The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

The Very Hot Jews planned not to wish you a happy Valentine's Day, because we think too highly of you.

In our not-so-humble opinion, Valentine's Day is about as fantastic as month-old bologna — an opportunity for creatively challenged, time-crunched lovers to buy each other mass-produced cards inscribed with tooth-achingly hackneyed verse. (We suspect, by the by, that said treacly messages are written by Third World sweatshop workers earning mere pennies per sentiment.)

It is no less than an agonizing grade-school popularity contest wherein Garfield valentine cards stand in for votes cast.

It is no more than a caloric orgy for the single folk who buy themselves a giant velevet heart full of chocolates because, damn it, they deserve one, even if they don't have some lame boyfriend to buy one for them that they don't even get around to eating because they're too busy having crazy, passionate sex with him until they both pass out (not that Sera would do that).

It is, furthermore (to the best of Wikipedia's knowledge), a commemoration of this canonized dude named St. Valentine from the Roman era who died rather than give up his passionate Christianity. So, yeah, not our cup of tea, and by cup we mean pint, and by tea we mean beer.

The Very Hot Jews were all set to ignore Valentine's Day, but then it occured to us: We love you.

Seriously, we love you. We love you for reading our weird little blog. We love you for posting your comments, and directing your friends to our site, and erecting small yet intricate shrines to us in your bedrooms. And even if you do none of the things listed in the previous sentence, we still love you. We love you just for laughing at us.

You know what we love you almost as much as? Bacon.

That is why we're taking this opportunity to share our love of bacon with you.

It probably bears mentioning that the Very Hot Jews are super-secular when it comes to the antique dietary laws of the Hebrews. No Kosher bacon, turkey bacon, vegan soy facon or other pig-free palimpsests for us.

Simon, in particular, believes that the manna from heaven referred to in Exodus must have rained down in crispy pink strips. He even subscribes to the exclusive Bacon of the Month Club. At times, his eyes glazing over slightly, he dreams aloud of "Judaism 2.0," with its more modern attitude toward Farmer John products and pornography.

Sera may be a more fickle lover of that sweetest of breakfast meats, but she did have an entire plate of bacon for breakfast this morning — so clearly, when it's on between her and bacon, it's on.

And so we present to you on this, the occasion of St. Valentine sitting in a jail cell waiting to get his head chopped off by the Romans, Simon's sestina on the tender and intimate subject of his Passion of the Pork.

Bacon Sestina

I’ve gripped with trembling fingers luscious pork
The golden, tender flesh of long-banned swine
Reflecting all the while upon the law
Forbidding me from chewing on this fat.
What hateful ancient dictum could declare
A fatwa on this salty meat so crisp?

Myself, I’d best try making my thoughts crisp,
With clarity proclaiming love of pork
And with my greasy lips proudly declare
My gratitude to tasty slaughtered swine
For offering so selflessly its fat
and savory self – there oughta be a law!

Well, so there is. But I’ll defy that law
And any that would bar me from this crisp
Deliciousness, bestreaked with tender fat.
Jehovah would not quarantine the pork,
Brave product of the noble trotting swine.
And this I’ll toward bright heaven now declare!

And as I scan the buffet, too, declare
That flavor is its own unbending law.
And so atop the pantheon go swine,
Their pinkly marbled pieces done up crisp;
A true apotheosis of the pork,
Illuminated manuscripts of fat.

All days, not just one Tuesday, should be fat,
We pleasure-loving creatures now declare,
With Mardi Gras beads fashioned out of pork!
For chewy, crunchy lust is now my law,
And never was a morning ever crisp
That lacked a heaping helping of the swine.

I’ll slap the face of any human swine
Who asks me if I want to chew the fat
But fails to serve me anything that’s crisp —
Then runs to his accountant, to declare
Deductions, loss and income, per the law,
Of which old Caesar makes his barreled pork.

Such metaphors do insult to this pork.
Let us instead heap blessings on the swine!
Speak not to me of the Mosaic law;
All renderings are useless, but for fat.
Let skillets, with their cracklings, declare
Your ban on trayf has been burned to a crisp.

O noble fat! O skillet's sizzling law!
Declare me but an acolyte of swine.
Crisp logic fails — all falls in thrall to pork.