Natural Valentine

A strange black
and white cat
cradles at my foot
but won’t be touched
gets up and sidles
over to my other foot
but snarls when I
bow to pet it
meanwhile a fat
grackle is making
all kinds of racket
I don’t know why
pecking at the grass
a few feet away
which the cat
completely ignores
stretching its long
back and curling up
under my seat
as if we were best
friends and had
forever been

Green Valentine

One thing just stands in
for another and so on
until you get to God
or the idea of someone
living in the infinite
luxury of endless ideas
even if you don’t want
to ‘believe in’ God you
can still think the idea
of such a someone which
itself is god-like in a way
and you can have the idea
that we are all just other
ideas that have fallen out
of that first one like ash
fields after a fire through
which green spears arise

Adult Content/Adult Language Valentine

The close family relationships
between honesty and shame
are merely pointed to in language
as father is to son or son
to the incalculable
spirit of things the mood
spread out of a solemn
beauty coming to rest
on eyes turned inward
to disclose an imaginative world
above all animal desire
(poor sinless animals – humans
are the only animals
capable of sin – which is maybe
why we love and fear them both)
but without sin no freedom
and to walk among ideas
as your friends

GPS Valentine

After the freeway
over the perilous bridge
past the trailer park
and the Indian campground
past several streets
still to be excavated
and a small house
cut in half like
a road-kill rabbit
past the town of Consequences
with its smoking dump of guilt
out beyond where a green creek
runs into a yellow lake
and the last shrines to the sun
waver in the wind
wait for me there
pray you have not
taken a wrong turn
that I have not
led you on in vain

Touching Valentine

To cross-pollinate
with all things
to have touched
all men and all
women all trees
and all fragrances
of course would
take centuries and
worlds at enormous
costs and incalculable
obstacles or perhaps
just one thing
done once and for all
one conscious gift
elegant and swift
a flower’s knowledge
an ant’s shouldered leaf
and all that’s fallen
starts to lift

Centaur's Valentine

All Peters are haunted
by threes all peters
are sucked on your knees
let Tourette’s inform my aesthetic
a momentary precognitive blurting
as surly Ur-poem
the way walking unleashes
the dogs of feeling
which really look worse
than miniature centaurs
or are they already
being bred and ridden
never switch centaurs
mid-sentence and yet
you must you know
whatever does not manifest
here manifests there
nothing is lost now
I’ve stopped trying
not to love you

Wave's Valentine

A wave of barking
carries the postman
down our street
like a surfer bowing
and stretching foam
into a sea of discarded
papers their competitive
howling rises and stalls
suspended in silence
and then I can hear the wave
go down the next street over
the pause as it turns the corner
between roars and then
the street after that
and the street after that
as far as the dogs can go

Scientific Valentine

I am the lottery you won
which you have slowly squandered
profligate foolish expenditures
until my love had drained you dry
but then we went to Florida
and saw the hibiscus and the sea
I knew you’d come back to me
there’s always a silliness to life
with a school play’s drone
but what is only personal
seems wrong a life without
an honest witness still not
even scientifically condoned
but I confess I wanted you alone
how love morphs into power
and what happens when
it doesn’t get its own

Infinite Valentine

All the time we thought
we were close we were
actually infinitely distant
and all the time we thought
we were distant actually
we were quite close to it
the questions of
sacred ignorance and
do we have to do everything
every good every evil
just because we can
watching the hummingbird
(so that’s how the unicorn
finally was solved)
listening  to saws

Homeward Valentine

Early every morning
I take you personally
I make a list of names
to remember I am water
I have downhill in me
a racer to death later
I will have my leisure
some bird signals to me
from the alley our agreed-
upon warning we
are not alone but
death is the stealthiest father
first on my list
you on awaking
voices of my dead
to write down here
your continuing words

Small Green Valentine

Inside the dead
shriveled flowers
small green seeds
why am I always
amazed and tickled
like a magic trick
so many more
than could ever
make it now
those that don’t
grow on into
further gardens
upwind from here
where rain resumes
its childhood
and the sun

calls them home

each night

Yourself's Valentine

What you know
about yourself
in one sentence
write that over
and over as they
did back in the day
on the blackboard
as a punishment
a thousand times
I love you because
all I know
about myself
is you (: whoever
you is :)

Belly Valentine

Every morning
I look at my gut
in the mirror
I stand back as if
I was someone else
and assess
flab or muscle
is irrelevant
what I’m looking
for is the state
of the character
of the thing not the
paunch of kindness
or the washboard
of steel it’s just
in this middle
patch of flesh
where the knights
would aim their
shaken spears
I can see what
the future is making
of me inside
like a child

April Valentine

Along my street now
the sparrows are
searching for homes
they look up
under the eaves
and check out
corners you didn’t
know were there
but they don’t
want you to know
what they’re up to
what strength still
lives in them
to live privately
and simply

Fiery Valentine

In the empty yard
a wooden pail
filled with red
geraniums like
a campfire
waiting for us
in the courtyard
of the great
emperor night
our story already
immolated and
ashen there
but flaring up
when it sees us
approaching
still approaching
our lives

Landing Valentine

Climbing the stairs
the first ladybug
of the year
was your voyage
longer than usual
I drove five hours
to see you land
on the peninsula
of my thumb
I love how it takes
you a moment
to tuck your wings
up under your red
carapace when you
land and look around
obviously you can't
see us or you'd run
for your life

Easter Valentine

The little pine tree
is full of new candles
a child cries over and over
I want Mommy
there's a cabbage rose blooming
on my empty coffee cup
and neon green letters
on my ankle socks
the whole world just wants
to be itself this morning
just the way it was
in the beginning
but since it can't
it just wants to cry
for Mommy

Maundy Valentine

We had to give up
on roses and morning
glory sweet William
and the pale plumeria
and settle for nasturtiums
poppies and hollyhocks
we had to give up
on fear useful but
wearing and shame
refined into caring
and settle for living
close to one another
often in silence
often not caring
we had to give up
on love to come
to actual sharing

Pear's Valentine

I ate a pear
I dared
the peach I
could not reach
it wasn’t hard
it was sweet
and soft
the greed we see
is a cognitive
failure the
artificiality of
an intelligence
that cannot
invent a pear
or imagine
a heart

Apocalyptic Valentine

The shadows of the bees
fall along the wall
flitting among the shadows
of the flowering trees
if you look up you
can see the bees themselves
moving among the flowers
and the still-forming leaves
the rivets holding everything
together carefully as a child
holds a flower a red moon
holds the glow of every
sunrise on the earth
for one night one day