City of Legends

(I wrote this hours ago and saved it, by accident, as a draft…won’t Candy be surprised! Now I feel I have to write yet another post…and add some new poetry over on Amomancer…)

Okay…let me clarify.

I have known the most elegant lady for several years, as a nodding and casual acquaintance.

I will be the first to admit that within moments of first encountering her and her work on Authors Den I was somewhat smitten, a state that did not ease with my continued reading of her works (I subscribed to her updates at AD and was always informed when she posted something new). She is brilliant and mercurial, intense and dark and sweet and exotic. A wonderful blend of spices too numerous and rare to appreciate with just words.

But, at the time she was married and even though my own pseudo-marriage was grinding to a bizarre death, I had made an oath to never again, for myself or another, violate the bonds of marriage (ahem…shhhh!).

I hung back, and she drifted away and soon after her divorce (okay, not overnight but I was busy licking my own wounds, thank you very much) she found another and I would not have imposed upon that for anything, I faded into the background, merely occasionally taking note of a new work or a surname change on her part.

Fast forward to this past summer when I find out her latest marriage was dead and having earth dumped over it. I did my best to position myself near the graveyard, trying not to look too opportunistic, and she made note of me. She acknowledged me. Me. (Double-take worthy of a Warner Brothers’ cartoon)

What passed over the next couple of months was a bizarre ballet of free spirits trying to define their role in the world and each others’ spheres. At times she encouraged me to seek other company. At times I would creep back into the shadows to nurse a bruised ego (and when an ego my size gets bruised, according to legend, we’re talking bruises the size of the "Cloverfield" monster’s right testicle). But I was resolute that I should, at least, linger at the periphery, hoping against hope that she might have the grace to bestow her favour upon me. Hell, a smile would be nice.

When we write our biography, it will be a strange and amusing series of chapters as to how we danced around it all. I am amazed we figured it all out, worked it all out, in the face of our own doubts, our wounds, our own human natures and those who would have warned us off or blatantly sabotaged us and our own hypergolic natures. By the way: You wasted your energy.

::fwooooosh::

But the fire burns and I, everyday, find her more charming, brilliant, magical, beautiful, desirable and miraculous than the day before. I want nothing less than to spend the rest of my life trying to make her as happy as she can be without keeling over from a massive attack of joy.

This love is what I have been waiting for, for oh so long, this is what the night has been for, to appreciate the light she brings into every corner of my being. This is the mantle I tried to place on every woman who entered orbit around me but who could not find a commonality to sustain us or a heat great enough to burn us beautiful. This is why I am a poet, to say things that might please her, that might frame all she is to me so that others can see that the fairy tale is nt only possible, it is real.

I love her without requite, without limit and without end.

But don’t worry, I still exist and I shall write and I still hold strong views on many topics, I am just deliriously drunk on Candy’s love and my love for her. I’m going to take a few decades and give her the proper treatment so many failed to.

I invite you all to join me when next month, in honor of the lady’s birthday, I realize my latest book, "As such", which is a collection of poems I wrote during our courtship. There’s some good stuff in there.

And (tapping chest) there’s now some good stuff in there, too.