you stab my back, i'll stab yours

valentine's day is a perfect day
for shattering the crazed imbecility
of True Love.
For smacking around
its childish guilelessness,
its hysterical vanities,
self-deceptions and monomania,
for blinding
its musing, mackerel-faced sentimentality,
and its starry-eyed worship of the
dull possibility of great things.
Both the full-blown condition, and
its less diseased forms,
can meet their deaths gloriously,
on February 14th,
day of darts
and perforated, ruptured hearts.

i've looked in many of the movies
and some of the
greeting and playing cards,
but only in a few dismal
poems and novels
do they have anything to say about
the dark and yawning flip void,
which we sample again and again if
we are either lucky or tricked or fatally flawed,
while searching for
perfect happiness in the loving arms and thoughts
of some
other being's
ephemeral states.
loving is just another crazy word in the vocabulary
of a sick and dangerous animal
that shouldn't bother
trying to
vocalize its madness.
All it can produce is
horrible wet and screechy sounds.
On the annual holiday for celebrating
this sublime, irresistible union
between two sexually compatible monkeys
whose soul purpose is commonly said to be
the pursuit and fruits of love,
called martyred Saint Valentinus' Day,
one can truly lift their hands to the sky
and denounce all of this sad,
destructive foolishness,
and do it
with some glad,
ironic,
sweet candygobbling
finality.

Because enduring, romantic love is not meant to be,
it should not have a crass little holiday.
but it does, if it must, provide the chance
to sever the cord
from this great human swindle,
baby Cupid's weeping dream,
the silver-clouded earthly afterlife
of nibbling at one's sweetheart's earlobes forever,
and hearing here
in the moonlight and there in the sunshine and
the inclement weather
her coos of delight
always in return.
you will feel the shock and honesty
of that callow, flinty strumpet's
eventual distaste for you
on this holiday
in the ass of winter,
and because as a race we know
the value of Delusion and Profit,
and subjection to the churchly calendar,
we intend to celebrate these happy
realizations of the heart
each and every year!

If-you-want-ta-know-about
Romantic Love, lalala,
then ask a blind person what they know
about the new Honda Prius XLE 5010.
they might describe its general shape
and that it has four wheels,
and farts around emitting toxic but
comparatively benign gasses,
and one of them can transport and be the untimely death
of at least one fool at a time,
but beyond that it is all mystery
because it can't be seen
or controlled,
and so is no better
or more worthy than patriotism,
or arbitrary calendar systems
that dwell on human sacrifice
and astrology.

i might prefer a handful of melted chocolate
to the heart of another human being
like me, and the ones I've known.