Cyclopean Valentine

My right eye flickers
like a light bulb
about to burn out
while my left is almost
perfect and carries the light
the way a mountain carries
its landscape in folds
around it and in furrows
but without the depth
and width only two
together can provide
when one has died 

Nashville Valentine

We’re running out of honey
honey and we’re running out of gas
stuck on this run-on highway
like a sentence worse than death
where the past first met her match
and the future still bows and scrapes
we’re running out of heaven honey
so we’re tapping into hell
exploding and finessing
denuding and caressing
singing our way to hell

Losing Valentine

When you work your way back
you find you are losing your life
first the morning fills up with
wrong numbers and cold coffee
then you try again to read about
the old Greeks was there another
people more the youth of the world
the rich young men of Athens and Sparta
Socrates’ students then the afternoon
lumbers around the yard refusing
to come indoors for crying
and finally twilight and night
vacant elegant equestrians
nudge you with their noses
as you fall asleep

Volunteer's Valentine

Even a stem
thin as a thread
a volunteer
among the settled
foliage with six
tiny leaves but
what holds it up
draws it up
I am it says
a person with
full rights
and privileges
I transact
the business
of the sun
don’t you see
we live at
one another’s
pleasure

Undefeated Valentine

When thinking starts to hurt
you hope you’re getting somewhere
like coal miners caught
deep underground or weekend
sailors battling a hurricane
who may not return
and finally when you have to
give it up and come right to the end
of thinking like a long hallway
at the end you find a picture
that becomes a mirror
on closer inspection
and you see how all the thoughts
were coming out of this picture
all along out of what it was
itself a stand-in for something
more substantial and complete
than even thinking could defeat

One More Valentine

Poor whip-
poorwill
keeps saying
read my lips
but I’m back
stuck on our
record night
poor too I’ve
grown seeking
your thoughts
to know another
one more bird
is even harder
I would rather
kiss than read
your lips I
would rather
go round like
this forever

All Souls Valentine

In the month when the leaves
have to be swept up every day
or they become impenetrable
on the nights when the old people
have to be kept locked up
or they wander away
under the dropped uterus moon
when the dead of the year assemble
and the cat gallops like a pony on the roof
do we have to turn off the lights
and eat our own candy in the dark
while the television flickers
or can we open the door to fear
even if someone who knows how
to raise the dead walks among us
along with these goblins and ghouls

Literary Valentine

In most writing
story is firstborn
then words come
 
but in the poem
Language is born
first and since
 
the story is always
the same it’s just
an excuse for
 
Language to take
center stage
or drive a kayak
 
through meaning’s
white water
for meaning is a
 
kayak’s kayak
which is not what
I started out to say
 
but at first I left the I
out of that last sentence full
disclosure is 75% of the poem today

Bowing Valentine

If you bow to the west
bow to the east also
if you bow to no God
don’t bow to yourself either
we are all worshippers
of someone or some idea
personally I prefer the former
unspeakable the beauty
of most people at some point
on the ride home tonight
what we call happiness
is that two or three seconds
between the depressed past
and the anxious fitful future –
live there with me

Fricking Valentine

In order for things to get
significantly better here
everyone in this world
will have to shut up
and sit down
and put up with a long
embarrassing harangue
administered by one’s own
unmet expectations and other
assorted failures of nerve
and witnessed by all one’s prior
manifestations which will have
everyone laughing
you most of all
until the awful gratitude
we started with returns
the smiles our faces are for
and we can all finally agree
that only love is sane
that only love is real
but that’s not fricking
about to happen I'm afraid
anytime soon

Torn Valentine

Sooner or later
you have to grow
a philosophy about
these terrible things
that keep happening
to you either a conscious
philosophy in which
you reason with
yourself an obviously
torn creature
or an unconscious
philosophy in which
you remain a bitter
or a happy person

Planting the Hibiscus Valentine

Location vocation locution
dig out the old soil
a hole like a womb
how long we waited
lay in well-composed
manure mixed with
some of the old virgin
shovelfuls of loam
use your own imagination
if we wanted to
what flowers would we make
out of our own arms
fingernails and yawns

Flying Valentine

How much do I worry
about quartz countertops
popcorn ceilings startlingly
white teeth teen suicide
perennial plants organ donors
long nose hairs dirty eyeglasses
breaking news fallen asses
wall sconces glaring inconsistencies
phony hallways erotic birds
Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s boots
the interruption reality can be
if these are the things I try
to get in front of as I fly
through the sky
holding your face

Transitional Valentine

In that transitional moment
between the love of my life
and the love of my life
recognizing that what it took
to get here must become
the thing that has to go
that the barking dog
barks to call his master home
not to protect the place
that I missed the bus
and walked from 33^rd
to 142^nd St. that night
transitioning from one
love to another I wrote
them down but they
were all one now gone

Rising Valentine

How many rooftops
in the chill of time
the sun must leap
before it really rises
above the level of
sanctimonious clouds
already hard at work
and comes at last to
my neighbor’s roof
where I wait and watch
first its radiant aura
peering at it from the side
just above the ridge-line
with steep glances yes I say
I am the one over here
in the darkness where
I wait for you to find me
finally rising as you must

Heroic Valentine

For years we remain
oblivious to some central
aspect of ourselves
which if admitted we think
would bring us devastation
and yet backstage the scenarios
swing back and forth on their tracks
holding the promise of growth
for the epic self who can
traverse several species
in a single bound
while all the audience
we are to ourselves applauds
but from a long way down 

Fallen Valentine

Autumn language
mild violence
leaves indoors get dusty
 
the statue in the garden
taking a selfie
its face a sun
 
first there was the idea
of mankind but who
would be fit to carry it out
 
how far ahead
did the gods think
do you think
 
look how carefully they’ve sewn
together the illusion of freedom
with the stitches of love

Tea Party Valentine

Conservatives are preservers
of the past not creators the future
frightens them into stockpiling
lives as righteous hoarders
but the spirit despises cheapness
and the pretense of virtue
as if holiness were a competition
and God played favorites
except he does at times it’s true
even he has to give it up
for a humble man or woman
who has learned to love
for its own sake this world
and the neighbor of the self
as God alone

Thorny Valentine (for D.)

We wrestled that thorny
Palo Verde tree to the ground
you on the roof and me
on the ground we went
round and round sawing
and clipping and tearing
getting our hands torn and
our arms ripped open for five
bushels of thorns and a pile
dragged to the bloody alley
while you cursed me
and I cursed the tree
why didn’t you listen to me
when I told you to kill
that thorny thing a week
after you planted it
but o no you said it was
for the yellow flowers
in the spring stupid
yellow flowers
in the spring

Eclipsed Haiku Valentine #2

You can tell that dove
has been shot at the way
it stays well out of range
 
in the spring and in the fall
hunters fill the woods
until the last thing is killed
 
winter comes to represent
the pollen of the dead
the soul inside each seed
 
in the clearing I thought
my failed loves
could finally evaporate
 
partly the pride I take
in these hollyhocks
keeps me on the earth