Post Traumatic Valentine Blues Poem by Kevin Patrick

Like clockwork gift shops become abattoirs
Of heart shaped pummelled tomes
Declaring idioms of faux rhapsody
Through sutured pictures and snaring verses
A good racket for greeting cards working overtime
Labouring over painting rats into doves
To which beguiles the buzzed romantic,
or smash a sceptic in withdrawals

Meanwhile Ribbons hang like entrails
in department stores, in rich ensigns
of pink and red, intertwining melodically
around the season's hottest ticket items;
The Cuddly bear declawed for cuteness
for that girl you planned to cheat ambrosia chocolate escorted by red wine
for the other one you plan to dump.

Malls become arteries of clogged eroticism Signs on store windows, hang gutless hearts
advertising a religion that few have admission to everyone else, its loves skid row Stenciled taunts with polished fonts Hungrily stabbing at starving monks and bums as romantic slogans hammered saying
"for $50 more you can hit him with this poison"



Everywhere the worlds trying to get you stoned
Off on Aphrodite's weed, but it fails,
Leaving you to trudge, through the rut
Of two-bit Romeos and Juliet's
Hustling and bustling of soulmate marionettes
Somehow still believing they found
Their missing feet, in their one true hearts
Just a shame mines jelly stone.


And Drugstores have no cures, their ground zero
Cupid's tricolours sway at half mass
Flaying you with gaudily delightfulness
You walk through twirling balloons organs
Picking leftover scraps in the candy isle
Until you reach for the treat of codeine
Which the six-pack will feel like morphine
And think to yourself this is bliss… until next year appears