Tonight's Poet Corner: Valentinus
Valentinus
by Belinda Roddie
You all know me: I am worthy of your
attention. My grave is plastered over with
paper hearts and doilies. My power comes
from mystery; no one knows if there was only
one of me. My name is scrawled on every
Hallmark card and banner glued to the
glass teeth of a storefront's mouth, sealing
each transaction with a kiss. I am Valentinus -
a saint, let me remind you, a man of God
who slapped his palms across a girl's eyes
and forced her to see her surroundings again.
Asterius was impressed. He smashed his idols
for me, fasted until his stomach caved in, and I
sated the spirit of his belly with holy water,
baptized him while his disorders growled for
sustenance. Claudius, not so thrilled. He
saw how I tied lovers' hands into Christian knots
so husbands wouldn't go to war - or maybe
I was just bitchslapping the concept of
persecution, I don't know - and so he stripped
me of my own grip on mortality. I bear the
bruises and broken bones from heathens' clubs
and stones. My head took a permanent vacation
from my body when the blunt trauma wasn't
good enough to do me in. Somehow, despite
being able to sew my temples back onto my
temple with string, the ache of shattered ribs
and ulnae never exactly goes away. They say
I wrote the girl formerly known as blind a letter,
and I signed it, "Your Valentine." A sweet
little story, I grant you, but is it true? It has
certainly spawned a holiday from its crooked
loins. Chaucer and his friends did wonders for
my legacy - who knows how much the tales
actually lend themselves to authenticity? I've
had many symbols laid in front of my feet
besides X's and O's - the bodies of bonding
birds, a child writhing from an episode
of epilepsy, a rooster - what a cock. I've held
a sun between my palms, warmed up the orb
like clay against my skin. Somehow,
beekeepers dote on me, too; perhaps I protect
their lips from honey lovers' kissing stings. Romance
is not always reciprocal; that goes without saying.
And here I am, with barely a name, or a history,
expected to tell you all to send each other flowers
swaddled in plastic robes. I rise from my alleged
hole in Dublin to apparently command that you give
one final rousing and "original" rendition of the,
"Roses are red, violets are blue" poem, and please
don't make a fuss about how violets aren't actually,
factually blue - there's very much a chance that
Edmund Spenser was colorblind. I'm not exactly
familiar with his background, anyway, but I'm also not
exactly familiar with my mythos. I see my relics
withdrawn from the bleeding earth with a syringe,
carried to the Pope for him to swoon at. He breathed
loudly at the vessel that possibly carried the rust
of my dusty flesh. But if my martyrology fits,
my priorities did not lie in flesh or blood. They lay
in Christ. They lay in the immaterial, the demand
that statues have their faces split open by hammers
and swords. They did not stamp wax approvals onto
boxes of chocolates. I was only interested in the art
of healing. And if that's the case, then all I ask is that,
on my special day, you are healed. May your inner
wounds be treated as tenderly as your outer contusions.
May your heartbreak be mended by personal dogma.
May you find comfort in candlelight, in an overpriced
restaurant, where your smile is lit up in the natural glow
of a catacomb. For that is where we all go in the end,
and our spirits are free to float in the grocery aisle,
where we remember at the last minute: "My God -
couldn't I have purchased this heart-shaped candy coffin
two days later and gotten it for a seventy percent
discount?" In the meantime, don't forget me: Valentinus.
I am worthy of your attention. And I am stubborn enough
to bask in both your adoration and your hate. I'm not
offended by your scoffing, for in Rome, I adjusted to it,
even when it cost me my life. Even when it cost me
my soul. Even when it cost me my remains as they
morphed from scars to scribbled, "Be Mines." Even
when it cost me my story. And despite the vitae,
I suppose I ought to indulge in being inconsistent
for the sake of this commercial consistency.
by Belinda Roddie
You all know me: I am worthy of your
attention. My grave is plastered over with
paper hearts and doilies. My power comes
from mystery; no one knows if there was only
one of me. My name is scrawled on every
Hallmark card and banner glued to the
glass teeth of a storefront's mouth, sealing
each transaction with a kiss. I am Valentinus -
a saint, let me remind you, a man of God
who slapped his palms across a girl's eyes
and forced her to see her surroundings again.
Asterius was impressed. He smashed his idols
for me, fasted until his stomach caved in, and I
sated the spirit of his belly with holy water,
baptized him while his disorders growled for
sustenance. Claudius, not so thrilled. He
saw how I tied lovers' hands into Christian knots
so husbands wouldn't go to war - or maybe
I was just bitchslapping the concept of
persecution, I don't know - and so he stripped
me of my own grip on mortality. I bear the
bruises and broken bones from heathens' clubs
and stones. My head took a permanent vacation
from my body when the blunt trauma wasn't
good enough to do me in. Somehow, despite
being able to sew my temples back onto my
temple with string, the ache of shattered ribs
and ulnae never exactly goes away. They say
I wrote the girl formerly known as blind a letter,
and I signed it, "Your Valentine." A sweet
little story, I grant you, but is it true? It has
certainly spawned a holiday from its crooked
loins. Chaucer and his friends did wonders for
my legacy - who knows how much the tales
actually lend themselves to authenticity? I've
had many symbols laid in front of my feet
besides X's and O's - the bodies of bonding
birds, a child writhing from an episode
of epilepsy, a rooster - what a cock. I've held
a sun between my palms, warmed up the orb
like clay against my skin. Somehow,
beekeepers dote on me, too; perhaps I protect
their lips from honey lovers' kissing stings. Romance
is not always reciprocal; that goes without saying.
And here I am, with barely a name, or a history,
expected to tell you all to send each other flowers
swaddled in plastic robes. I rise from my alleged
hole in Dublin to apparently command that you give
one final rousing and "original" rendition of the,
"Roses are red, violets are blue" poem, and please
don't make a fuss about how violets aren't actually,
factually blue - there's very much a chance that
Edmund Spenser was colorblind. I'm not exactly
familiar with his background, anyway, but I'm also not
exactly familiar with my mythos. I see my relics
withdrawn from the bleeding earth with a syringe,
carried to the Pope for him to swoon at. He breathed
loudly at the vessel that possibly carried the rust
of my dusty flesh. But if my martyrology fits,
my priorities did not lie in flesh or blood. They lay
in Christ. They lay in the immaterial, the demand
that statues have their faces split open by hammers
and swords. They did not stamp wax approvals onto
boxes of chocolates. I was only interested in the art
of healing. And if that's the case, then all I ask is that,
on my special day, you are healed. May your inner
wounds be treated as tenderly as your outer contusions.
May your heartbreak be mended by personal dogma.
May you find comfort in candlelight, in an overpriced
restaurant, where your smile is lit up in the natural glow
of a catacomb. For that is where we all go in the end,
and our spirits are free to float in the grocery aisle,
where we remember at the last minute: "My God -
couldn't I have purchased this heart-shaped candy coffin
two days later and gotten it for a seventy percent
discount?" In the meantime, don't forget me: Valentinus.
I am worthy of your attention. And I am stubborn enough
to bask in both your adoration and your hate. I'm not
offended by your scoffing, for in Rome, I adjusted to it,
even when it cost me my life. Even when it cost me
my soul. Even when it cost me my remains as they
morphed from scars to scribbled, "Be Mines." Even
when it cost me my story. And despite the vitae,
I suppose I ought to indulge in being inconsistent
for the sake of this commercial consistency.
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