Moon Day Valentine

The word I can’t recall
Is ‘haze’ being in one
Has the feel of something
Derogatory waiting in the collar
Of the sky yet one mounts
One’s horse one’s cross
With alacrity a horse’s
Dose of blue like a blank hand
Reaching for a nail or whip
But poor punishment is not
Today’s purpose enough
Of the words I know
Give me the ones
I can’t recall

Your Father’s Lost Paintings Valentine

Dancing with my dead mother
To Hall & Oates ‘I can’t
Go for that/no can do’
I find I can but don’t need to
The great thing about life
Is that everything’s always
Becoming something else
Even stillness is a movement
Toward going with the flow
Thus rafting and meditation
And the whole realm of sleep
And the most flowing of all
The warmth of the will
That must be behind it all

Autopsy of Fear Valentine

Here we have the cadaver
Let’s begin with what
It didn’t have the stomach for
A slice down the throat
Reveals the Tuesday when it fled
Here I mean where the backbone
Crumbled into the cage of ribs
Where we find the worm of the lie
By which the heart unraveled
And the lungs collapsed
But maybe you can feel
Hovering above the flesh
The soul of fear
Amazed now and confused
There was anything to fear

Ars Poetica Valentine

A poem leaves
Doubt behind
The way Orpheo
Left Euridice
Though it must
Search for her
Forever finding
Words along the way
That are its own body
Which still needs her
To cherish the doubtful
And what slips away

Time’s Valentine

Who knows the time
Of his passing but
Everyone would like to
And maybe it would be
Better if we did
Think of how it
Would change everything
Like the suddenness of sight
To a blind woman in the street
Would we run home in terror
To consider our options
Like those fish that duck into
Holes when the tide rolls out
Who would we tell
Who would believe us

Burnt Valentine

The rose of the world can see
I’m just cleaning my nose
To enjoy its company the more
Whose scent is the flower’s
Memories of Arles and Provence
Its youth in Damascus
Its long childhood in the fires
Of Lemuria its phantom body
Growing stronger on the roadsides
And the mountain passes of new worlds
And in the burnt woods of spring
Among the first to return
Its thorns protect it
And its scent calls it forth

Fallen Valentine

Only a man
Who could settle
For a blossoming smile
From one who thought
He was blind but
Can see now
A smile that turns
Inward like a searchlight
To catch the pictures
Then outward to touch
His face and the air around him
Because he washed
The mud away
With the smile that sees
It was just mud
Mixed with a little blood
Fallen from his head

Faces Valentine

If either everything
I’ve already accomplished
Or everything I’ve yet
To comprehend good
Or not or both
If I haven’t taken the time
To memorize one line
What will I remember
On the other side
That my soul not die
But join back in
To the whole organized
Chaos of being
Like crowds shoveling into
An underground train
Getting to work
Getting to the hospital
Getting home

Cure’s Valentine

I threw away my glasses
And got new ideas instead
I saw the same music
But now more deliberately
My new glasses
Have a style two
Asterisks referring the reader
To the footnotes swollen
At the bottom of the rage
We are a scrip
Written by a sage
An illness
Buried in a cure

Lost Valentine

If only what is lost
Can be found again
Though no forgetting’s
Random things are
Kept in the background
So something pressing
Can step forward
Memory is seeing that’s
Trying to turn around
Away from what is found
To what is not lost
But hidden because
It steps past time
Is not bound
By any of its seasons

Our Time Valentine

Our time demands
That every woman
And every man
Become a true Greek
Philosopher again
But no one wants to
Give up their phones
And have to think
Their way back upstream
Against fierce inner
And outer currents
Inconvenient shortcuts
But from what does
The world work
So hard to distract us
If not its treasure

Thank You You’re Welcome Valentine

If I forget
To clean her litter-box
She shits on the roof
Of my car says she’s
A squatter asserting
Original nationhood
On which we still depend
And if every creature
Had the right to shit
With dignity how
Much greater it must be
To live with dignity
To feel welcomed
On the earth

Polonian Valentine

Be careful not to put
Yourself first too often
It gets to be a diagnosis
After a few months
Create photographs
In which you can hear
What’s happening
In the real world
Behind the pictures
Jogging the memory
Whose other side waits
But on the receiving end
This time be aware
There is another
Who lives inside you
With not always your
Best interest at heart

Longing Valentine

After a long rain it’s sweet to listen
To the heavy wetness that settles
Heavily into the dry ground
Like a fat man into a hot tub
And what spills over
Dries quickly on the warm walls
And the smell of history gets to rise
Up from the deep earth
Soothing its hatred within
So its muscles relax a little
And a long exhalation
Or exultation ensues
As the rain once so triumphant
Falls asleep like a child in the earth

Civil Valentine Summer 2017

Maybe what we face now
Mirrors the months just before
The Civil War broke out
And the scales were tipping
The northern hypocrisy exposed
And the southern royalists raging
Both falling toward the same fire
The fire of so many lives
Burnt to cinders
Will we let the dictatorship
Of money (the king) rule
Us our slavery today
Still all about money
Or will we learn to live
As one family watching
Out for one another
And get some therapy

Could Valentine

Are you afraid
You’re becoming
Too dependent on me
We all fear dependence
Much more almost
Than our freedom or liberty
Or whatever you want
To call it because
I fear I’m becoming
Too dependent on you
And just when
I was learning
To walk and cry
Out on my own
As I always could

Walkable Valentine

Conscience don’t be too shrill
With me if I drink my fill
Of the world of my will
My guilt is pre-existing
A work-in-progress
Each life packing for the next
Dragging along unnecessary things
As if it was your first naïve voyage
Or war undertaken or avoided
When actually it’s a razor’s
Edge you stare down
On one side civilization
Then a narrow stretch of sand
Still walkable
Then the roaring ocean

Sun Mystery Valentine

What we name levity
Overcomes gravity
What we name gravity
Overcomes levity our tools but
Somehow both
Must hypotenize a third
For which we have a few names
But no description
So let’s call it Victor
La Victoire one who tries
To scale the wall of will
And stand astride the fulcrum
Always flowering
Always forming a new seed
Always gesturing toward the sun

Powerless Valentine

I found something I needed
And not five minutes later
I lost something I loved
Memory’s handing-off of
One thing with another
There’s peace for a moment
In the letting go of the power
To affect any particular outcome
All words are stolen
From the original mouth
As great destinies are spawned
Wondering at our littleness
Our need to be carried along
Our need to die
On the earth we love

All Sevens Valentine

We have our thinking
To understand our feelings
And our feelings to understand
Our desires but none can
Rule alone or gang-up
On the weaker
Thinking decides
If the goal be worthy
While feelings prepare
To throw caution
Out the window

So in the end

The will is all