Lucy Vickery

What’s not to love

In Competition No. 3085 you were invited to submit a poem in dispraise of Valentine’s Day. The day is said to have its roots in the Roman pagan festival of Lupercalia. But one scholar has proposed the theory that it was Chaucer who first designated 14 February as a day of love in his poem ‘The Parlement of Foules’, and I wondered if any of you would come up with a Chaucer-ian pastiche (you didn’t).

The challenge certainly struck a chord, though, and you captured the ghastliness well: mediocre, overpriced dinners, chocolate genitalia, nasty cards — or no cards at all… A consolatory handshake to Fiona Pitt-Kethley, Susan McLean, Hamish Wilson, Robert Schechter and Mike Morrison, who were unlucky losers. The winners, printed below, pocket £25.

A curse upon thee, Valentine —
Thou saint of woe and strife,
Who gave me leisure to repine
Of what I loved but was not mine —
Who stole away my life.
 
I raise a wall of years, months, hours,
As strong as prison stone,
That shields me from your hearts and flowers
Your lovers’ vows and perfumed bowers.
I am a rock, alone.
 
Blank diary page shows ‘Feb Fourteen’,
A date so grimly gay.
That card from bold Miss Everdene
I would that I had never seen!
A curse upon this day!
Frank Upton
 
For the mated or unmated,
14 February’s grim.
Roman priest decapitated?
Bloody perfect eponym.
 
In a box shaped like no heart
That ever beat in any breast,
The calories are off the chart
At stern tradition’s sweet behest.
 
For those with floral allergies,
The posies are a perfect pain,
And cognitive abilities
Can dwindle from too much champagne.
 
The theme, allegedly, is love,
About which everyone’s confused.
When red push comes to satin shove,
A heart of flesh is not amused.
Chris O’Carroll
 
Each day I place you on a plinth,
But why must I, with fervent gush,
Praise this one, full of shallow synth,
And chocolate hearts, and velvet plush,
 
To kowtow to the unseen Shogun
That orders orgies of this pap,
That sells each vacuitic slogan,
Each load of recrudescent crap?
 
Are lovers now so Gadarene
That they must drown in scented wax,
All wrapped in polyethylene,
To bring on bogus ‘heart’ attacks?
 
My dear, of course I’ll genuflect
At this pink, nihilistic shrine —
Such sentiments we’ll each confect:
But let them, please, be anodyne.

























































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