Judging by the grocery store aisles that have been festooned with pink and red crap since December 26th and have now entered some kind of marketing overdrive where Twilight-themed chocolates have replaced the once-ubiquitous "Be Mine" candies, we must be coming up on Valentine's Day. To be honest, Valentine's Day was never my favorite holiday — too many commercially-created expectations, if you ask me — but now that I have kids, I enjoy it a lot more than I used to. It's a great excuse to shower my boys with a little extra sappiness, perhaps even in the form of . . . incredibly bad poetry.
If you've been looking for something to replace the "Roses are red, violets are etc" in your kid's Valentine, here's a selection of deeply ridiculous poems I wrote when my kids were younger. It's almost disturbing how these are all still true today:
Did you know you are my heart
did you know you fill me with happiness
did you know you are my everything
did you know, my dear, oh did you
know
It is 5:30 in the freaking morning?
GO.
BACK.
TO.
SLEEP.
:::
No offense
but if you were on Survivor
you would get voted off
first.
They would say you had a strong personality
but they would really mean
that you were too whiny
wouldn’t eat the coconuts
sucked at the puzzles
and couldn’t swim for shit.
:::
It seems unfair
that on top of all the responsibilities
the worry
the guilt
the raw, tender love
I have to clip your goddamn fingernails, too.
:::
I was wondering what
your ingredient label would read
(if you had such a thing)
and I decided it would
include:
– Summer grass
– Thorn-bushes
– Labrador puppies
– Blue skies
– Treacherous seas
– High thread count sheets
– Electric eels
– Warm chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven
– Poop
– Sunshine
Exact content amounts would
vary, of course
depending on
various
things.
:::
Today you ran
full tilt
directly into my knees
and hugged me.
And I was like,
whoah
be careful!
But I didn’t really want you to be careful
if that meant
not doing it again.
:::
Hey! Let’s flap our arms!
Hey! Let’s play with trucks!
Hey! Let’s scream with joy!
Hey! Let’s run real fast!
Hey! Let’s start crying for no reason whatsoever!
Wait.
Damn.
And it was going so well.
:::
Sometimes I want to put you in a spaceship
and push “Destination: Mars”
and wave goodbye to you my sweet
and pray for those unsuspecting Martians.
But then you smile
and laugh with me.
And I say oh okay
you can stay.
Those Martians
don’t deserve you
anyway.
:::
I love you more than my heart has room for
so my love spills everywhere
I am a Love Valdez
because of you. Baby mine.
:::
Whenever I hold your tiny, eager hands
I think
Please
oh please
Let me be so lucky
to hold your hands throughout the years
Let me hold your reluctant, older hands
and remember the days
when they were tiny.
