Royal Rhodes: My Love is Like a Six-Foot Rose
(“Extreme' Blooms Offered for Valentine's Day")
Behold, "a six-foot rose from Ecuador"
for those who do not think that less is more,
can be delivered to your lover's door.
Forget the simple baby's-breath bouquet.
Like fast-food fries we'll supersize today.
Three hundred bucks a bunch –"sheer wealth" display.
Each crimson bud, three inches high and wide,
comes wrapped, but ready to display with pride:
60 petals each, when cut and dried.
The Andes and the rich Equator's soil
produced this crop of hybrids, born from toil,
year-round – cool nights and sunlight set to boil.
A hundred days brought forth each giant bloom
whose stems, as thick as digits, fill a room
of wedding guests and dwarf the bride and groom.
Men will buy them for their massive size,
so jumbo that their love will shriek with cries,
although the fragrance only beckons flies.
And what container's large enough, we note,
to hold this rose? A love that's like a boat
or New Year's Tournament of Roses float.
Hormones or altered genes have never born
such floral monsters, leaving love forlorn.
I pricked myself upon its mammoth thorn!
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
L.A. Mereoie: Letters Of Love
When spring at last is manifest
And birds begin to court and nest
The human heart hears its behest
So, when the arrow pierced John’s breast
It left him full of zip and zest.
It also left him slightly stressed.
For all lads, north south, east or west,
This question has to be addressed −
Which chat-up line will be the best
To leave the chosen one impressed?
Here, need and fortune coalesced.
The day he faced the crucial test
Her tee-shirt bore a printed jest
John ‘s cue to risk a small request
And murmur, “May I read your chest?”
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Tom Vaughan: Feet
If I knelt down
and washed your feet
would your heart miss
a single beat?
Were I allowed
to lick your sole
clean, would you lose
your self-control –
say yes to walk
life’s road together
sans sports shoes or
protecting leather?
Would you judge such
heel-holding cool
or meriting
your ridicule?
Do you dare to put
your toes on show?
All life’s on hold
until I know . . .
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Michael R. Burch: A Serious Matter
Listen, love, it’s a serious matter:
I love you better despite the fetter.
I love you madder than any hatter.
Now even though you’re my chains’ begetter
and keep me your slave with that braless sweater,
I love you better despite the fetter.
You say you’re afraid that you’re getting “fatter,”
but your curves are my lust’s prime aider and abettor.
Listen, love, it’s a serious matter.
I love you madder than any hatter.
When you come to bed in sheer lace, my thoughts scatter:
first to the firmer, then to the latter.
I love you better despite the fetter.
I love you madder than any hatter.
Listen, love, it’s a serious matter!
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Max Gutmann: Planet of Love
Venus, our neighbor that lies toward the sun,
Is a sultry and amorous spot;
The astrologers tell us our passion and fun
Are engendered right there, where it’s hot.
She’s the brightest of stars yet she’s hidden in cloud,
So her pull on our psyches is double,
An enticing enigma concealed in her shroud
And, like all such allurements, big trouble.
To the faithfully married, the word from above
About passionate partnership stings.
There’s a planet we’re told governs all earthly love,
And it isn’t the one with the rings.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Tony Dawson: Narcissus And Echo
It was Narcissus that took the first selfie
when he caught sight of himself in a pool.
Though he came from a place close to Delphi
the ephebic young man was a fool.
A nymph from the mountain called Echo
who hung on a speaker’s last word,
rushed down to take a quick dekko,
as she searched for the person she’d heard.
The nymph fell in love with his beautiful face
though the young fella had beaten her to it.
The Greek myth gave rise to the unusual case
of each being smitten with the same twit!
So, Narcissus and Echo started pining away:
he rather floridly, she with little to say, to say . . .
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
L. A. Mereoie: Suit Of Print
“I am a Garamond woman. Not least
because someone once said that
you can't tell lies in Garamond.”
- Correspondent
To win his lady, young Leander tried
A swim across the Hellespont–
No Herring Pond, and yet, alas, he died.
A safer way is . . . choice of font?
That sizzling brunette or brainy blonde
Disdains designs not pure and plain?
Just catalogue her charms in Garamond
You smitten stanza-spawning swain.
Or, now that rhyming billet-doux and styles,
Of typeface have been mostly X-ed,
Abandon all such antiquated wiles
And simply send the girl a text?
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Royal Rhodes: Cupid Comes Again
(A Valentine verse in terza rima)
Cupid faced our monetary mess:
a free-fall market and a limp libido.
He tried his tricks: a trickle-down caress,
a plunging neckline Dow, supply-side Speedo,
Botox lips and massive liposuction,
jetting bankers to the sunny Lido,
breast enhancement or a rate reduction.
Nothing worked, not even little pills,
the purple kind, whose chilling, grim instruction
warns us that prolonged tumescence kills.
Four hours are the limit. Such is sex
these days, the body's punch-clock sends out bills
for too much pleasure. Time-accounting wrecks
the fun that primed and pumped up wealthy Cupid.
Is there some way to purge this Wall Street hex?
Something silly, comical, and stupid?
Something that the GOP would do?
That's it! A dance revival starring Cupid!
His band, The New Erotics, like the Goo
Goo Dolls, will tour from Vegas out to Frisco.
Forget the Boss, Cobain, and Motley Crue.
Our lover boy is resurrecting DISCO!
Stayin' Alive with mirrored, spinning balls,
and moves so smooth they seem like liquid Crisco.
Wrap-up Rap and Rock. Travolta calls!
Amor vincit omnia! It's clear.
Bell-bottoms reappear on guys and dolls.
So once again St. Valentine's is here!
