You buy flowers and a card as an excuse to write a poem, even though you're single.

2. When " How Do I love you, let me count the ways"... And you literally lost count.

3. When Cupid calls you corny.

4. When you make a poem out of those little heart candies.

5. Cupid throws up a little in his mouth after reading your exceedingly sweet sonnet.

6. You bought your kid Valentines day cards for his class and wrote haiku's on every one.

7. You ponder the box of chocolates, and how it is like life, though it sounds familiar, you title your poem "Life is Like a Box of Chocolates".

8. You buy roses and a card filled with your sweet words for your ex, though she calls you a stalker, you are glad she called you.

9. You recite Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, and you're in the shower.

10. You suddenly bulk up on Pablo Neruda, ready to take on the romantic world.

11.As you look at your hellopoetry site while driving, you see a smear of blood on the windshield, two small wings, and what looks like a bow and arrow.

12. When you write a poem and have no one to give it to, suddenly Mom is the best Valentine ever.

13. When you go on the big date, secretly you have your own penand paper in your back pocket, writing verses when you excuse yourself from the dinner table.

14. When you write a poem for your wife, your side girlfriend and your mistress, just because it feels romantic, it is Valentines after all.

15. When you give the wrong poem to your wife, instead of the mistress.

16. Your girlfriend is suddenly a diabetic due to your sweet poem.

17.When you write a poem on hellopoetry and dedicate it to your Valentine, even though you don't have one.

18. When you buy yourself roses and a box of chocolate, write a beautiful poem to yourself, you might be a romantic poet.

19. When your secret admirer is you, the secret poems don't have the same effect.

20. Last but no least, you might be a poet when you wonder if Cupid is lonely and write an invite in the form of a sonnet to see if the little guy will join you for a poetry reading.

At this hour the walls are black,
They breathe with apparitions as
The sky splits open,
     I am alone as the sun dial walks
Across the stone bodies,
    Where there were once streets and homes
Now lay in waste filled with your
Silhouette of silver memory,
Vast as my Earth at the crossroads
Of eight directions I walk through
a gallery of echoes and the infamy
Of the present,
And the verbiage of the moment carries
       Your luminous spectre,
A master of reflections,
     The dialogue of a lonely poet....

I am but a poem haunted by your ghost,
petrified by the frame of your spectral silhouette.

With the sun settling down,
The huge candor of the dusk settles
In on its spectral enchantments
And its usual "Only God could have done this",
Portico: Where the day is meditated
And the sigh of humbled gratitude sets in,
As the stars form
Across the eyes and her hand
In your own,
It is simply good to have a moment
Between the day,the sky,
and everything in between.

Over the wide cold earth,
You walk back to the door,
By the fleeting pain I endure,
I don't know whether to open
Or close this chapter.
     You come lukewarm in color
And shivering with guilt,
My heart yearns to open the door,
From a word yet to he spoken,
      The essential within which was us
Before you left,
You wear a coat of tears as your
Hand placed flat against the door,
     I feel its presence
And place mine the same.
How much of the soul
      Do you want to **** in me,
To forgive you, to hold you?
Should this be the final sky
    From whence ocean tides once
Touched us, even as gentle air,
Should I open the door in full anguish
In this flowering sorrow,
    My heart nostalgic and broken?

I, who longed to be someone else,
To weigh my words in the scales
Of judgments, to read poetry,
To hand  out my own,
Will see the world invade even here
In this place, once thought to be
An Eden of words, a place to begin again.
I see that I am at last here to face
My destiny, carried by the ruinous envy
And hatred in a war of words,
The intricate labyrinth that are verses
Designed to weave their way through
A site where philosophical change
Of the human condition can be
Discovered and even nurtured
Through words is being held hostage
By those who would not sacrifice ego's
Grasp to better the world around them.

I am an honest man,
With my open book of lies
That my poetry is a kind of reflection
On the life I have been blessed to see,
That poetry is the key to dealing
With all my years, to see the perfection
In desolation that was the beauty of
Some mysterious higher power,
That in the lampshade I write the
Eternal nocturne and I see the world's
true faces, I wait for the circle to close.

And the war of self should not spread
To those whom seek refuge from
Inner shadows, to spar with words is a ridicule
To this artful mirror.
Bow the wars of the self have spread
To poets, and the truth of poetry
Is not that of hope, but something
Much more powerful, the true nature
Of the person, which is animalistic
No matter the pretty words.
And the truth crosses my throat
As a jaded knife,
Poetry wars, oh the humanity.

High voltage poetics,
       Planting words seeds
In a field of nomadic minds,
     In a sky of dreams
Bursting above the magnetic stars,
      The skin of words
Peeled from flesh of life,
        The page is a silken weave,
The words threaded in a void,
        Syllable construction
Of a spiraling flame that invents
      A city
In a day
     In a life
In a person-

    The thought deconstructed
Into metaphysical metaphorical,
    Musical mandolins,
The mandolinist touches the foreheads,
     A pack of wild people
In the wild city nocturnal,
     The spectrum of voices
In a rainbow of verbiage,
      A wonderful desolation
As the hours fly as a writer flies,
       The Sunstone's dial
Burns time at the crossroads of midnight,
     We are a gallery of echoes,
Our history lives today
    Hushed into memory,
Diaphanous vision
    Accumulated into the mind
Vast as the moment,
     The mirrors reflect the Word
And the Word is life,
      Reasons are a geometric anomaly
With morality at the center
Of the theoretical poem:

   I choose to inspire,
Which means to live and observe
Daily reconstructing in the poems,
      But the poem is not truth;
Poetry like history is made,
    Eyes of language,
The truth is to walk it,
Inspired to live and the dream
Is written in verse.

It's stayed stuck in my eyes,
The vision of you walking home
As the old school buses, sluggish
And scattered yellow passed
You by on the infinite road.

     I wasn't following you, I smile.
You don't know how crystal clear
     I remember you.

From the bottom of my soul
A fresh evocative scent forms,
One I can see ,touch, and hear,
I could smell it even today,
I take it with me everyday
Under the maddened carousel
        Of this life.

I am the same wild guy
     Who brought you to his side years ago,
In those moments we are forever.

Sleep now, my daughters of fire,
I have removed the teeth from
The flowers, in your dream there
Will he a crystalline home
At the bottom of the sea.

Your hair like morning dew,
Glistening like constellations,
I have prepared your bed
With sheets of earth and a quilt
Of smooth butterfly wings.

Sleep now, my daughters of fire,
I will watch your dreams from here,
I will be the star you follow home,
You will play in a sea as blue
As the day sky as fish wink at you
Both in a meadow of coral meadows
Riding the sea horses to visit golden fish.

A heavenly body will watch over you,
Sleep now daughters of fire,
The night dove has come to sing
You to sleep, a celestial dream awaits
You, and when you return,
A father will be just as grateful.

Man, whatever bleakness has named
You, I have never seen your face.

I imagine you rugged and more....
More than I had been for her.

I imagine she sees strength in you like
A stone on a mountaintop: loftily perched.

And your hands that have stolen my embraces,
I imagine them smoother than my calloused
Fingers,

My jealousies grow as you see in this poem,
It kills me, every verse that I imagine you....

Are you like this?
Is this the unimaginable lust she has for you,

Are your ears ringing now,
Do you even acknowledge me as her man?

Tell me, tell me if you held her through death,
Did she cry herself to sleep in your arms?

When you see your destiny,
Is she among the constellations you foretell?

I am sure you are quite the lover,
You who now kiss the woman I had before,

You who hold her in adoration,
Perhaps you know why I wanted to live,

Because you have stolen all good from me,
All the hope I had from this verse,

In petrification of my soul
I confess to you I am a broken man.

What divine intervention will seek you out?
Will karma let you be as happy as I was?

In a myriad of solemn thoughts,
I am at a loss for the wrath I hope vengeance has for you.

But treat her well,
Kiss her methodically and with purpose,

And maybe she will show her angelic eyes
Which promise forever, quietly whispering:

I will be here with you always,
So that when the promise has penetrated you,

The divinity you feel at the comfort of her
Lifetime of promised cherishing,

Maybe she will find something else
In another promise of another soul,

Only this thought eases the heavy bitterness
Left in my procession of days.

For now move forward,
Because I am paralysed,

And to the other man,
The burden of me writing this poem.

Emptying memory:
        The sun does not block out
The stars,
        The soul did not absorb them
The water vanishes the fire,
       Petrified light,
Executed dust of old flesh
      In a tomb of earthly thoughts;
The Sol centrally corners the eye,
     Blinded by the word
In a litany of days,
     Crushed hopes fall on nocturnal
Flesh,
     Old as Cain and Abel
As smooth as assassin pagans,
        Kissing the eclipses
In a fit of rage on a wounded bird,
     Theatre of peoples
In a cosmic garden
     Impaling moons
And guillotining the planets,
      Eating fire on burning lips,
A thirst for living water
     And a wisp of gentle air,
A swarm of deities with
Overgrown origins in a circus
        Of faithful,
    The sanctum was exploded
With idealistic dogs licking
     Their own *****,
The amphitheater of man
     Stained with repetitive slow thoughts,
Drunk with light
Hidden in shadows.