The Ides of February

While nursing pain of liquor'd sort from yesternight's drunken cavort.

I happened on a little frog as he was perched upon his log.

Ghosted and devoid of and bliss while waiting for his princess kiss.

"What ails thee?" said I, still besotted, by whiskey fumes my throat garrotted.

"Ah, Cupid! Do what thou does best: you've loosed thy arrow in my chest.

And now, before the wound can clot, flee without a second shot."

"Who says this is my lowly way?" said I, events in disarray.

"Why, foolish cherub, one and all. Thy steps retrace, thou'll be appalled.

"From melancholy ingénues, to Capulets and Montagues.

To brutes unfussed by anything until they know thy arrow's sting.

"Souls content to go without before you end their peaceful drought,

And jilted lovers long forgot, thy name incurs a murder plot.

" 'Vagrant! Villain! Errant knave!' they cry, your fickle blood they crave.

Be thy aim reliable this claim would be deniable.

"Alas, I know quite otherwise, and thus thee I too so despise."

"Forgive me, poor amphibian. My memory's in oblivion."

With arm raised high above my head, I hoisted polished glass and said,

With reeking breath of rankest offal, "Behold my only love—the bottle."

"Emptier than all combined. I've known no single valentine.

No sweet nothings whispered here. And yet their wrath I'm supposed to fear?

"They tell me all their tawdry pain and take hope in romance in vain.

'Hopeless romantic', there's a phrase. Redundant as 'a scorching blaze.'

" 'O weep, my soul. Persistent ache.' Bemoaning every heart that breaks.

Each blighted affection told in kiss, each florid complaint so soon dismissed.

"If blood they crave, then have it they shall! But not satisfaction nor lethal morale.

My charge, a nightmare! A bouquet of shit! Forswear it I do, this horror...I quit!"

Hurled and crashed glass did upon log, murdering that poor little frog.

Green turned to red, and rage to guilt, for every drop of his blood I spilt.

An unfinished sonnet addressed to no one I took from my quiver, never to be done.

I recite not its contents, it matters not now. Just needed page on which to endow

My crimes, my confession, my saccharine vice. I commit this account with sugar and spice.

The heart that breaks the worst it seems is that which whimpers instead of screams.

And so with arrows tipped with hearts, my tender flesh I long to part.

Across the street and down the lane. Ah! There's that yawing open vein.

Weeping red, not angry though. Relieved I am to see it flow.

Leave my wounds with all due haste. This sacrifice be not a waste.

To wax pathetic, thou shall see, I leave this tragic elegy.

Poetry writ in blood eclipsed, expired with sorrows on my lips.

I hope I die before I wake, and pray this penance lovers take.

Goodbye, cruel world! I shall not see the tainted Ides of February.