Valentine’s Day Poem Mark 3.0

Author's Starting Note

As we approach another Valentine's Day, I am reminded once again of how I would commemorate the holiday in years past: through poetry.

Specifically, poetry I would print and hand out to my coworkers at the office, completed with the autograph of a published poet (me), while they handed out traditional cards and candy. However, rather than discussing the obvious subject matter, my poems offered alternative takes on the holiday, from escapism to cynicism to this, the third annual rendition, which focuses on self-love and self-actualization.

And lucky you, I'm sharing what I consider the best of the three. One I put much thought into, starting with hand drafting it in the journal where I keep all my "serious" poetry.

A seriousness that is likely undercut by it rhyming, but that also made the decision to self-publish it here fairly easy; no literary journal seems to take rhyming poetry these days.

So here it is, the poem that graced my coworkers' desks on a fated February 14, 2020:

Valentine’s Day Poem Mark 3.0

Each year, it comes without fail.

A day to celebrate and commiserate

everyone’s rosy lover’s tale

—or for those alone to lament their fate.

.

Every year, it, too, arrives,

a poem, freshly written, right to your desk.

Full of this author’s diatribes

against displays insincere and grotesque.

.

Yes, it’s easy to hide behind commercialism

and its willing accomplice cynicism.

But this year, I thought I’d examine individualism

and deliver some new witticisms.

.

Much too often

in this hyper-connected society,

the emphasis is on the taken

and not on the self, the “me.”

.

Yes, relationships are important,

and their benefits can range far.

But all the more potent

is finding peace with that which you are.

.

This inner calm, this center,

requires great fortitude to find

for you must be willing to enter

the deepest recesses of the mind.

.

A greater trial will come:

what you uncover, you must accept.

Otherwise, you gain no wisdom,

and only denial will you have kept.

.

Your triumphs will be easiest to swallow,

times when will and values succeeded.

In your failures, you may wallow,

but this coming to terms is needed.

.

Amid the good and bad, you near the core,

the scale on which your actions are decided.

Understand this, and you know all the more

why certain memories are invited

and others derided.

.

So this Valentine’s Day

I invite those who are alone

to consider what I have to say

and look inward to that great unknown.

.

Ignore the envy and doubt hurled

your way, for in life, only two constants exist:

the mystery of this world

and the self that navigates through it.

.

With utmost professional sentiment,

[This is where I would have signed the printed out poem]