Chuck and Jed's V-Poems

Welcome To The Home Of St. Valentine

2005-02-14T23:59:00.000-08:00

Blessed reader:

The poems that follow are an exploration and an affirmation of the glory of human love. For ten years, Chuck and I have striven to find the truth. Yet, somehow, that truth has proven elusive to us. These poems are our best and latest efforts to bring to you, our readers, the truths that we have come to know through our tireless and endless search. Enjoy.

Valentine's Lullaby

2005-02-14T23:05:00.000-08:00

In the second month
the fourteenth day dims.
A frozen shadow grows o'erhead
casting black the Lovers' gaze.
Senseless in their headlong haze
to the icy whisper they will not hear:
The siren song of Valentine
Sung through lips, raw sores incarnadine -
Come to me, my love,
My downey pillow,
My tomb...

For interpretive reading by Jed with piano accompaniment by Chuck click below:
http://members.cox.net/chuckrainey/valentine2-14-05.mp3

Love's Flight

2004-02-14T23:03:00.000-08:00

Love awakes.
From beneath the tangled festering linens
in the dank dungeon where She writhes,
Her eyes gaze with longing at a shaft of light
pouring from freedom's portal.
Bouyed by mirth, the joyous flight from cold darkness,
She ascends the slimy stairs to heaven's light
only to have the dungeon door slammed tight.
She slinks back to her shackles,
Her descent, again, into shadow
limned by images of the giggling grimace of Valentine,
his gnarled knuckles gripping the key.

Valentine's Void

2003-02-14T23:01:00.000-08:00

Today Valentine is in my heart.
Like a cold stone he lies, unmoved and unmoving from yesterday,
and the yesterday before that.
He remains stagnant on this day as he has been for all time.
But today is Valentine's day, the day when he raises one flabby leg heavenward
to expel his gaseous message to the lovers of the earth.
And from the fathomless depths of his great folds of flesh arises the
stifling stench:
The stink of futile longing,
The putrid emanation of purloined purity,
The Rot of Love.

Valentine's Promise

2002-02-14T22:58:00.000-08:00

This morning the shadows hide in fear.
Yet, it is not the stinging rays of their harsh master from which they cower.
For even the Sun shivers, engulfed in a looming blackness.
Saint Valentine has returned!
And even as the forces of darkness cringe, two young Lovers coo and cluck,
Holding hands, oblivious to the afternoon freeze.
Lovers Beware!
Valentine's Promise is the sheath of a knife disguised as a dewy rose.
Once wielded, our lovers will be ended in a bloodless goring,
Awakened from flaxen delusion,
Naked, shivering
In seperate corners of a bowery hotel room:
Valentine's eternal triumph!

A Valentine Vision

2001-02-14T22:57:00.000-08:00

My eyes close on this Darkest of Days with neither poem nor tender word.
And still through heavy lids the stinging visage smoulders on scorched sockets.
For once again, the devil,Valentine, with scarlet cloak and victorious sneer,
From his fiery pit erupts.
Lovers, Beware!
Beneath his cape he conceals a dagger.
Behind his smile - your broken heart.

The Song of Valentine

2000-02-14T22:55:00.000-08:00

Outside the tulips smile unconscious.
Inside the yellow walls wail as the piano commences that familiar aching pall.
'Tis the Song of Valentine,
ascended once again to fill the punchbowl of my heart with his filthy venom,
And I will drink. Oh, yes. I will drink
Valentine, you are the hole where once my heart lay.
Mercy.
Have Mercy.
Pieta!

Valentine's Night

1999-02-14T22:51:00.000-08:00

What cry wafts through my desolate garden on this subconscious morn?
Could it be the stray cat who sighs dead in the mountain lion's hungry teeth on the distant hill?
Perhaps I perceive the relentless gnashing of termites gnawing tirelessly at my withered foundation?
Alas 'tis neither; for today is the Day of Valentine,
and what I hear must be the trembling of Intimacy and Romance,
dressed in their banal trappings of candy red, bemoaning their impending unveiling.
How can the young lovers promenade on the street below
deaf to their dying cries that now blare through the day like a crashing train?
And how, as the daylight wans, can those lovers lie together,
impotent and oblivious, as Valentine's evil symphony's opening ostinato shakes and cracks the black clouds asunder?
And as His Day gives in to Night, do they not hear the sudden shrieking silence as the accursed Valentine, Bastard Son of Love, lifts the glittering scarves from the, alas!, wrinkled heads of his hated stepsisters?
Behold now, Lovers, the rotten corpses of your fallen idols!
Some may be immune to the boiling stench or the scorching horror of this fatal apparition.
Yet all will succumb to the damning truth, the emptying of the heart:
That this Valentine's Night will neither fade nor falter,
But will fester and swell
In its red glare
For all time.

The Curse of Valentino

1998-02-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

This one was so venomous that it was too much even for my weathered heart to reproduce it here. I apologize to those who were subjected to it in '98.

Friday, the Fourteenth

1997-02-14T22:46:00.000-08:00

The sun sets black on the day of love.
The clouds tremble in their terrible triumph.
And yet the Lovers take no heed
For surely a miracle is at hand.
Golden red balloons of Love float down from the darkness.
Valentine's bait is on the hook
And the ignorant fishies are famished.
Ah! How they do froth and blow on the infected, flaccid orbs,
Which have arrived in their hands, alas, slashed and bloody
And still, in their dim desperation, are mistaken for Hope.
Oh! Love! Vile Virus, thou!!
How Valentino does snort and ejaculate as he wields you in his yearly slaughter.
On this Friday, the Fourteenth, Saint Valentine in crimson sequined
cape swoops from the black sun like a carrion bird scooping up the
bloodied hearts of his prey on this darkest of days.
Some may not hear his piercing screech,
Yet He overlooks no one in His universal curse:
Damnation and Despair.
Complete.
Eternal.

Black Wednesday

1996-02-14T22:43:00.000-08:00

A lizard, splayed out in the February swelter, patiently awaits its next meal on a rock in my garden.
But it is not this particular saurian presence that explains the lasting chill in the transient sunshine. No!
'Tis Valentine's Day,
And surely the lecherous, green serpent Valentine lurks in the Garden as well.
Today, Cupid, with hot-pants and a twelve inch Dildo, in the employ of the demon Valentine
Embarks yet again to seduce the masses into Valentine's love induced stupor.
And in the ensuing saturnalia , Valentine, that pernicious Pimp, from the ignorant lovers exacts his eternal payment :
All Happiness; All Hope.
I witness from the corner of my eye the terrible instant flash when tongue meets flesh. Two bulbous, reptilian eyes awake as those of his victim, a passing fly, explode in a death grip.
The lizard kills its prey. Oh yes!
Our Saint leaves a hollow shell.
Broken.
Decayed.

The Sun

1995-06-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

The torpid Sun drags in from the East,
Her pallid rays fire to a weary heart,
Yet no match for the stagnant drops of dew,
so like the fond memories of yesterday
That cling to the grey roses on my window sill.
Directly overhead, her sordid negligee hangs agape;
This one-time lover has come too soon.
She cannot dry the dew, the promises of that Glorious World that will never be mine. And yet how those drops do boil and fester,
when she lounges above them, cheap and spent!
Like stinging acid they rip into my face and ravage my core.
Dry! Vilest memories! Dry!!

Abject misery, my only friend, why do you spit on my withered shadow?
When did this faded view, so bleak and so horrid, become my life?

Soon

1995-05-25T22:37:00.000-07:00

My Longing Burns!
That petulant, patronizing whore, Time, drums her cracked nails on the mildewed nightstand.
My Passion penetrates the clouds like a supernal Mountain!
Black eyes roll back into sunken sockets. Click, Clack, Click, tap the bony fingers.
In Moments, The Eternal Flame of our inevitable reunion will ignite from the depths of our souls!
Rotten teeth chomp a juiceless apple.
And Yet even as that moment triumphs, she will count her pay, bored, and sigh only once.

One Month

1995-05-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

One month till we meet again.
One month of painful anguish without you.
The rose mocks my ache, its drooping pedals a parody of my longing.
The humming bird screeches, the sugary nectar dripping grotesquely from its beak, delighting in the urgency of our impending reunion.
The dam of time is made of concrete and steel.
The wider it becomes, the wilder yet become the waters on either side.
The torrent on this side of the dam rages with desire, and even now threatens to explode forth.
One month till the storm breaks and rages in unbridled fury.
One month till we meet again.

Eternal Winter

1995-02-14T22:04:00.000-08:00

A storm rages outside on this day of love.
So too, in my heart, the bitter clouds of a far away lover gather in a tempestuous knot.
When will the hurricane of unrequited passion subside?
When will the stinging frost melt from my lips, blue with neglect?
How will the ceaseless, biting showers of tears ever be dried?
Will this eternal winter of despair ever give way to Spring?

St. Valentine was a wretch, and he ogles like a mad troll in Hell at the young Lovers
who prepare themselves on this day for a life of unending torment and cold misery.