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Standing In Line for the Beast (New Issues Poetry & Prose)

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This is really the supreme solution for when you're illin'.

Compare to a rabbit that sings in a tuneful way.

Better than a hedgehog, but not better than a hedgehog that has taken a bite out of Billy Corgan, Billy Collins, or Billy Dee Williams.

Its vibrations are reminiscent of the Sonicare 6000.

I have neither sent nor received
a valentine since well-nigh on the third
grade when small paper rectangles displaying
the Pink Ranger and Fozzie Bear and no
less than three hearts in varying shades of
red and pink actually meant something.
And of course by something I mean very
little because really all that they were was
just another form of a popularity contest,
just a ruse to see whose heart shaped, glitter
coated envelope would receive the most
patronage, which would have most fully
glutted itself upon heart shaped stickers
by the end of homeroom but there was never
any point to this contest because you knew
before it began just exactly who was going
to walk away with the most pink-foil
wrapped Hershey's chocolate hearts
and who was going to get exactly one
package of gummy Lifesavers from the kid
whose mother made himorher give a valentine
to every kid and not just the pretty, rich
ones who could afford to plop a big
condescending candy bar in every box and
smile because they know that Lifesaver is
a terrible metaphor as well as a terrible
candy because though there is, I will grant,
a degree of similarity in the shape of the thing,
when it invokes an awareness that you are,
in fact, alone and hopeless in a vast pink
ocean of people who may or may not actually
love each other more than they love those chalky
heart candies with poorly annotated messages
of mild affection, and that your only hope
of rescue lies in one small, vaguely dusty tasting
sort of candy, it really ceases to be anything
salvific and just becomes a little bit sad. Sad,
especially because middle school is supposed to
prepare you for what the world is like beyond
homeroom and sad because, really, it is, and
when you have the misfortune of realizing this
you also have the misfortune of realizing that
the whole rest of your life is going to be one
long succession of popularity contests to be
won or rather lost based on whether or not
you happen to be able to afford the good candy
bars or if you are the more bargain-bin, last
year's cartoon show valentines sort of kid/
adult who never quite managed to breach
the role and I suppose what I'm trying to
say is that even if you are someone who
has someone, or if you are someone with
the big candy, Valentine's Day can still
manage, all too often, to be a rather sad,
bleak, lonely, and generally oppressive
sort of holiday, and so: from one writer
of long, rambly, lonely sounding but
hopefully also beautiful and honest sorts
of poems to another: You are not alone
in your poignant observation of a less
than beautiful world. You are lovely and-
in a completely platonic, non-creepy,
sort of way - You are loved.