Fertile Fruits

O Valentinus, pray, that we might breathe on Love’s embers
In the ashes of commitment and sacrifice
May your intercession – like strips of knotted goat hide –
Lash from us our infidelity and Foe Malign
He the genderless, contracept, and abortifacient…
Sterile Master of Our Times.
And may our prayers, joined to your faithfulness and martyrdom
Banish him entirely,
Our foreheads marked not for Pan, but The Scapegoat
Smeared with His blood and vital milk of She Who Bears Us.
Great Mother, may our flock number as the stars
In celestial Lupercalia
And outnumber the bleating horde who – through ignorance or vice –
Would our suicide, complete.

Love Enkindled

For The Lonely, O Celebrant in Chains, would your archer’s prayers
Skewer those hearts whom Providence would mold as one
May it be Prudence guides Cupid’s darts
No less the fiery for their passion, but his aim mediated
By The Ancient Love who bore him;
That blazing Agape consume Eros sooner
And that the bodies of sweethearts everywhere would tend first
To the discipline charity asks of them and which chastity answers

Before The Feast

Psyche’s Ascent

If you may, Great Valentine of Ours, pray that our Soul – with Psyche –
May in love, stand the trials set before us
Through gates narrow and stygian waters
Tumbling about the underworld of weatherworn love.
May the Divine Assistance sort our wheat from our chaff,
Finding us worthy of Love and Life Eternal.
And may the sweetness of the honey we find in the dark places of our worlds
Rise with our Winged Queen’s prayers on thermals warm
To appease he at the gates:
Four-faced cherub who with fiery blade guards The Return;
That chastened by true love we might die to self
And reclaim our place on The Life Tree
Joining our sacrifices to He, who formed us in mud and remade us in blood;
And to our forebears too: holy tīpuna and saints who
Have not succumbed to the lies of the lifeless
And who wait to usher in a Brand-New Eden

O Renegade Celebrant
O Cupid Renewed
O Martyr in Love

…Saint Valentine,
Pray for us.