Forest Valentine

The dogs of fall return us to our noses

The smell of stars in the mossy air

While the taste of summer lingers

On our fingers the garlic and the roses

On the lake the ducks are late for mating

And the wood-paths stretch out

The promise of a yellow mood

A fading sound of wonder and relief

As represented by the rain and wind

Forcing us outside ourselves

How superficially summer lands

Now the skin is flayed away

Now we walk around the forest

Carrying our heads in our hands

 

Alone Valentine

Leaning forward head in hands

A seated woman weeping 

I found hiking in the mountains

She could have been the moon

Glowing faintly in the milky

Morning light or the crone

Of some misery following me home

But she was certainly no vision

Real tears issuing from stone

She filled a cup and made me drink

A sour flowery taste of dark loam

With bits of the bodies of bees

I spit out with racking sobs

But now that I'd found her she said

I would never be left alone

More or Less Valentine

When I was an amateur genius

Arrogant as the river was green

And strode the polluted cities

Of my dreams I could still be

A timid student of the stars

Where lived my kith and kin

That I could read my way to glory

And still come back to my earthly life

Transformed by the example

So now I live in two worlds

So completely I can't chose which

As if between two children

I could love one more

Or tell one from another less

Home Valentine

You ask if I can follow you

To the car-detailing shop

And on the way home we can stop

For breakfast or pull off and stare

At what they've done to the river

What river you ask and follow

It with that drive-by smile 

That still leaves me taken

You ask if you are following

Me to hell now we are lost

Haven't I taken the wrong left

No your other left you moan

We together forever

Cruising home alone

Aesopian Valentine

She had fallen on her back

Unable to right herself

A shiny black beetle

Waving her six frantic legs

In the air when a yellow

Butterfly stopped by to shout

I'll run for help but never returned

The red hibiscus watched all this

But couldn't lift a leaf or speak

Until at last a sparrow came by

To carry her to its brood

For which the beetle was so grateful

To be realized as food

To have taken so large a leap

On her way back to God

Even You Valentine

To reach the point you begin to see

Death cannot be our real destiny

That death is the boogie-man under the bed

The part of us we love to fear

What is scarier than love

To love the thing you fear

To come to the place you start to sway

Between two worlds two dreams

Separated by your own personal abyss

Every morning every night

To have perceived the little man

Who hangs with his arms outstretched

Holding back the sun and the moon

So even you can pass

All You Valentine

All you I get to love

Who believed me as a child

When I made up the world

Sweet or stern yes or no

Who blessed me as a friend

And carried me through the waves

Forgive me in my old days

For not getting to know you enough

Full of my old lameness and doubt

You suffered through but thrilled

There is still time unlimited

And still space unbound

Where we can sit and talk

All you I get to love

Dusty Valentine

Little moth of light

Combing the ceiling night

Little rainbow shards

Darting around the room

Dust of infinite stars

Settling on my face

Laughter coming from the furniture

The floor gets up to dance

Let me join you falling

And rising swirling beings

Airborne and looking for a life

And never still not finding it

And not ever quite resolved

To have just one brief life

Moon's Valentine

When the moon left the earth

And was caught in its orbit

It was like a lighthouse raised

A point of entry and departure

A little boat of glowing light

Carrying the dark sun

Growing brighter and brighter

As more passengers came onboard

Until it was full to overflowing

A deep brilliance free of the earth

With a pure longing to sail on

But when the moon returned to the earth

Its light got caught in the churning waves

Sinking all its cargo of death and birth

Undeserved Valentine

It wasn't the war

Terrible as it was

But that despite

The enormity of it

No one cared

To face the causes

No one would own

How it began

Buried in the rubble

Each blow an excuse

For another attack

But one man just

Stood there silent

Letting death rain

Down upon him

What no one deserved

He accepted as fate

And knew love would win

Past Valentine

What can I do with my past

Stacked up like luggage by the door

Where do you think you're going you ask

Leaving this tangled mess behind

For someone else to sort your clothes

Having disposed of your body

Swept the patio locked the gate

And what have you forgotten to pack

Did you think you were going without me

Did you feel you would never be back

The past is so vast and small

And most of it hidden or lost

How many more lives must it take

For the future to remember it all

From Valentine

From the bottom of my feet joy

From the edges of my fingers anger

From the turnings of my eyes wonder

From the top of my head sadness

From the way you look at me levity

From the way the world looks back gravity

From the crater of my heart a cup

From the river of my brain

Overflowing or dry as dust

From where you are listening to me

Tasting me on the tip of your tongue

From where I am touching your face

From where I am unafraid undone 

Childish Valentine

Riding the body with my airy thoughts

And trying to cultivate a big heart

For whatever seems to be going on

And at the same time feeling secluded

Here on the tropical island of myself

Where supplies run short

And no boat comes sometimes

I rarely sleep at night anymore

The stars next door loud coupling

Or arguing about the future

My unhappy parents

Forgive me if it's not too late

To grieve for your childhoods

And to thank you for my own

Reflected Valentine

Beauty proves the body

Is a transitional object

A bridge or doorway to the mystery

As it unfolds through the centuries

How it invokes the eye and ear

With its flashes of lightening

The still evolving blood

Touched by an inner light

With planetary implications

The body mirroring the body

Of the stars and sun as one 

But how the body loves the moon 

The first place love can happen

Whenever Valentine

At nine I met a beautiful boy

The one I wanted to be

But he rejected me

At nineteen I married my ideal

A wooden statue of the Virgin

At a time in her life when

She could still understand me

At thirty-nine I parked the car

Lost on some mountain road

Overwhelmed I'd got this far

Some time later I saw

How easily overwhelmed

I had been whenever

Beauty approached me

I was who I wanted to be

Blue Paper Valentine

Some thought-knots

Are so tightly tied

How stupid can I be

Only the heart-knife

Can cut through them

Or working its deft fingers

Carefully ease it apart

Like a present I unwrap

Wanting to save even the blue paper

And the immaculate foil stars

Lifting from the layered box

As from a tomb my life in pieces

And there at the bottom a little

Tube of glue to put it back together

Neighborly Valentine

How can we fetch ourselves back

To sanity all couples ask

Where will we find the place

Of agreement beyond all

Disagreement families want to know

Is it kids not listening to their parents

Or parents not listening to their kids

At midnight the paramedics showed up

To take my neighbor's body away

Two policemen whispered outside my window

I only spoke to him or saw him

Actually a few times in twenty years

He was a man who lived alone like me

And did I once think to bring him cookies

Or he once to bring me a beer

All Photographs Are Lonely Valentine

Today is so still so strict

Breathing seems intrusive

The clouds concrete slabs

The trees transfixed as paint

The stop-light stopped at red

And I alone walking the empty streets

Where have you all gone

Following the crying out of town

People of the earth

To some festival or grave 

And left me in this photograph

Where calm has finally come

Where nothing moves or needs to

And nothing can be done

Spontaneous Buoyancy Valentine

Bearing in the new born

Harvest placing it on the Scales

September just wants

To pack it all in and go home

But my Orion won't let it

Something larger

Refuses all his flowers

A buoyant seriousness

As he bounces along

Completely dismembering himself

Down to this skeletal outline

A few mere stars

Where once were beads

Fly's Valentine

I see you hungry fly

Following me into the house

I see you disaster

Creeping up the coast

From the corner of my eye

I see you spirits

Of disagreement and delusion

Even at the grocery store

I thought I'd better feed the fly

It must want something

It looks very skinny and wan

For something that devours us

Little asterisk of death

You have no idea

What a surprise I have for you

Crisis of Memory Valentine (for Dave)

It's not your memory failing

It's you that's blocking it

It remembers everything

But grants you access

On its own terms only

It serves a secret

But recurring theme

With its own imperfections

Yes memory imagines you

The broken-up truth

Of what is happening every day

Everything is a recording

Of a recording of an awakening

And here you're standing in its way

The God of All Solutions Valentine

Every night my eager soul ascends

Like a balloon from a child's hand

Leaving my body on the bed

A weightless outline in the dark

Seeking the other side of the air

Up through the ceiling and the stairs

Until it tangles on some nebula

Or higher still slips into a trance

That weaves together broken scenes 

From the day before a puzzle

Reassembled from that other

More truthful side of me

A world familiar with no reason

So I spend the whole next day

Wondering to decode the context

Disconnecting all the dots 

Feeling the god of all solutions

Slipping from my thoughts

Tree's Valentine

Out in the forest of the flesh

Where the deep beasts prowl

Where I will be devoured

It takes about an hour

Or I will just stand there

Like a tree at the bottom

Of an abyss unshaken

I didn't know if I was dying

Or being born the top of the tree

Had just blown open and on

The updraft I was lifted

Wings rocked out of the dream

And that it was just waiting for me

To let go of its branches

And drift upward to the sun

Friedrich's Valentine

He is our Amfortas a king

Poor frightening Nietzsche

For who has suffered as much

Or been so easily misconstrued

As Job's defiant mountainous son

He swam in a sea of courage

And loved to be cold and alone

He flew to be free of love

His only inadequacy in flight

Not to have seen love coming

What alone could get him there

But I know how he hurt

When love refused his gift

And love became the enemy of love

Glorified Valentine

Too scorching or too old and lazy

To cut the grass and fuss with plants

I let the backyard naturalize

Into a wild walled garden

Weeds and flowers fighting it out

Vivid colors in a waving green

So by August it was in its glory

When I started to wonder about

The gardener implicit in the garden

The exactitude of the arrangements

Which happens when the sun

 Is free to coax up this or that 

New leaf from anywhere it wants

Fit now for a child to enter

Or an old man to sit

Abandoned Wisdom Valentine

A lifetime's library my dear

Book-shelves bullying every room

Began to weigh me down

The gravity of reading so much

And retaining much too little

Time to cull the lot

To separate the keepers from the dust

So much dust on the oldest heads

Grown white exuding wisdom

I never read a book I didn't like

So I boxed the ones I liked the most

And kept what no one anymore

Wants to own out-dated

Travelogues abandoned dictionaries

Useful if you have to stop a door

Carried Valentine

When I first saw the famous bridge 

Of Brooklyn in an early picture

I was surprised to find the ruins

Of an old cathedral stone

By stone carried over from

The old country to reconstruct

Or subtly evoke a lost

Sense of the divine that river

Before these bridges pinned

It down the flying Hudson

And then to walk across it

As if inside an enormous harp

And to be casual about it

As if it was nothing to be carried over

Sorry Valentine

Two shadow eyes

On the white ceiling

When the sun blinks

The cloud's eyes a muse

My messenger for today

Who looks down from the black

And white heights

Of the infinitely distant

Stars that bloomed last night

And die in the summer storms

Yes I am speaking to you

Grave abstraction of my dreams

Returning ephemeral eyes

Sorry to keep you waiting

Logical Valentine

If you don't recognize the existence of the gods

Then you don't recognize the existence of ideas

God is just the passing idea of you

The Idea conjuring its ideas

Without ever repeating itself

Until the earth and the stars

All the clamoring constellations

Are populated with its good

And bad ideas our bodies

Wrenched into their places

In another firmament its first

Grandiose sketch of an idea

How many blackboards did it fill

Until it reached the final equation

Random Valentine

What they meant and mean to me

In the daily discovery of memory

Random moments that flare up

Like waves in the general sea

Of thoughts' flotsam and haste

They stop and stare at me

Faces I half-recognize

Half-recognizing me

I see they cannot speak just glance

Like eyeballs staring through a fence

They see what I can't

My soul revealed to them

Which leaves them speechless

Though their eyes are full of thanks

Returned Valentine

When I finally noticed you were me

One morning in the middle of our lives

It was too late or too early to go back

We started to lose track of us

As separate or lost or gone

And tenderly and harshly over time

We lost our bearings

I know it seems strange

Becoming a part of everything

Like melting at the edges

But this time consciously fearlessly

So grateful to have come back

To being simple trees and grass

You a mountain me a lake

After Valentine

When the earth was covered with water

After everything had burned to ash

After you woke up on the island

Of yourself after the long

Trek north to the Burgenland

After the failed initiation

When you lost your second sight

And couldn't find your friend

And the flower of immortality

Slipped from your feeble hand

It must have been around then

You finally fell asleep

And the dream of your youth began

And you knew you would come again

Just Valentine

A broken off piece of rainbow

Fell through the window landed

On the floor a small triangle

Of unworldly colors

The germ-ghost of what

Became the world

Actually visiting me

I was just sitting there

As usual thinking of you

As a patch of radiant light

And I could see right through you

All your clever disguises

All the way back to when

We were first ours that night

We Are Always Protected Valentine

I said I don't know what I'm doing

When others have said they do

They have done their research

And found what they felt all along

But my not knowing hasn't stopped

My doing I'm always right

And wrong my companions

Who cherish uncertainty

Are always cheering me on

I know nothing about everything

I'm too awestruck to think

When they ask if I know

What I'm doing those who know

Let's Not Be Angry Anymore Valentine

COVID confusion perhaps brother

But more the pangs of conscience

The hot adrenaline of shame

For my argumentative self-serving

Attitude and arrogant words back then

After which I felt I lost you

You would never speak to me again

Aren't you amazed we know

So little about one another

Not just us but everyone's life

An only partly open door

Either widening or closing

Forgive me for slamming it in your face

I just forgot to be your brother

Hereditary Valentine

Was it a calculated move

When his father said no to him

Having foreseen the pain to follow

Was it carefully designed

As a labyrinthine plot

With no way out it seemed

But to return the way he came

He knew how inventive his father

Could be how he craved

To arrange every single thing

How his heart would ache

When his son ignored his warnings

Just as he knew he would

If he'd ever be free to love

Light Rain Valentine

When I'm right it feels inadvertent

When I'm wrong it feels willful

Like working in the yard in a light rain

Or stumbling on an old letter in a book

I was giving away what changed 

My life your words I had forgotten

From the fourth of my seven lives

Finally the rain forced me inside

Where I found your folded letter

Full of encouragement and love

Falling like a light rain in me

The kind of rain that gives you

Permission to keep on working

And knows the harvest will be rich

I Am Faust Valentine

Finally old reprobate Professor Faust

Gets rescued from himself

By a whole battalion of angels

While M. just stands there embarrassed

By his own sense of shame

But Faust still lives here with us

At the very pitch of darkness

His repentance still to come

And yet given a second chance

He didn't live to see the light

Dawn inside him at least not

In that lifetime but everything

Rests on the right location

And you never know when

The heart will stop and turn in

Every Night Valentine

Domestic cosmic comic

Book that we are just

Making supper up and plans

Laying together on the couch

Getting ready for another what-a-day

I kiss your feet eternity

The way you just keep spinning

Out myths and fables that finally

Put us both to sleep

And we can leave our bodies behind

Poor instruments of torture and joy

Resting comfortably on the earth

As we rise up through the ranks

Of angels and the starry dead
To retrieve their hopes for us

Poet's Valentine

Usually I imagine you

Standing at the edge of an aspen wood

Sunny windless afternoons

In a silence so deep no bird

Would dare penetrate

And yet you call me here

To ask if I can feel it too

The visible music of his arrival

Setting the leaves to quaking

Rays of the sun falling at his feet

His foot-prints on the pond

That leave you speechless

Holding me in your arms

But I can only imagine you

Short-Lived Valentine

Cometary beings like Shelley or Keats

Or the brave Hypatia who sweep

Into and out of our atmosphere

The short-lived who blaze through

The night sky like a body

Running from a burning building

Itself engulfed in flames

Impossible to extinguish

As they speed over the horizon

On that long journey back to us

In the darkness behind the earth

But time here only to get

As far as the emergency of youth

And ring the fire alarm of truth

Better Valentine

In the beginning there was racism

It was always hiding behind 

The next tree in the beautiful garden

The enmity of two brothers

Beginning the hatred of others

The satisfied and the unsatisfied

The one who stays for her father

And the one who must get away

The refusal to change

Igniting the spark of freedom

Didn't they both just want

To be appreciated for their gifts

For which they had to give up

Feeling better than their brother

The Four of Me Valentine

Constant stickler for the truth

Best of the melancholic breed

And you the proof of sensible goodness

With that sanguine grin on your face

And you who makes us eat

Our vegetables and say our prayers 

O lord forgive me for my fiery

Outbursts and the walls I shake

It's not that I didn't have great

Teachers to goad me on

It's just that if you're going

To tell the truth and be good

Sometimes you have to lose your shit

And just spit it out

For beauty's sake unafraid

Spiraling Valentine

Lefty Lucy and tidy Righty

He breathes out his life to her

And she just breathes it back again

They're screwed into one another

You say with a straight face

To hold something in place

To snatch it out of space

And ever-destructive time

Feeling the ever-loosening bolt

Of loneliness and lust

Accede to loyal friendship

The spiral of days ascending

And descending ladders

Love that lifts us up

And helps us down again

Replicated Valentine

The speech of animals is all vowels

The speech of plants is wind and light

But it was we who brought the hard

Consonants capturing them in words

And if you trace it back

To the first smell of words

From far out at sea maybe

You can feel what languages feel

Assembling their storms and calms

All these languages rushing toward

A replica of living sound and light

When you spoke to me

Of our destiny and plight

Thelma's Valentine

As seniors in our little circle

Of friends and colleagues of the spirit

As we approach the beautiful iceberg

On this Titanic of our lives

I wanted to schedule lunch

With you now in the after-world

To get to know one another better

If you have the time once

We get settled in to our new names

And have counted our accounts

What plans we've made for future

Adventures what books

We're re-reading what new

Friends we have found

Arriving Valentine

I was expecting the sun and the stars

But gray clouds covered us completely

For a few seconds we were

Arriving in Corinth again

Unsure which century it was

Until we turned from the ruins

And looked at one another

It's you here so it must be now

It's just me straying out of time

Practicing my remembering again

The younger I feel the older I grow

The more I wonder

When I will arrive in you

And everything's remembered

Today's Valentine

You were dancing on the point of a pin

And I was dancing with you angel

And gave you a spin

And lost you in the crowd

You had gone to find a razor

We could line-dance on

Or a cliff for a pas-de-deux

You would bring me to the edge

Where the waves grow loud

And all our dances come together 

Swahili limbo waltz and clog

Where we could look down on death

And life as equal partners

To be danced away today

Disappeared Valentine

While Charlemagne was learning over there

A grown man to read the nursery rhymes

The Hohokam people were thriving here

In the clear desert air of not yet America

A peaceful agricultral tribe

Where these many buildings stand today

And when St. Francis was alive and preaching

They were carving ball courts out of sand

Over two hundred of them who knows

Abandoned as if a sudden plague

Or greedy lord devastated them

Then did the survivors disappear to the east 

And west and north and south

Like pilgrims on the road to Santiago

 

Weather's Valentine

What are the great powers and principalities

Trying to accomplish this gray Monday

Their flickering constellations whisper

Don't look up if you can't stand feeling small

If you don't like to get dizzy and crumble

Into the light right now

Cloudy-sunny after a long rain

What would we do without the weather

To know how we're feeling

To synchronize with the spheres

Pondering their ideas

Swirling around us and in us

To find something to hold on to

Or to completely let go

When the Cock Crows Valentine

My neighbor who keeps a rooster

Sometimes makes me wonder

How many other farm animals

He's hiding in his house

Has he turned the bedrooms

Into a stable snoring with the horses

I swear some nights I can hear

A cow's sorrowful mooing

Like a secret farm with woods gone

A safe house on a busy city street

For dreaming sheep and the bustle

Of corn stalks striking up

From the living room floor

Called by the moon once more

Mind's Valentine

In the beginning was the I

And the I was in God

And the I was itself a god

Just as God remembered it

When God was eager and young

And started out good and whole

With a simple sketch of the I

It was the first I in the first mind

Then came the I that mocked the I

For taking itself so seriously

And there was laughter on earth

As in heaven the sound of thunder

And the rain became the flesh

of the I it was the true I

Old Valentine

The pure and selfish motive

Of a child knowing nothing

Is to control what it loves

And to saturate the nights

With its terrified screaming

But to think within its smallness

A huge aura is trying to settle

On a decision to stay or go

War-torn they come back to us

From heaven's camps

In search of healing

And end up healing us

But why the war so long

And the child so old 

Johannine Valentine

So we meet again after several lives

For lunch you've lost weight

Cheerful your courage still intact

Feeding on fish and rice and tea

To hear what's come of our fears

Your many moves across the country

The marvels and tragedies we've seen

And how the time has come for you

To move forward and me to fall back

For you to remember everything

And me to slowly forget

Making space for the new discovery

Of far-reaching death

Me waiting for you where we met

Summer Victim's Valentine

Cara Cara red navel dwarf

I had just the spot for you

I wanted to taste you one day

But then you were just a staff

With blossoms what would

Become of you under my care

It was like taking on a child

Whose leaves were blistered hands

That startled when they started

In the heat falling off

What sustained you when you lost

The ground under your feet

What became of your sweetness

Under my helpless care

Flooded Valentine

Tears and rain and sweat

Finally accumulate

On burn scars to flood

Proportions towns float away

On the other side of the mountain

We horseback ride in the cool

Forest you on Diablo the stallion

Me on a mare called Fancy

Whenever joy happens elsewhere

Some disaster crops up to sqluech it

One made-made and the other

An unearned gift of the gods

Past their tears and rain and sweat

Mess of a Valentine

Was I raised to make a mess

Of things to learn the art

Of cleaning up and putting back

In their proper places the words

Let fly across the room

Clearing the air between us

Resolved by afternoon

Our differences collide

Sanding down the edges

I try to explain did you

Know our neighbor has a rooster

Every morning now cock-a-doodle-do

Every morning I love more of you

For Valentine

I've already started planning

My next life even if you say

There won't be one I'm feeling

Super-practical about it

And hope to preserve

Enough ego to go on

To keep up the search

Even though I'll live

In a little house

And go no where

I will have met you

I will have known

What it's for

Beach Cities Valentine

It's early Thursday of the world

And we are hard at work

For days we drove through fires

And floods west with the wind

So we could sit and stare at the sea

With hundreds of others supine

Or celebrative mostly the children

Or walkers overwhelmed by the waves

Swept out and tossed back again

We've come to peer over the threshold

Into the abyss of a sunny day

Troubled and peaceful and weary

And for once with nothing to say

Bedded Valentine

Her name was dull

But her face was dawn

And yes she'd been spat upon

But it never made her cruel

Though she could be abstemious

With time and came to my bed

But once when she was living

And now again she's dead

The tattoo of a rainbow on one cheek

And a painted bluet on the other

A woman of the forest and the creek

Now the landscape of a dream

Where we had but a moment

To catch up but a lifetime it seemed

Stopped Valentine

Truth socializes with everyone

But seems to have few friends

At gatherings it shatters

Into a million wafers

Melting on tongues

Or spit out on the floor

Finally it creates a disturbance

And is asked to leave

No one seems to know its address

Though our best detectives

Have tried to follow it home

One night I passed it on the street

It stopped and smiled at me

And said, 'Go ahead my friend

There's no lie I haven't heard'

 

Snow in Summer Valentine

Winter is a roving widow

Who drags out all her wedding dresses

Refusing to wear black

She lifts them through the dirt

On her way back to her father's house

Having lost her head again

For faithless summer but knows

Her old man will take her back

To her quiet room where everything's

Preserved just as it was

From her high school days

Where it will all start up again

Where the child she's left with

Will lead her back to love

Even Valentine

Whether we like it or not

Whether we can get past

Liking it or not

Whatever's left over is truth

One and one makes one

Or you carry the two

Left with a negative sum

We are always in love with someone

Even if it's usually ourselves

We each have our Orpheus

Or Eurydice inside even if

We scorn them even if

We don't have a romantic

Bone in our bodies

Honduras Valentine

A glimmer of hope was spotted

In Honduras in a cohort of clouds

I write it down for absence of you

I want to be you for twenty-four hours

Probably as long I could be away 

From myself but it would be enough

To get a quick survey of Honduras perhaps

Where you are living under that glimmer

In hopes of being me one day

For which I pity you as much

As you illuminate me

With your cloudy hope

Glimmering above Honduras

Cities and jungles of my dreams

Waving Valentine

These days my fervent prayers

Are all the names of my friends

We gather together in the church

Of occasional rain and sing its praises

Then sit and talk on the beach

Worrying and laughing about one another

Often there's a sermon or a joke

Which drives us off for a swim

Or back to the house for a nap

But sometimes no one comes

Or comes and then quickly leaves

I keep the darker days for myself

My friend the lake seems all I need

And my friend who walks its waves

Something Valentine

If we were really animals

We would need no memories at all

Of guilt or deep regret

But at a certain point

Something comes into us

That separates us from the tree

Suffering into its branches

Under its devouring leaves

And only a few blossoms reach

Out for a better life

Nature becomes a picture

We have colored in

The animals have bequeathed to us

Our conscience and our sin

Godly Valentine

What would you do first

If you had to create

A human body using

All the usual parts but

In a new configuration

Would you put the head

Where the feet are now so

It could kiss the ground

And the feet could walk on air

Would you triple the eyes

Two in the palms of the hands

Two in the middle of the chest

Would you have learned something

From all this if you were a god

True Valentine

The leaves at the ends of its branches

Turn many colors mimicking flowers

Products of the sun overcoming the soil

While the true flowers stay hidden

Almost insignificant among the foliage

But if you pull back the covers

Then you see their Venus sleeping

Naked in her marble flesh

Awaiting her many broken lovers

Bees who come to suck her blood

From wounds that time has made

But only one will wake her

Arriving regal from the future

I know he will be true as you

In Irons Valentine

I say yes obsessively to you

With only an occasional no

So you'll know I'm not

A robot or an interloper

Which isn't true I'm both

And though we share a digital 

Heart that warns us of attacks

If you'd only remember

To plug in the charger

We could get some rest

From one another's 

Mechanical politeness

I could learn to dance

You could get dressed

Painted Valentine

It's not what is depicted

But how the paint is applied

The subject merely intrudes

On the way the color unfolds

It takes its time in the mind

Of the momentary Tuesday painter

Did he not set out to move us

And isn't it the fingers anyway

That matter in music and painting

You have to have the right elbows

Firm and agile feet it helps

To have worked in a circus

Or know someone who does

Released Valentine

The wind that teaches the trees to walk

And the shrubs that hurry after

I caught one and brought it home

And imprisoned it in my yard

A bush of several branches

I pruned back to a single one

And forced it into a trunk with three

Outwardly-reaching limbs

Taller and wider each spring

But each branch just gave birth

To another bush pleading

With pale blue blossoms

To be released from my idea

Of a tree this project of me

Hypothetical Valentine

If earth is the body of human beings

Water must be the body of angels

Isn't it their life we see looking across the lake

The exhilaration of mist and spray

We feel them in our blood

And way out those proud clouds

And lightening bolts out of the blue

Aren't they gathering up the feasts

Of archangels violent and calm

And finally the primal beginnings

Who focus their warmth in us

Whose bodies are our I's

Aren't they always starting over

Our Star Valentine

When it comes to explored space

It's serious how this earth is one

Of a kind and we alien humans

Are one with its conditions

This planet is our only body

Bodies that weren't even here

Before the Pleistocene

Knowledge of this can take us so far

Until it finally crumbles

The body is just the ash

Thrown out by the fire

Spinning up into dark space

Like the darkest star

Historical Valentine

A young black man named Darius

Gives a massage to an old white man

A tired ex-history professor

Who talks and whispers

Throughout the session

Between grunts and gasps

Stretching out the story of Darius

The Great (550-486 BC) 

Whose empire was the largest ever

Who conquered Greece even Naxos

Who built amazing palaces and temples

In the next session Darius

Spends the hour while massaging

Explaining how those bricks were laid

These alternating sessions go on

For a long period of time until finally

The body on the table is dissolved

On John's Day Valentine

She wrote her master's thesis

On the meditative life

Of a mountain nearby concluding

With a fairy tale about a lake

And what happened one night far out

I could never decipher

If she was entirely fictional

Or one of those passed over

But she accompanied me

All that day after I spotted her

In a strange town crossing the street

As if our meeting again had been arranged

Even though we had no future

Just the impulse to start again

Glad Valentine

I'm glad I sat on it and slept

On it and waited for it to rain

When rain was no more

In the offing than you

But here it is lovelier

For not being expected

I'm happy I followed

Morton Feldman's advice

About never knowing when

You're gonna hear something

Or see something freezing you

In your steps that stroke of joy

Lovelier for sparing your life

When it's still raining softly

And look there are still several

Indeterminate string quartets to go

Not Fair Valentine

I do not hope not to despair

Never to sit and just not care

About anything or anyone myself

Never not to give up and howling stare

Out the window when there's

No one there it's just not fair

That little dragon of despair

Who keeps slipping out of his cage

Begging to be taken for a walk

I've seen he means to eat the world

Greedy and pompous if I let him loose

My single hope is to have 

Honored him with care

And to resolve what is not fair

So Many Valentines (at Solstice)

It was in the summer of our disaster

It was as good as it was going to get

There were only those waiting for the disaster

And those for whom the wait was over

The blade had fallen or was in progress

Water depleting and fires raging

Replacements in short supply

And when it reached its highest point

The sun poured down its floods

Of heat just standing there for days

Opening its little doorway of escape

For so many wafted aloft to a summer

Beyond summer and disaster

In Our Time Valentine

Why are you watching that uber-gay movie

Striding into the room he scolded

Oh I forgot to tell you something

Urgently as I got up from the couch

And walked over to him

As he stood there wondering

What I would possibly say

And kissed him full on the lips

And said calmly no that's what

Uber-gay looks like my brother

It is given to us in our time

To unravel sex from love

And your scorn only makes it harder

For love to be born

Sister Sorrow and Brother Grief Valentine

If you guess the first three secrets

The fourth is free

Wit is luck achieved

The grub of consciousness

That must be seen to be believed

But it's already become a moth

With colorfully mottled wings

Like the emblem of a great army

Reconnoitering all night

But what can its wings say

About its diet or its sorrow

For its butterfly sister

On the other side of day

Heading for the flames

Drawn Valentine

I was a cheerful fearful child

Outgoing and mouthy and uncommitted

I never felt adults

Should have all the power

To say what things mean

A tree could be just the way

I drew it and I could go back

To living there if I wanted to

How did I lose that ability

To scamper over rooftops

In my new shoes and make

My sterner sister laugh with shame

I've saved that old phonograph

Now it's my turn to laugh

I Too Loved Linda Valentine

A fatal love at the center of her life

I confess something about your loss

Inspired me to move from 'her' to 'you' 

You weren't just out there living in the desert

Anymore but here inside another I and life

Self-assured as Persephone ever was

That glow that drew me to want to have

You as my distant loyal other half

Your face in the opposite subway car

As we sat waiting and staring

Steadfastly at one another

While Zeus and Apollo boarded

Found Valentine

If you think of a plant

As the chosen body and blood

Of an important being

If you think of an animal

Possessing an angel's soul

Left to roam the world freely

If you think of the mineral brain

Half in love with stones and shells

Arriving at its own clear thoughts

If you think of the seas and stars

Inside the organs of a body

Striding through another night

Then I know you will find me

Or else I will find you

Unanswered Valentine

Why did Jesus just not say to Judas

You cannot eat my body

Or drink my blood though

He knew he would betray him

What was the knowledge he had

Above any thought of escape

Does he not leave to Judas

The lost judgement of his debts

Judas must have been one of his first

Encounters on his visit to hell

I think he must have blessed him then

And thanked him for his part

Told him not to worry

And held him to his heart

Before Valentine

After the great event had happened

After everything had turned

Around and was unalterably

Changed for a long time

It was only a few who noticed

That nothing would ever be the same

And even today we still

Go about our lives getting on

Having forgotten how hopeless

The world was for us before

We received the thing we longed for

That sense of something deeper

Missing in the picture

The conviction there was more

Silent Valentine

Words where the I is silent

Like friend or ancient

As if it stood right there forgotten

Or accused offering no explanation

As if only silence could respond

To the surrounding confusion

Of a word without a speaking I

An I like the word's open secret

Unpronounceable yet visible cipher

Or take a word like Christ

Or Isis or business or decision

As if it was actually buried

In the language and I

Ever watchful for its return

One Valentine

Every morning I put all my thoughts

Into a round rather leaky container

And shake it up soundly

And set it down on the table

And sit quietly and watch

Which parts slowly settle

To the bottom dead-end material

While several layers are built up

From this foundation growing

More and more ethereal

Until finally there's no thought at all

Unless it's the clear one of you

Necessary Valentine

How necessary it becomes

To have wounds and scars

And a visible body to bear them

The world itself a wounding

Me scourging you scourging me

Because we are so proud of ourselves

And want still more of the other

Our motives are mixed distilled

Into medicines of pleasure and pain

So we're compelled to return again

And again forgetting the antidote

'Wound' what a beautiful sound

Of unknown ultimate origin

Some Valentine

Some people don't want

To know how something works

It's enough that it does mostly

Some people plant a sapling

In their front yard one spring

And tend to it for years

Some people have so many cars

They can only drive them once

Some people know all

Of human history but

Never learned to write

Some people are dolls

Inside of dolls building dolls

They want to take over the world

Summer Valentine

Now it's summer we can go all the way out

To Saturn's orbit where the heat stretches

Into a blue immensity of light

Is it ignorance or bliss that reaches

A certain limit and collapses

On a thousand sunny beaches

The beauty of bodies by the sea

One sweltering afternoon we walked

While everyone slept in their cool stone houses

The silent empty streets of Samos

Whispering to one another about

The marvel of a doorway arch

Or a courtyard garden where

Pythagoras finally gave up

Preaching to the flowers

We Are Valentine

We are who we are

But that's no excuse

We need to be better

So we can do better

Which may be less

Or more of doing us

Take me for instance

I would like to be

You or someone else

When I'm frightened

And feel I'm losing it

But I need you to bring me out

Of my little bubble sometimes

Because only love can do that

Despite Valentine

They called it a comedy back then

Even if it wasn't very funny

And often much of it wasn't at all

But just because it ended happily

Because everything worked out in the end

And they could stop there even

Though they sensed it might not last

Into next year's unwritten acts

It was considered a comedy because

You just had to laugh

Before you forgot how to

At its secret indomitability

The revelation uncertainly

Of its final victory despite

Name Unavailable Valentine

Why do you land on my neighbor's roof

And stare at me for a few minutes

And then fly off every morning

So I find myself waiting for you

As if we'd made a promise to someone

To stay in touch with one another

Though we're mostly strangers now

So much can happen in an epoch

But wasn't there a day you landed

On my shoulder and clearly

Spoke your name and swallowed

Me whole with your song

Or do I have it all wrong

Word's Valentine

The early theories of language

Proved poetic in the wrong sense

Perhaps they did not love it enough

To get beyond the fanciful to facts

Like the fact that poetry is real

Practical knowledge of the world 

We begin to grasp its prophetic

Implications in nursery rhymes

And the savagery of heroic couplets

Even as children to play at war

Even to believe in glory

But it's always a sense for language

That saves us in the end

Word given and word returned

Violet Valentine

Have you considered the Verbena

As I have staring and staring

Do you wonder how water works

Into the roots that sucking sound

In relation to the crusty leaves

Or how how much is not enough sun

To bring them to bloom again

How drowning roots and drying leaves

Have to negotiate under duress

Floods and deserts crossed

In search of a faithful gardener

Until finally their blooms rebuke me

What is it about violet at twilight

That brings me to my knees

Bargain Valentine

The roses are yours

But the vase is mine

The windows are yours

But the door is mine

The trees that drop their leaves

And the melting snow are mine

While you hold the firs and lichen

Blazing in the summer heat

The rain in the empty streets

At four in the morning

I will trade with you

For five of your mountain days

I'll even throw in my dead gold watch

All my time included for one more time

Advisory Valentine

You need someone who brings the music

To your life who forces you to dance

Even once in a while when you're alone

Or stretched out on the floor

Like Mahler after listening to Satie

You need cornets in the background

Announcing the arrival of a new century

In your life a new bar mitzva

Another quincinera last graduate

Of joy and silent astonishment you need

To settle down with your multiple selves

And work and cook for them

You need a wedding of vast proportions

To which everyone is invited

Corpus Christi Valentine

When you cry you are the moon

Is it you or the moon who is more unhappy

When you laugh you link up with the sun

Don't you feel that burst of light

Completely releasing you in a flash

Total freedom for a second or two

But when you see the changing stars

You know for certain you're lost

Unless you hold on to the one

In the center calling your name

North to its own country

That most distant intimate point

That dwarfs and lifts you up

And leaves you standing on the earth

Into the Woods Valentine

Another dissolving blog of clouds blows by

Horsetails between their legs

Pursued by a thousand tweets

Replacing real birds in the sky

More and more they're pulling us

Out of our bodies into the woods

But the paths are overrun with dogs

And children and the blue columbine

Are trampled on their last legs

But that's only on holidays

And every weekend so just pick a day

When you have nothing else to do

And go and visit your mother

Who is dying as we text

Guilty Valentine

I know I love

Because I feel guilty

For not loving more

When it stands to reason

It's the only thing there

Can't be more demand

Than what is on supply

I am guilty of loving

But not enough quite yet

Love has to compete

With such knowledge

Or all will be lost

And then there's lunch

Having come so far 

And starving