valentine is a martyr. or is it ‘was’--
because he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter
imprisoned for caring about the marriages
of his soldiers...

the present, feb 14, valentine's day
    
where the couples celebrate
and kiss one another with glee, lipstick and wine
staining skin, like roses,
rotting in the pretty glass vases of this house that
have become the symbol of the addiction to
a lovely shade of lust

and where do the single people go for sanctuary,
to hide away from the flocks of married men and women
& teenager couples
with their fingers interlaced,
the celebration coursing through their veins;
    
love really is a losing game
full of gambles
    
i think i finally
feel like valentine
    
forever &
loving

it is said that
“when once you have tasted flight,
you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,
for there you have been, and there you will always long to return”
& i have never felt the same way.

the sky: broad & open as it is,
her great blue beauty
will never have the same grit &
smell that dirt gifts me.

i’d rather kneel on the pavement beneath me
than suffer the misery of clipping my wings.
because i’d rather seep into the soil
than have the stratosphere melt away my freedom.
i would have the earth eat my bones
than dissolve as a fleeting cloud

if i ever die,

please turn me into a blade of grass,
amongst mud & rubble,
perhaps in a cemetery
or a meadow.
maybe i’d become a sapling
growing in a park
or a rock, unearthed.

i’d be more at home with that;
tethered to this world
rather than a fleeting moment in the sky
in the air,
in the wind.

this world is mud-luscious &
puddle-wonderful
so the sky cannot be the only
limit