Valentine's Poem

ODE TO VALENTINE’S DAY

Hearts and flowers aren’t my friends anymore
They gnaw on my soul.
Feeding on lies and betrayal.
Little rat teeth, their maggoty bodies grow fat.
Squirming.

The bloated corpse of Romance regards me
Empty eye sockets that never saw.
Hanging bits of flesh
Vultures nibble
The future is unknown. Will Romance arise again anew?

I stab Cupid with his own arrow, disemboweling angel flesh.
It trembles in death throes. The promise of love dead.
Feathers of wings scattered on the ground.

I fling both corpses over the cliff.
The vultures scream out into the cloudless blue sky.
Circling in the air and then pouncing once more to feed.
On despair.
The stench is gone.
The pain is dulled.
I walk away.

I rarely read poetry, let alone write it. But my irritation over the "holiday" inspired me to write this poem. I was tired of reading other peoples' sappy sentiments about Valentine's Day. Romance? None in my life.

So, while riding my bike, I thought of what images would be the most vile to counteract the claptrap that I was reading on Facebook, seeing on television and hearing on the radio. My mind was so immersed in images of death and decay that I barely noticed that I was training.

It turned out that writing this poem was wonderfully cathartic. My depression about being alone was eased. I could express the deep pain I felt in an acceptable manner. The words seemed to come out of nowhere. The darkness of the images surprised me. It was different from my usual blog writing in that it was freer and more raw emotionally.

Best of all I could immediately kill off Cupid without the effort of developing a story. I wrote a short story about a murder and it took me months to figure out how he would be killed and who would do it. In a poem, Cupid can be disemboweled in a single sentence. It's utterly wonderful. It takes whining to whole new and violent level.

I am going to visit this medium again. The range of subjects is endless. Divorce, depression, triathlons, loneliness, empty nest? Or maybe a Christmas poem, though disemboweling Santa might be a little too much. Reindeer meat?