valentines

Be My Valentine

 

 

If the greatest virtue we can aspire to is love

And the greatest follies in our lives are due to love

And we can't cure our frenzied malady of love

But all sages exhort us just to love

And pure poison emanates from loss in love

And pure bliss is promised us from lovely love

And what about those horrid beings we just can't love

And what about that horrid feeling of being unloved

So what in heaven/hell is love?

 

 

There is love that sends you dancing

into romantic lunacy

that feels so right and free

There is love that burns so hot and cold

you never know

quite where you are

There is love that holds a whisper

in a cloaked corner of your being

makes you smile in

that secret special way

makes you want to linger

in a lover's fantasy

makes your day

There is love that hurts and hates

and kills any chance of saving

face or heart

burns the bright flame of your essence

into ash

leaves you bleeding, pleading

for any drug or thrill to kill that agony

There is love

indistinguishable from insanity

in any way your twisted mind

will go

There is love that lets you know

you have a soul

because it's growing

magically

What kind of love are you offering

to me?

 

 

I offer you a human love,

not constrained to simple delineation.

Part seeking a confidante face,

to find my hoped for reflection.

Part need for nurturing solace

in uncertain days.

Part desire to be hero, adored

shining spirit in your eyes,

because you spark enduring fire

in mine.

You send my boundaries

leaping.

Your presence increases my

self’s reality,

inspires wider denotation

encompassing we.

Crawling into each other's

place of essence,

breaking through,

It doesn't matter where

I am

when I'm with you.

 

 

 

 

 

Haphazard People

 

 

Mostly pretty ugly, pretty useless, pretty stupid,

not pretty at all.

But how can I discount them when unexpectedly

somebody kind, unreasonably wise, a vision of grace,

undeniably lovely.

How could we account for miracles, unlikely odds

coming through?

Random chaos is enough for human ingenuity

to engineer you or me, or any soldier joe

or social geek.

Who's to say which or any of us is the freak?

I like my lovers half-crazed, bravely strong, and wonder-filled.

A true friend to cry with,

who then can laugh me out of my blues.

I like that she could choose,

and freely cleaves to me.

Haphazard people.

Collisions of lives.

What are the chances we might get it right?

Patty We Hardly Knew Ya

Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of the publishing magnate William Randolf Hearst was kidnapped on 4 February 1974. Two months later Hearst announced that she had joined her captors, the armed radical group, known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and adopted the nom de guerre 'Tania'. Hearst was arrested and convicted of armed robbery and other crimes in 1976, despite her defence lawyer's claims of brainwashing and coersion by her kidnappers

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/picture/2014/feb/04/patty-hearst-photography-us-crime

Patty We Hardly Knew Ya

So they took you from your lover's home -- Steven
who treated you like a child & later wrote memoirs & told them to take anything, but to leave him alone 
& they took you.
& they locked you in a closet & used you for a media campaign to feed the hungry.
You had never known hunger or privation.
You were a princess of the ruling class.
But you had known loneliness.
You learned, finally,
away from your university walls, about revolution.
They called you Tania & plastered your picture on front page reports & post office billboards & 
the Six O'clock News.
Your father wasn't the only Hearst 
who could make the papers.
You became a phenomenon. You became a star.
And the question on everyone's lips was:
"Where is Patty Hearst?"
& some were arrested & some were destroyed & the LA siege was just one of many brutal episodes in a bloody war movie, but you were a star.
& all the "little people" -- the housewives & the students & the laborers of the working class took you as their own & discussed your motives & some applauded you & some said you deserved to be spanked & some said you were just a pawn, but pawn or queen, you were a star -- a media heroine & no one could ignore you as they had 
ignored your wealthy and powerful family.
Month after month you led the headlines.
The FBI was embarrassed 
by false leads on your whereabouts.
All those trained bloodhounds searching for one
little girl playing revolutionary.
It could have been made in Hollywood,
But never in CUBA or CHINA or Viet-Nam.
You were so bold, standing in your beret & rifle 
in front of the SLA trademark
(and we still may wonder on the significance of 
"Symbionese")
Robbing banks in the tradition of Dunaway and Beatty
-- a whirlwind crime spree 
to the glory of the "people."
What did you know of the "people?"
Those who cheered for the circus & those who condemned you at their mid-morning coffee breaks.
Yes, now you belonged to them -- 
no longer the sheltered heiress.
So they found you, the pigs, really quite by accident (the whole investigation being a gaily colored comedy of 
errors)
& brought you to "justice."
& Justice took its time-honored time drawing out the headlines -- arraignment through appeals & exposes 
("New Times features Bill & Emily Harris: 
at home with the fugitives")
And when they asked you for your profession on the 
official forms you ingenuously proclaimed to be 
"an unemployed Urban Guerrilla," which is certainly as valid as an unemployed newspaper heiress.
And Squeaky Fromm tried to shoot the President,
but you were still America's sweetheart -- 
poor little rich girl gone guerrilla.
But then you were reprogrammed and reneged on your revolutionary ways. You cried for joy on being reunited with your "capitalist pig" parents & 
the family dog --
Just like any Long Island JAP or Sacramento 
newspaper heiress back from her hippie jaunt.
And they locked you in your "country club jail" 
like they send a naughty child to her room -- 
"just to teach her a lesson."
And still the interviewers came 
to continue the media comedy.
What fun you had with your "Pardon Me" teeshirt & your jailhouse romance with your guard.
(And Jerry Ford, who Squeaky tried to shoot, had 
pardoned Trickie Dick. And Susan Ford, the First Daughter, married her Secret Service guard.
And it was the era of Post-Watergate when nothing could be too absurd for a world weary public worn out by the Stagflation Wars)
And Waffling Jimmy Earl of the Georgia Peanut Dynasty was in the Whitehouse.
And China was finally invading Viet-Nam
And a fast-talking Orkian 
was the rage of prime time.
And discomania mixed liberally with coke and 'ludes had taken over Amerikkka's youthful zeal.
And Werner Erhard replaced Che Guevara in ex-Yippie Jerry Rubin's heart & so the wheel turns.
& five years after the kidnapping, Patty Hearst finally went home.