A Valentine’s Day Garland

For all my lovers,
past, present, and future.

I gave my love a Valentine. She sent it to another. But each one more to whom it’s sent enriches all the other. We draw love from a pitcher, ever full to overflowing. Receiving love or taking it, we don’t know where we’re going.

If I gave to you my chocolate heart would you bite off a chunk and swallow it down? If I sent it to you by Royal Mail would you tell the postman: Return to sender? If I sent it to you by electronic mail would you instruct your program to delete it as spam? If I planted it in your garden would you root it out and toss it on to the bonfire with all the weeds?

If I stop sending it to you each St Valentine’s Day will you ever wake this morning wondering where it had got to? If I hold it here for you for ever in my breast will you ever learn to come and dance to its heart-beat?

A birthday Valentine February Comes around Eternity Where we’re bound Once more New year You’re there I’m here Heather springs Under foot Tomorrow’s bloom Taking root Skylark sings Just the same Melody Of your name Corn sleeps Under ground Harvest Lost and found Seasons change Warm and cold New tales To be told

Dark flower Deep song Sweet power Sing along Walks in beauty Day and night In my heart Shines a light Happy since Knowing you Memory Ever new Celebrate Every day Blessed now Come what may

A garden Valentine My heart is a garden and you, you are the gardener. Without your tending it grew wild and weed-strewn, trampled down by intrusive feet, brambled and withered, a place for wire worms and slugs to do their slimy worst. The sun shines through the branches that are your arms. Your leaves go from green to gold to scarlet to brown, a mulch that fertilises the ground I tread on. And then green again as each morning blossoms into a new spring. And so I have transplanted my heart into this token of my desire. Take it; embrace it; water it with your laughter. Tomorrow, who knows? It may bear even sweeter fruit.

Our hearts are time machines warping the fabric of love to their own devices; colouring black holes with the blood-red sword of memory. No one may escape this eternal now where even light loops back illuminating the dancing of my tattooed flesh with the different drumming of a choir come out of Africa. Our very DNA is encoded with genetic errors which mutate each monstrous chrysalis into the dazzling brilliance of butterfly wings.

All days become Valentines and each year leaps into the space between the twelfth and thirteenth chimes of our pulsebeat. We are one singularity, a strange footprint in the sands of this deserted beach. Let us run into the waves and drown once again in the eternal oneness of infinity.

My neon heart A scarlet tree blossoms in my blood Red as the God of War

I’d give to you my neon heart. It blazes over the Piccadilly Circus of my capital. A scarlet tree blossoms in my blood and my dreams stand rampant over your sleeping form. The night is full of stars, red as the God of War. A network of canals funnels the transactions of my memory across a planetary sky. The circling universe is reflected in the dark pools of your eyes, event horizons from which nothing may escape, nor would they wish to. I’d paint your name in letters none but you can read, since you planted them like arrows in my breast. I’d throw this alphabet into the sky, and astrologers would try to read its entrails in sands we once walked across to a salt sea to be baptised in. And love comes down like a dove from an opening in the cloud. The Jordan valley runs dry, waiting for our destiny to pull down the rains again upon the famished earth.

Let’s be foolish one more time People said we must be crazy Cos you are you and I am me The past is dark and the future’s hazy Today’s as far as I can see But let’s be foolish one more time A love like ours is no great crime There’s too much sense and sensibility Let’s love the best of our ability And let’s be foolish one more time. People said we should know better At our age love is in the past The sky is black and stormy weather Let’s nail our colours to the mast. So let’s be foolish once again Be foolish like we can’t remember when We learned the right way to grow up Though love can be a bitter cup Please let’s be foolish once again. I’ll cast my hat above the rooftops Not caring where it lands or how Not knowing how love starts or stops Living in the eternal now And let’s be foolish ever more Tomorrow’s just an open door Let’s open up its possibility Make it into a probability And let’s be foolish ever more. November 24, 2012

Take 2 – I actually prefer this version to the one I originally placed on Youtube BELOW: Take 2 video on Youtube