How do I love thee? Let me count the dead things.
When Elisabeth Barrett Browning penned the words “… if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death,” I’m pretty sure she didn’t intend that you should kill things for her. I can see how that might have been misinterpreted given that courtship is more like Goddess worship and we all know that divine beings love dead things. As a classic poem capturing the nature of love, only the last line, taken out of context, describes the rites and expectations of romantic culture.
The problem in a dinner date isn’t about who is going to pay for it, I believe the real issue is that you didn’t go out and kill the fucking thing yourself to lay it at her feet. Now that independent women can buy their own food the ante has been raised. The purchase of slaughter by proxy has lost its value and the standards of worship have increased.
The consumerism of modern dating is conspicuous. A woman requires evidence that you have resources and are willing to expend large sums of them, preferably on items with no intrinsic value — with which to decorate her person as proof that you will honor no other Gods before her. It’s a pantheon out there with other Deities who may steal your worship away, and she is a jealous God.
There are two divine battles being waged; acquiring the adoration of numerous worshippers whilst making sure they follow her covenant of rules, and the battle to defeat other rivals who might offer a better harvest. Hence the importance of rule number one: Worship no other Gods before me or, as the Highlander would say: “There can be only One.”
So here I sit in meditation, preparing myself to approach her altar. Cold sweat trickles down my side and over my belly as I run through the checklist of my offering. Mistakes can be deadly. I’ve learned the rules of approach so well I can recite them by heart. Avert your eyes; It is foolish to stare directly into the sun for too long and her beauty will overwhelm me if I try.
Only enter her presence in a state of purity; anoint myself in pleasant oils before entering the temple and think only clean thoughts because she is omnipotent and reads minds. Not only are my thoughts bare before her, she knows them better than I do. If I break a rule, I’m smote. If it’s a bad day she’ll have the whole tribe wiped out. I shall keep no false idols (titty pics) and shall never worship at the shrine of a lesser divinity. I will offer regular sacrifices of the approved sort, preferably flowers which have been severed from their life giving stems so that they may sit and decay on her kitchen table. This is an important ritual, as it reminds us not only that beauty exists to serve her but that she enjoys watching life wither away before her eyes.
The flowers should accurately represent her own perfection and remind us that, whilst they rot in a vase she survives, immortal, to throw their corpses in the trash. She is not a God to be fucked with.
Why am I enduring such uncertainty and cowering to please such a cruel being? How can such a malevolent, narcissistic creature be called a loving god? Certainly these queries have been made, but the questioner is quickly brim-stoned and cast from the sight of others. These outcasts now find their numbers growing because she is such a wrathful and vengeful god and we are mere humans. They have left the Temple of Twat, abandoned the Altar of Arse, shunned the Shrine of Snatch, and have formed the Coven of Cloven Foot Soldiers called the MHRM.
I scratched out the following words in a moment of inspiration. It’s simple as poems should be and proposes a change to the meaningless sacrificial rituals of servitude to which we’ve become so accustomed. This is my soliloquy to the value of life over death.
Please Don’t Bring Me Dead Things Anymore
A fire burned smouldering embers
Of lost amour; your sweet whispers
As you placed dead things at my door
Like the mouse my cat left so
Lovingly in the old shoe on my porch.
I felt guilty.
I thought I should put it in a jar.
That’s what one is supposed to do with
Such things.
Those blossoms that once dripped dew
And offered their beauty to
The morning light.
Now severed and decaying on my stoop
Because you thought me pretty.
I waited until you left before
I cremated them.
The embers glowed greedily for
Pretty things.
I wiped off the rot from their stems residing
On the tips of my fingers.
At least it wasn’t a mouse.
Perhaps the next one will bring me
A plant.
