keep telling him the same
Old story over and over
The one about the lame blind man
Who had no one to help him to the pool

Blue Bird's Valentine

Whatever is happiness on earth
But listening to our angel
And doing the work we love
Whatever the work
Throwing yourself into the little
Tasks and the major mistakes equally
Not just for the exhilaration
Of accomplishment you feel
But don't trust too much
But out of a thinking will
That longs to see the totality
Of what's really going on
To become a scientist of happiness
And pick its feathers and its bones

 

Reappearing Valentine

Warmed-up leftovers suffice

For heaven's last meal

Even more delicious

The next day on earth

Of course ravenous helps

The wolf soul descend

On the sleeping infant

You've grown into again

It must be this helplessness

You love to come back to

Always crying out to be cared for

Free of all guilt and shame

And more beautiful than ever

Hearing your name

Chore-time Valentine

I spent the morning polishing my karma

Then I sketched out a new kind of hibiscus

One that only blooms on the coldest nights

Then I thrashed roomsful of dishes

In alphabetical order and dusted

Off my two tympanum so the voices

Could become more orchestral

The music more insistent

Then I took a long hot shower

So by nap-time I was wiped

And I could drowse like a heavy baby

My circumference moving all the way to Mars

My center-point still you

Words For It Valentine

Fortunately for us all things

Are in service to our minds

There's no other word for it

The only other word is love

Its activation and response

Here at the limits of abstraction

One way or another we're all

Watching one another's thoughts

Trying to figure one another out

It's not enough words carry meaning

They must become effective in themselves

And learn to work on us again

Just by being spoken

As when we were children

And believed everything they said

Deserted Valentine

'Summery' and intense summer

Are our only two seasons now

Where once a great inland sea

Fed forests with melting ice

Leaving us various cacti and sand

Ready to burst into flames

Yet here we build our homes

Drawn to suffer in the warmth

To wait for a few cool days

And nights when we can open

Our windows and doors

And climb the path to the ruins

To feel the breeze from then

And touch the snowy moon

Circle Time Valentine

In my favorite picture that remains of you

You have your back to the camera

Sitting in a lawn chair reading

While in front of you a vast green

Rolling landscape of lakes and hills

Without trees or people lies

It's late spring-early summer

Before everything turns brown

When heaven still seems

A part of the earth though leaving

And you're still reading it the story

Of your life your head

Bent to the words in wonder

While we old children listen in

Emergencies in Heaven Valentine

If the body is a sacred animal

The soul is slowly eating away

If the fires of so-called love

Burn everything to the ground

Does it go on eating

And planning suppers

Only the fittest can survive heaven

And then move on to a true paradise

Where they are put to work

Pulling burrs out of a silk garment

In the great flat fields of light

From which they grind their flour

Simple farmers and retired kings

Unrequited queens sipping wine

After Osip (from the English) Valentine

Cautious but called

A single fruit falls

In the silent forest

Setting it singing

 

Until the Orioles come

To amaze the branches

With a new tuning

Out of lost aspirations

 

It doesn't matter about sadness anymore

Tears are so transparent and leaf-like

You've mistaken it for nature

 

But it won't protect your heart

It will still have to sing and tremble

It will still be part of the future

Perseid Shower Valentine

I must be a Greek or ancient Egyptian
The way the gods have infiltrated me
They seem to be giving up on nature
Turning all their attention on us
Until the suspense is killing me
As they say the temporarily dead
Who have a way of scolding me
With just a smiling glance
In my general direction
Just knowing they are there
Is enough to calm me down
Just seeing they're returning
Their masterpiece undone

Serving Valentine

You gods who play the long game

Who were part of the early planning

And stay loyal to your name

Great creatures who have no guilt

Or shame who work your will

Tirelessly in every place and time

For whom our mountains and our seas

Are poor reminders of your rhymes

And starry rhythmic breathing

Like you I just want to endure

And stay pissed just a little

Learn to love the nothingness

And the somethingness equally

Unassigned unknown none

The Other Last Thing Valentine

That the spirit would have no obstacles
They chose the purest girls
To sit above the noxious fumes
So the god's voice could come through
Crackly like on an old radio
While we scribes quickly wrote down
Those words immediately passed on
To the highest interpretive authorities
But today everyone's a prophet
Of their own opinions and rewards
Seduced by their own perfume
No one to reveal the future
So it can be decoded
And the past avoided

What's Not To Worship Valentine

Whatever's done to gold
Say this day or your eyes
Smelted with silver
Whatever's done to silver
So it descends from clouds
Unavoidably a river
A moon-lit crossing
Running through the ground
Whatever's done to travel
So it becomes this wandering
I still want to keep going
Hope is the last body we'll ever have to wear
Though it's too loose and itches
You look as beautiful as ever

Reading Sappho While Running Errands Valentine

Did you come back exhausted
From the crowded stores of life
With nothing in your hands
Did you sample a few grapes
And run your sticky fingers
Over an old book or two
Did you argue with the clerk
About the exorbitance of silk
Discarding several dresses
With a flick of your gold wrist
Was your laughter haughty and lewd
When you saw your lover with another
Did you get to the part
Where she hurls her heart
At Aphrodite's feet

Out-gardened Valentine

My small mind has effectively been replaced
By a wide heaven of close-knit dandelions
Sheep-white balls of seeds and
Bright gold turned-up faces
Together basking in the sun
I tried to root them out
While they were young and
I was strong enough
To spread new grass seed
Over them at just the right
Spring shade of moon
The day after a rain
When everything
Is possible

The Mystery of In and Out Valentine

If I look around me
Everything keeps to its given place
But if I look inside me
Things are always moving about
Interpenetrating one another
Forming and dissolving
A dream world in which
I sometimes feel I'm waking
Where colors and sounds
Reveal themselves as languages
I'm learning to speak and read
While outside here in the sun
I enjoy the illusion of sitting alone
Inside I'm thronged with beings
Who call me by my real name

Arts and Crafts Valentine

If I organize my thoughts

And throw them down like clay

On a wheel or knit them

Together into a garment

Or shape them into a vessel

If I turn them on a lathe

And sand them down to gleaming

Forming them into a figure

Stain and polish it

And then wrap it as a gift

To whom can I send it

Who will drink from my crooked cup

Who will wear my ragged shawl

Who will ride my prancing horse

God Fishing Valentine

Alert but helpless as a goldfish

In the bowl of a dazzling day

I am content but wish

For company sometimes

To swim among my fellows

In some intimate pond

But that was not to be my fate

The fascination of a child

Turned out to be my part

Who only wanted greater things for me

When he flushed me

Down the toilet and then cried

To find me gone

Active Waiting Valentine

Now we have a good system in place

By which 'Unknown' can call

And leave not a word for us

But we know very well

He'll just call back later

So we can get to know him

And watch him record

The broken-up message

We're listening to right now

At three in the darkness

When we call him back

Just to hear his voice

Detect in it the signal

Of his coming soon

Waiting Valentine

While I was waiting for you to wake up
Though you're probably just laying there
Scrolling through your phone and dozing
Warm and sweet under the covers
While a small brown leaf
Is twirling from a spider's thread
Someone's world coming to an end
They don't believe you will ever get up
That eventually you'll come and kiss
My cheek and life will begin again
They've foolishly given up on you
The revelation of your love
The twirling of a leaf
Their whole religion

Science Fiction Valentine

If we could visit the communities on Mars

If we could see what they envision

The incoming and the outgoing of souls

The warring cities and the peaceful towns

All rather medieval when not plain evil

If we could explore their landfills

And climb their latest constructions

Learn if they've solved

The problem of cleverness

And if they teach you how to live

Once you get there

 

Birthday Valentine

A knock on the roof
At four o'clock
And a hundred and four
Degrees in the afternoon
I was dreaming of burnt-up rivers
There was nothing mystical
About it for a change
My prayer was easy-peasy
In return for letting me
Live just a little longer
Than might otherwise be
Prefigured in the plan
To see that face to hear that voice
I promise to go quietly in time

Natural Valentine

Even though the beauty of the world

Cannot save us now it stands

In speechless wonder

As a perennial encouragement

To us to save ourselves

Its glories and its sufferings

Offer us pictures of our past

Mountains and rivers we once were

And cast off in our long journeys

Toward affection and remorse

In it everything we've been and done

Returns to be reconciled and owned

The last vestige of a promise we made

To become beautiful ourselves

Thoughtful Valentine

Do I exercise my thoughts enough
Do I think about my thinking
Is it too automatic and watery
Do I have any succinct ideas
About where they originate
These questions themselves
Or what thoughts are worth thinking
And what thoughts decide their value

A piece of music or a painting

Can come close or a death observed

From the safety of my thoughts

Let me go in your stead

Let me bury my I in your you

Whose thoughts awake the dead

Phantom Valentine

One last grown-up butterfly
My phantom in the yard
With time running out
As quickly as it rushes in
Frantic beauty floating
Searching for a place to stay
While space just stands there
Patiently waiting to be filled
With leaves and sunlight
Wings of assembled dust
That flutter back and forth
Like a grieving mother
Achieving her composure
When she finally comes to rest

Called Valentine

I had a mandate and a mission
A divine commission
But I misplaced it on the way
To some forgotten destination
Now life is my vocation
How to keep them each alive
Body soul and spirit
Even when the soul
Tries to kill the body
And the body scorns the spirit
So needy for the inspiration
And good company
Of other bodies souls
And spirits

Freedom Valentine

The flowers of the palm trees
Are falling like snow in the sun
The out-breath is always dying
To take in again its life
What connects the leaves to the body
Must be some idea of a seed
High in the palm tree a man
Hacking at his mind with a saw
Forcing the tree upward
The dead limbs falling away
He shouts to the one below
Leave me here and let me sway
There's a fragrance coming in from the sea
Enough to live on forever

Wind-Rung Bell Valentine

Sometimes my cat's tail accidentally
Rings that little rusted bell otherwise
You can only hear it when the wind
Reaches a certain degree of emotion
That it pushes back and cries out
So meekly so sweetly
It begs for mercy shameless
As a child singing
Keep me around
I can sing for you
Whenever you want
I will bring your youth
Back to you reborn
Before you die

To a Spy in Heaven Valentine

I want my entelechy to speak
To your entelechy and say
Thank you for contacting me
I know how busy you are
But I need a big favor
Something only you can do
Though I know how difficult
It can be to get a message through
Even the night couriers are slow
But could you please tell your friend
Your current curious manifestation
To keep searching don't relent
I too am a spy of the soul
And will know him when I see him

Visiting Valentine

What if the pregnant Mary came to me

Would the child quicken in my throat

Or strike me blind and speechless

Or would she put me at my ease

Sit me down and take my hands

Into her comprehending hands

Where nothing need be said

Everything known everything forgotten

Everything given everything taken away

Darkness would gather around us

And our hearts would break

And mend and break again

Until the last sun would wake us

Why Valentine

It's like being in a shooting gallery
Or would you rather have a real war
Like the sandy trenches of Samothrace
With spears flying or when
The arrow was invented
At the same moment all over the earth
Born to be a bullet in the head
Ultimately I take a positive view
Of the end why
Would you chose not to love
Deny
What's obviously right there
Not say a prayer

Fevered Valentine

The hands of the gods are tied

Behind their backs when it comes

To directly intervening in our affairs

Or offering some advice if not petitioned

In the stern summer we can feel

Their gazing on our backs

Their lightening starting fires

In the spring-abandoned hills

Approaching our locked doors

One disaster so a worse

Doesn't have to happen

But still at night asleep

They soothe our feet with their hands

They cool our fevered brows

Whether Valentine

Wasn't Copperfield correct

Whether we will live on our ideals

The only route to survival

Or flounder in appearances

Let's get serious and sublime

For once it's like those men

And women who built the pyramids

Laborious stone on stone

We're still speculating how

The seriousness of suffering

Erects monuments to the sublime

What the mind is capable of

The body performs

The landscape replaces its castle

Pedagogical Valentine

A shy smart-aleck I was back then
A phrase derived from a con man
Who exposed an evil prison system
Another kind of Alexander
'Defender of Humanity'
One crying out in the classroom
Feasting on figs and honey
'This is all hogwash'
A cursed science
And a lost religion
We came to get baptized
In water and fire
To remember our errors
And be changed by them

Schooled Valentine

Things do or don't add up

But there's always that subtraction

At the end of the column of want

Sitting on my lap she likes

To reach up and place her paw

On my throat what desiring

Her claws sheathed her eyes pleading

Now I know I'll be back

I want to leave this hurried note

For my future eyes to find

Today it was summer here once again

So as usual we left the earth

In the schools of heaven

We were yearning to return

Summer Valentine

We have to look up steadily

To see the clouds gathering

And the smoke in the air

That look like an X-ray of teeth

Only three left in the lower jaw

And looming brightly over there

A continent of snowy lakes

Thawing in the desert sun

Still bucolic and amazing

To get past the blue veil

Into the outer darkness of things

To see nowhere

There are not stars

Nowhere the way is not lit

Zurich Valentine

There's nothing imagined in a photo

Not the real Lake Lucerne I imagined

We crossed to get to the 15th century

So cold I had to keep walking

Or temporarily freeze in place

On the shore the old churches of desire

And a story-book of ghosts waiting for us

But we keep moving snapping

Pictures of what we would soon forget

And have to re-imagine years later

Through the memory of these pictures

Each one a calendar shot

And yes we were actually there

What felt like coming back   

To You In Care of Persephone Valentine

I wanted to write to you today
But I've forgotten your name
And now you have no address
Though I think you'd remember me
After a few easy reminders
What's interesting about forgetting
Things is where they go
Into the meantime world
But I want to thank you anyway
For truly stirring me
With your words and example
What's so moving about memory
She who lives in the shadows
Is how she seizes her moment to return

All Crime Is About Revenge Valentine

That good may grow in me

Deliver me from the evil one

I thirst for my daily bread

But doubt my debt

To the I of the world

Will ever get repaid

I cling to the four directions

To what's above and below

To what's in front and behind

My heart is either bowing

Or dancing I can't tell which

Or where I am sometimes

In the calendar of my lives

Inside and all around you

Your kingdom come

Call From None Valentine

He fulfilled the perennial fantasy

We all have of running far away

Of throwing ourselves into the elements

Proving we could go back

To our life among the winter trees

The deft runners in the darkness

Close to the slightest shift of breeze

So no one would know they're there

But a shameful desire to retaliate

To return the hurt that hurt you

Secretly fueled your amazing will

What you were really running from

The mushroom in the forest

Blooming where no one sees him

Biographical Valentine

We work with time
Not knowing how much
There is of it personally
While the world looks
Younger than we know
Though it's dying and a new earth
Is always creeping into being
We work with pictures
Sketches and water colors
Then we lay down the bricks
And decorate the walls
We worked with words once
But came to find them wanting
So now we work with silence

Chris's Valentine

Forced into felonies to survive

In a self-imposed exile

You abandoned all human warmth

And what you can't talk about

Must have been horrific

Shame is the best jailer

To be dead and not yet dead

Safely sleeping in your grave

Yet stealing to stay alive

Which only adds to the cold

I knew someone like you once

Who felt his spirit crushed

Under the knee of the world

Fresh out of second chances

Uncle Tony's Valentine

We're still wanting to get
Directions to that hidden falls
Uncle Tony took us to that once
If we only knew him anymore
And besides it's miles away
But whenever I think of him
I think of that falls that day
The long hot drive on dirt roads
All the windows open
To turn a corner and see it
The summer you were ten
The white water plunging from the rocks
So we could stand under it
And have our sins absolved

Decoded Valentine

In the ruined graveyard of words

I pass through on my way

To the shining beach of words

I learned their alphabet

By running my blind fingers

Over the names and numbers

So when I reached the sand

I could read whole sentences

Of a language I was learning

But couldn't understand

One day I put a stone and a wave

Together in the same word

And broke the code

No longer was the world absurd

Nowhere Else Valentine

Memory doesn't use the Dewey Decimal System

Or some obtuse algorithm

It is not an instrument of the state

It's more an act of magic

That appears nowhere else

In the world an image

Comes up on an inner screen

Triggered by some taste or touch

Body memories soul memories

That night on the beach

What if we lived in the future

As much as we live in the past

And knew once done

Nothing is forgotten but returns 

My Book of Names Valentine

I wish now I had written down

In one book all the names

Of the people I've met over time

So that I could read them to you

Some names actually have faces

And can speak for themselves

Not by my remembering them

But by a power of their own

Appear before me so I can ask

For their contrition their forgiveness

Now it's clear we all signed

These pages and pages of names

Where I searched and searched

And finally placed my own

Ahistorical Valentine

We made music

Before we spoke

We danced and broke down

Into song we said

Love before we fought

Ecstasy against despair

We were done with time

All we needed was the space

Infinite and ever-churning

To call home this lostness

You still keep the photo folded

Of a horse in your pocket

Your pride is as long as your hair

Still cantering toward the future

Faced Valentine

O all the ways of saying sorry
Mea culpa please forgive me
I prefer je suis desole
I am desolated
My first translation
Or better I have devastated myself
The second heaven of despair
The sorrow of demonic stars
I have exaggerated myself
Je suis desole
What else can I say
The wind has taken my will
I am slowly blown to pieces
That come to rest on your faces

Red Valentine

All the places red shows up
Something brilliant is being born
That stops us in our tracks
Like a piercing cry
Blood or fire or rose
The fire of the roses
Burning down the mountain
Outside our window now
Do you know how wicked you are
The fire asks the rose
How pure how driven

Can you even imagine
How much I've loved you
Rose asks of the raging fire

Kept Valentine

Every night because I love them

I water the parched flowers

Of my soul I drench them

With a flood of dreams

So by morning they stand up tall

Ready to bloom and bear their seeds

But by noon they limp along

The desert sun beats them down

If I didn't come to rescue them

In a week they'd all be gone

Why keep this little plot of leaves

Transplanted from a kinder world

Where they belonged and flourished

Always longing to return

Returning Valentine

Every day on the rays
Of the sunlight reflecting
On the earth we send out
Our wishes and intentions
Seeing the little things we do
To solve our problems
Are weak and ineffective
We let them go like balloons
Out into the reaches
Of a higher understanding
And then we wait so long
Sometimes we forget the question
Until a full moon rises in us
Illuminating the way back to the sun

Legal Valentine

We keep rushing back

Into a cul-de-sac

Of disease and disruption

All with the best and worst intentions

Each country fears its friends

Are few and each person ends up

Becoming someone else

If they live long enough

We are all our own uncertain species

Each one relevant and indispensable

So what if we made a law of kindness

How many would get convicted

Imprisoned in tiny cells

How many would get forgiven

Verdin's Valentine

A wee verdin in the garden

Weaving like a bobbin

My attention to the pattern

Of four women on the horizon

Like that needle-point you worked

Of the seasons where did it end up

From here it's hard to tell

If the women are ascending

Or being swallowed by the hill

Urgently rushing toward me

Or just standing in tableau

The verdin like a thread

Pulls me steadily along

As I go out to meet you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personal Valentine

Thinking makes us aware

That it is nothing without feeling

And that unless you will every moment

Thinking is just sensation

The will makes thinking conscious

Of its origin and destination

While feeling seems the journey between

The traveler staring out the window

A picture looking at a picture

Out of the wedding of thinking and will

The child of feeling is born

The only really personal thing we have

Since thinking is never completely our own

And will can't always be counted on

Offered Valentine

Made up as we are

Out of many lives

Interwoven enfolded

Yet we can live only one

Life at a time moving

From place to place

This makes everything specific

And a little distracting

In our search for the overlapping

Sounds of waves of praise

Rising up from the lake

When summer begins

And another better life

Offers itself again

Escaped Valentine

You have to have enough intelligence
To comprehend the abyss
And thinking leap across it
Or you have to have enough tenderness
To follow a donkey down
Into its endless depths
And have enough dumb luck
Not to be completely broken
Smashed on the rocks below
You have to remember this
Incomplete journey back up
The other side always asking
Are we there yet wake me then
Having escaped with your life

Background Valentine

A dim chorus of sweet voices in my brain
As we wait for the soloist to appear
Who after several incarnations
Sings his heart out for three seconds
Underestimating the applause
From an audience of one
Locked in here as we are
The only way is further into
The higher reaches of thought
Into the old country of the dead
Who are raising us up
We feel them before we see them
Their obvious endlessness
And ever-present hum

Pentecost Valentine

Sooner or later
Climbing the ladder
Of time we bump
Our heads on heaven
And are thrown
Back down until
A rope is lowered
Or a pair of wings
Is carefully constructed
From threads and shards
Of past mistakes
To lift through time
And space bright
Sparks of flame

Li-Poo to Hang-Du Valentine

Baby the weeks speed ahead
While the days creep behind
They will never catch up
I would have compared
A puma to a hare
Or a snail to these turtle nights
What kind of friend
Can a month be or a year
That every day ends
And you are still not here
Perhaps I sent too brief
Directions or you've taken
The wrong train how long can I
Exist on just the speaking your name

Arjuna's Valentine

Into my empty cluttered brain
Each dawn a revelation came
A feeling I cannot explain
A sense of the deepest calm
Stirring my storm of thoughts
As I watched them come and go
And for a moment it seemed as though
I could finally know nothing
But the deepest uncertainty
And not blink an eye
I could feel the armies
Of the light behind me
I could face the loss of all
With an implacable serenity
Knowing with you I fight

Rushing Weeks of Plodding Days Valentine

I stay up late
And wake up early
At night I walk
Across the lake
Come light I hide
In the woods unworried
I wait for little
Things to accumulate
The thud of an emaciated
Flower a dripping
From the leaves
Always he feels
Just around the corner

At the Last Grave Valentine

After long fluttering in the light
And laying down of eggs such a life
Its wings battered with exhilaration
It lays down on the wet grass
Awaiting dreamfully
The undertaker ants
So all my favorite childhood
Stories are of funerals and this
Is just a prime example
Of when the dead one
Sits up in his casket
And looks around at us
As if death was done

Nothing Valentine

During the long ceremony of waves
You sat there staring at the dark
Invisible lake and then
The daily monstrance rose
With gulps of darkness
Exposing you on the beach
A creature of the light
A stone or shell from where
You are now you can turn
And look back at yourself
From the other side of the world
And still you are ground down
Even if the grinding takes
Eternity you sit and wait

Ahead Valentine

We bring flowers to our sweethearts
And our dead we plant them
Around us in pots and drifts
As if they might convince us
But we plant tomatoes in the front yard
Where the sun is best and keep
The backyard for its beautiful
Stretch of grass and one Chaste tree
Which happens to be blooming blue-
Pale-purple panicles repeat that quickly
And you've captured my mood
Thinking of all the flowers that lie ahead
Of us and all the red tomatoes torn
And eaten from the vine

Ascension Valentine

That some would like to make it so
And push us down to competing animals
Into a war of all against all
That some would like to turn it all
Into a moving drama of facts
Designed to avoid the central act
That some would like to choke off
The spring just as it begins to bubble up
Into a searching stream
That some would like to be cruel and mindless
While the rest are carried along
Yet I still have hope for mercy
That it must be boundless when it comes
If it would keep us strong

Late Arrival Valentine

Isn't the truth always a surprise
You keep looking around to find
A face hidden in a crowd of lies
Until it leaps out at you
There all along but somehow
Just arriving an unknown face
Searching for your own
Stranger's countenance
Until our eyes lock
And we smile in recognition
You made it I didn't
Think you'd come
I'm exhausted my love
Please take me home

The Judas Question Valentine

Why not just give us heaven
If you have it in your keeping
The easiest thing to do
Just heal us all at once
And we can live together again
As in the first days Father
When we played in the woods
And went fishing on your rivers
We love those who are good to us
Who never abandon us
Despite our treachery
And you are the only one left
Who could possibly tell us
Why must the good be so hard

Left Valentine

These leftover days
I never finish
Anything but prayers
Three half written
Letters and ten
Left open books
My thoughts pile
Up Like dirty
Dishes I will
Get to later
I sit outside
Afraid I'll miss
A moment of magic
These butterflies accomplish

Secret Valentine

Wisdom exalts
What love preserves
What we forgot
Keeping it a secret
From ourselves returns
The effect creeps up
On the consequence of the cause
Shocking us into remembering
That of course these words
Are just similes
For you and me
You who are so wise
And I who love you
So much

Common Valentine

Now nothing can be understood
Except in the light of you
One by one we come to the grave
And stare at the abyss
Wondering how to get across
Where some see only emptiness
And turn and walk away
Others head out for the lake
Or the mountains searching the roads
For anyone who's seen you
But now who will know you
When they see you who will
Have enough common sense

Running Valentine

I hear you so it’s good you run

I run around the house avoiding

Housework it keeps me moving

The weeks are like freight

Cars banging into one another

As the brakes are applied the

Dropped bomb is still detonating

The world is at war with itself

But who is holding a gun to our heads

If we weren’t too frightened

we could turn around and look

I am hiding and being hunted

You are running and being chased

The difference between us is miniscule

A smile is the last free act

You make me smile

Heavenly Valentine

We think of heaven as the end of pain
But if heaven's already happened
Maybe we have it turned around
And heaven merely exposes
A deeper hurt in need
Of healing the weeping god
And the laughing god
Paraded through the streets
Here in heaven the Father God
Takes up all the room
With his farms of stars
And the Son is left
To suffer on earth
Of his own free will
 

Javelina's Valentine

Plants preserve the time before desire
And prefigure the nights after it's gone
But a javelina dug and ate
All the bulbs I planted yesterday
Desire is so delicious
I suppose she could smell them
From a mile away
But if she'd only waited
A few weeks she could
Have devoured all the flowers
Aphrodisiac on the tongue
And stumbled through the woods
Like any world-drunk man
And fallen asleep in the sun
Dreaming of the purity to come

Betwixt Valentine

Somewhere between cruelty and tenderness
There is a whole world of effort
As if held in parenthesis
On a stretch of beach
Between the ocean and the forest
A passageway between
Two worlds where we are walking
Or laying in the sun reading
Our histories or playing catch
Where the great decisions
Wait on either side of us
Between drowning and burning
Between sinking and swimming
Between love and misery

In A Conflagration of Fritillaries Valentine

I need to dig a hole
To plant my desert rose
For years it's lived in a pot
Until it's eaten all the dirt
Just a ball of roots left
And yet it still flowers
Its sister the red one
Died in the cold one night
When I wasn't watching
Like the woman I walked out on
Trying to leave the past behind
Too far gone to return
I need to dig a hole
To plant my sorry mind
And yet it's blooming still

Joan's Valentine

My cat realizes a relationship
With a human cannot be
An entirely healthy thing
I know she sees in me
So much dependency and keeps
A certain emotional distance
My aura crowded with
so many complicated lives
She struggles to unravel
But not too proud to lick my toes
She knows what flesh is for
What must be loved and eaten
She has her tender side
And sleeps like angels nesting

No Man's Valentine

No problem-o no pressure we say
But something is always
Pressing on us wanting out
A memory knotted-up
A hair-ball spit on the floor
Our feeble hopes like feeble waves
As you stand shouting on the shore
Surely someone is coming
To rescue you from this island
You always wanted an island of your own
The waterfall in the forest
The long rainy season you love
How will you ever leave it
Even when they come

David's Valentine

Didn't Lazarus go through the last
Mystery of Eleusis too young
To die but he crossed over
Long enough to experience
A conscious continuity
And then came back
To tell us not to be afraid
Of something we've been doing all along
But it's one thing to raise someone
Else from the dead and another
To raise oneself from life to life
To become ash in the earth
And take on its whole glory
In a pool of light in the yard

Still Here After a Year Valentine

I was sleeping when you died downstairs
Jess said you birthed a little smile
With your last soundless breath
But she woke me right away
And I could still feel you in the room
Looking around a little dazed as we were
Seeing everything had changed
What could possibly be next
Without your necessary presence
In a body we could touch
But you were bathed and kissed
And dressed in your favorite clothes
While you watched and waited smiling
As we wept you on your way

Wesak Valentine

Particles of Buddha's self-esteem
Smashed into a trillion pieces
Are eternally drifting down
Gradually the true owner
Of the world comes back
To claim it and collect the rent
Way overdue and unrepayable
I hide in my little house
Hoping you forget where I live
And praying you remember
My whole life is a waiting
For you to return
Then I wake to find
We're already together

Beautiful Valentine

Can you love someone
If you don't really know them
Or if you know too much
Or is love a higher knowing
Tolerant of its own ignorance
And impervious to scorn
Or faithlessness when beauty
Arouses it its only source
And proof if you love it
It must be beautiful
And if it's beautiful
Naturally you love it
And the most beautiful
Is to know nothing at all

Schooled Valentine

Maybe our teacher chooses
Only the most difficult students
Why wouldn't he be drawn to those
Who only want to be themselves
Which is his secret plan
Every day he brings yet
Another incomprehensible lesson
And tells us take out our crayons
And draw a picture of what
He just said make up a story
Of the rest of our lives
And every one of our efforts
Is hung up on the wall
And we sit dumbly
As he praises them all

Bread of Life Valentine

Aren't we always finding new elements
To add to the recipe of the earth
The countless ingredients that must be there
If we want it to turn out right
After all that mixing and stirring
Kneading and freezing and testing
Until each ion finds its place
And settles in for the duration
Into a sumptuous being
Aware of its limitations
Yet driven to be worthy
Enough of what it wants
To taste good and be
Good for you and me

Longing Valentine

How come on the way to something else
I stumbled on you and started
Thinking of nothing more
Than how I could impress you
How can it be the most decisive things
Are made to seem accidental
Like a dropped object I could
Barely pick myself up and go on
Hardly noticing I had collapsed
Inside while staying outwardly
Calm and civilized and strong
How could the monumental
Be made to pass so small
How could we wait so long

Undigested Valentine

Sometimes I feel we are all in the process
Of absorbing one another somehow
Through touch and glance and words
Trying to metabolize one another's souls
As at a great banquet or meager table
We keep turning things into nothing
Raging between joy and despair
Forgetting the stranger who sits
Between us we met on the way
But why does he keep ordering another loaf
And another bottle of wine
How can he just sit there
Glowing with peace and contentment
Acting as if everything was fine

In Beauty's Way Valentine

The ruby sleeps into a rose
The rose wakes up in a robin
Blood drying on its breast
Another morning in heaven
But what am I doing here
Letting it all fly through me
The remorselessness of beauty
That never comes to rest
But presses on beyond me
Doesn't it call for me to follow
To foresee where it leads
How hard my heart must be
Not to take its hand
And let it culminate in me