BE A VALENTINE VALENTINO

It’s not easy being a guy, eh?

No matter how hard we try, the women in our lives seem to expect something more. We’re not romantic, they say. We don’t have a tinge of sweetness in our bodies. We don’t have a thing for spontaneously amorous ideas. We always want everything calculated and planned. We love our cars more than how we love them. We would rather watch Monday Night Football than take them out to dinner. We are not capable of the slightest romance ever.

Surely, we all have been chastised with one or more of the condemnations mentioned above. But we know for a fact that when we give our heart to someone, we plan to back it up with our lives. Us guys, we love completely, truthfully, unconditionally. Maybe we’re not just good in expressing them in clear, unequivocal terms and deeds.

So Valentine’s is fast approaching, and you do know how girls feel about that day, right? Yes, they may forget the fact that flowers are more expensive during such a season, and that the queue in the flower shop would take some literal hours to conquer. And they may forget that we can’t buy them that bottle of perfume as our budgets have yet to recover from Christmas which was less than two months ago. But they need to be pleased. They’re our girls, after all.

So what are you to do? What special gift could you give her that: a) won’t reduce your budget to ruins; and b) would make her feel like the most special girl in the world, because in your heart, she is?

Here’s a suggestion that I hope you’d take seriously, comrade. Write her a love poem.

In the days of yore, men wrote sonnets and odes to immortalize their beloveds in lines and verses that are as fair as the maidens of their lives. There is no reason why this couldn’t be observed in this day and age. With every word will thump our passion, with every line would flow our love, and with every stanza would beat our hearts. A love poem is something unconventional, something special, something which she would never, ever forget.

What’s that I hear? You don’t write poetry, you say?

There lies the beauty of trying it out, dear friend. Whatever you come up with, no matter how lovely or how contrite, would most certainly be appreciated by the woman in your life! It’s the effort behind the lines you will manage to write that would shine, and this would never fail.

But of course, every effort must be made to come up with a presentable poem. So below are some guidelines that would help you craft a masterpiece, or at the very least, a poem that you could be proud of.

• List down the aspects of your relationship. What about her do you love? Among these, what do you love the most? Why are you so sure about her? Why do you want to be with her forever?
• List down the things you want to do for her, as well as the things you are capable of doing for the love you have for her.
• List down the things you want to tell her.

These should serve as the materials for your love poem. Now, the next step would be to integrate them in some verses. You could try one of two approaches: a poem that rhymes, or a free verse. The former would follow some rhyme schemes, while the latter can be expressed anyway you want.

To illustrate, let’s try a poem that rhymes. Supposing you like her eyes the most, and that you’d travel great distances just to see her eyes, and you want to wake up every morning to see her lovely eyes in peaceful slumber… then you have the fodder for your poem!

Of all that is beautiful about you
I love your eyes the most
And my life I will give just to see them every morn
And savor you, the woman I chose

Easy, isn’t it? Practice makes perfect though, and you would need to read and reread what you will write. Make some necessary adjustments until your poem sound just right. After all, you would want to give her the best of you, and this involves the best that you could come up with.