Thursday, February 15, 2007

A poetic observation on the wretched V-Day (2)

And another one....

In my new home, The Unnameable Country, as in much of East Asia, they have been growing quite besotted with 'Western' festivals over the past few years; and with Valentine's Day in particular.

Last year, things just got CRAZY: almost every street vendor in the city abandoned his or her regular trade to become a florist for a few days beforehand. On The Day itself, everywhere I went, I saw gawky, spotty local youths lying in wait to ambush their sweethearts (mostly equally unattractive, and invariably squealing in schoolgirly delight) with the obligatory love token - a single (plastic-wrapped) rose.

On my way home from a bar at around midnight that night, I noticed one of these roses abandoned in a gutter. Then another. And another. Four or five in the space of a few hundred yards. I could not help but feel a thrill of schadenfreude.

Hence this haiku:


Valentine failures,
Relics of broken romance:
Discarded roses.


And by the way, I decided then that if one day I finally get around to founding my own rock group, I shall call them The Gutter Roses. A good name, no?

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