After long, cool winter

Of grey stillness,

Night recedes,

Cold fades.

Frost thaws, dew drops linger,

Pale blossoms appear,

Colour seeps back

Into monochrome world. 

Songs of faraway lands

Are sung by returning flocks.

Scents of earth and plant and beast

Stimulate slumbering impulses.

Sadness previously unobserved,

Illuminated and exposed.

Longing urges once hidden,

Unfrozen and stirring.

Dark thoughts long dormant,

Awoken and energised.

Feelings formerly contained, 

Bubbling up and boiling over.

The glacier melts:

Trickle becomes torrent,

Restless desire

Becomes unstoppable compulsion.

In fractured visions

And fitful dreams,

Comes a dangerous deception:

The bitter illusion, hope.

Fear not:

As all things,

Hope is transient,

It will pass.

The world spins on,

Oblivious,

Uncaring,

Only horrors await.

The harlequin egg silently rests,

No one knows whence it came.

Cracks form in its brittle shell,

Out falls a hideous frame.

Bulbous of head,

Blindly stumbling,

Misshapen limbs

All twitching and fumbling.

A handful of hairs 

Dot its translucent skin,

In small rasping cries

The newborn chick calls its kin.

A squirming, chaotic ensemble then gathers,

A mass of cheeping and flopping;

The grotesquerie continues

And it shows no sign of stopping.

Thousands more eggs,

A delirious horde,

What lunatic instincts 

Are driving them forward? 

Quite suddenly,

Amidst the writhing throng,

Appears a strange figure

With ears oh-so-long.

A flat, upturned nose,

Motley rags on his back,
Protruding front teeth,

And eyes, blank and black.

The gaunt, grinning Rabbit Man

Stands before all,

Like a stretched-out child's drawing:

Pale, gangly and tall.

He sniffs and he listens,

He looks toward the moon,

Then he pulls out a pipe

And he plays a strange tune.

Discordant and jarring,

It's painful to hear,

Yet it summons the chicks

And draws them all near.

The Rabbit Man jigs

In fits and in starts,

Like the pipers of old 

He has captured their hearts.

In shudders and jerks

He leads a parade:

The chicks and the rabbit - 

A bizarre cavalcade.

But the horde is too many

And the babies are crushed,

Flesh caught between toes

And bones stomped to dust.

Onward and onward 

Spins Rabbit Man, oblivious;

Babbling and raving,

His trail gory and hideous.

As the screams of the dying

Blend with his pipe's warbling wails,

Faster and faster

The Rabbit Man flails.

Over the horizon,

Followed closely by the sun,

The strange procession fades,

The ritual is done.

Flowers bloom from the entrails

In their bloody wake,

New life is born

From the chicks’ painful fate.

So give praise and give thanks

To the Herald of Spring,

For we are blind, stumbling chicks all,

And gibbering Rabbit Man, our king.

Stare wistfully

Through the rain-soaked window,

Look back

Through your memories.

Loves lost, missed opportunities,

All those could'ves

And should'ves and of course:

The one that got away.

Sit down, and enjoy

A romantic,

Candle-lit,

Microwave meal for one.

Spend that card and flowers money

On a bottle or two of spirits,

Swiftly fall into

A bitter, drunken stupor.

Stumble into the icy night,

Skulk around seedy bars;

Make small talk

With another loner.

What's wrong with this person,

That they're here by themselves?

They sit there wondering

Exactly the same about you.

Walk the long way home,

The mocking echo

Of your footsteps

Your only partner this night.

Replay all the missed chances

And all the failed attempts,

Do you blame others for your loneliness,

Or do you blame yourself?

Enter your empty home,

It makes no difference what you think

You're cold, alone and isolated,

Down another drink.

Smash the mirror,

Don't bother with the shards.

Collapse on to the bed,

Don't bother with your clothes.

Vomit on the pillow,

Don't bother cleaning it up.

Just curl into a ball

And cry yourself to sleep.

After all,

It's just

Another

Valentine's Day.