Ah Yes, Lady Justice has Come a’Knocking (wbiro's Defense)

I remember it well, like a fog in the rain,
like the beating of dutiful windshield wipers
against a blanch blizzard of inscrutable frozen flakes of snow,
clearing for me a dim access through a mad Mother Nature…

Actually, it all began with a topless dancer…

At least that’s what she said she was,
after I’d ‘known’ her for a while here-
she was probably giving me a test-
to see if I was the harbinger of infatuation,
love, ego or lust amid the hailstorm of man/woman relations…
then a hot, erotic, forbidden virtual encounter (to her) (writing collaboration to me)
and a new area of writing and exploration into human existence
opened itself up to me, the perils yet unsuspected…


Once my life was simple, peaceful, mirthful.
Women were distant objects, to be marveled,
revered, appreciated, feared.
I kept my writing material far clear from that perilous path,
choosing gender-neutral social, psychological, and scientific topics.
I would say I was happy, my heart at ease, my mind at rest,
only ruffled now and then by a bit of politics.
So little did I know of matters of the heart.
I did not know a heart-tug from a toothbrush.

Then the storm clouds gathered,
as they will with a 25:1 female:male ratio on this site,
for, as peaceful, reserved, and non-entified as one may try to be,
the hooks of inter-gender relations flail this way and that,
and it is only a matter of time before one is hooked,
all over.

It was like being invited to a dinner.
A many, many-coursed dinner.
Way too many,
and, as I unfortunately discovered,
I was utterly starving…

It all began in fun, innocently enough-
a daughter of a friend here giving me a link
to an AP Husband contest of a friend of hers.
The husband-seeking wife was only 17, with three AP daughters.
I won, with the novel approach of writing three letters to the three daughters,
as if I were a father away on business… Three Letters for Three Daughters



Now to interject some defense here, you will not find any evidence in my piece of the statements in the comments of my accusatory piece- specifically that I was one who 'willi-nilly played for hearts' (as many do) or that I merely plied my romantic word trade with no thought as to their effects, ala an early Robert Bolin, or even that I was a total loser of a husband (but that is subjective) not to mention that I should lose my head over said accusations!



All this was happening during the heyday of 'AP Families'.
AP families were sprouting up everywhere-
and by people with a need to be poetic, no less;
newly discovering that they could create virtual families and relationships,
whether they be light, deep, serious, fun, literary or social.

So it was that I became caught up in the wave of good feeling-
First a poetry wife and three poetry daughters;
then a few AP aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, grandmothers,
countless nieces, nephews, granddaughters,
great-granddaughters, great-great granddaughters,
I even ran a contest for an AP mother;
then there was an honorary mother, a partner of the afterlife,
even a group of AP drinking buddies, among other creative gatherings…
yes, soon every waking moment was spent either writing or socializing,
keeping up with name changes, personal details, fun facts,
even imparting my wisdom to those whom life had thrown a curve or two…

Amid all of this I received a straight-forward request, “Would you be my husband?”
What made this quite interesting is that this was from the AP wife of my AP wife… (this would be Lady)
now in the physical world that would have challenges all its own,
here on AP, as part of the newly fledging Internet world of relations,
no one on earth knew what the challenges would be.
Not one to shy away from a challenge, I said, “Sure, why not!”
Now tie this in to many other relations that were getting very demanding,
and, being one to try and keep everyone happy,
I simply had a nervous breakdown.

My new wife wife’s wife offered to back out of our new arrangement, and I agreed. That was our 24 hour marriage.
I needed to back away, having plunged in to the realm of the heart too broadly and too fast.
It made for great writing, and even greater insight into human existence,
but it was exhausting.

Several weeks later I returned to AP, mended as much as anyone could ever be,
after having one’s heart torn in one hundred different directions,
and, not being able to deliver, possibly breaking as many hearts in the process
(assuming anyone really cared for a relationship with me,
for, knowing me, I would not know why!).

After all of that, did I wisely say “Never again?”

No! Oh, fool am I before the goddess of love!
I thought I did not give my wife’s wife (Lady) a chance,
so when she held a husband contest, I entered.
I won, and we ‘married’ again.
Soon, however, my AP world was once again a cacophony of voices,
emotions, ups, downs, ecstasy and heartbreak.

Sitting quietly on the side was Lady of Avalon, my new wife.

Until, I suspect, she had enough!
“I want a divorce!” she flatly said.
Well, I could see why she requested this,
I could not be everything to everybody,
and she had come a bit late in my AP social life,
soon all to become a disaster anyhow,
and come plummeting down in a million dying embers…

So, like a small stone at the peak of a precipice,
little by little the avalanche of social disaster began-
one soured relation after another.
Soon the battleground for my AP social life
was littered with the dead and dying.

Perhaps in life, one thing can make us happy for only a limited time,
and that is why people move on.
Most people, I think, had moved on by this time-
I found the disappearance of AP families being fondly listed on pages,
and with the upgraded AP, no more fond notes passed between poet pages.
So, there I was, clinging to a dead past,
with the largest author page on the site, credited to the AP family craze.
Until it broke.

Literally.

Crashed, because it became too big.

So I created a fanciful “AP Archive” out of these first two years,
and fondly placed my repaired AP page, replete with everyone in it, there.
I suspect they had all too nice to tell me AP familes were passé,
and please could I take their name off my page,
as it is embarrassingly out of fashion…



Now, I cannot deny that the lack of attention was a factor
in the Lady's divorce request, but “abandonment” is a bit harsh.
Another factor was that, while some here on AP are merely looking for a purely literary relationship, as I was,
others have in mind taking their AP relationships beyond AP
and into the real world, as Lady was accustomed to,
and this is where I believe our true differences lay.

Now, let it be known that, though I may have been involved
(collaborated) with too many women,
it was for purely literary purposes, which few understood,
and which fewer hearts are built to cope with.

Note that LadyofAvalon did select TWO husbands from that husband contest of hers…
one of which was himself abandoned by the very Lady looking to punish me for same 'crime'!
So she is not free of said guilt herself…

Our relationship had its up’s and down’s, like any tested relationship over time.
At the end we did have a heated, winless discussion,
where I perhaps unfairly stated that I was here only to write
and that she was here only to socialize,
unfairly stated, for we are all here for both to a certain degree,
and perhaps it is in the degree that we varied in the end,
maybe even from the beginning.

Have I learned any lessons?
Of course, yet others cannot penetrate these thick walls,
while still others pass right through more airy cerebral spaces,
so I, aye, we, are doomed to repeat many follies over and over again…
My lesson? It is that it is not necessary to try for a girl’s affection
to have a working relationship.

So it was. Friends. Affections. Lovers. Unfriends.
My purpose was collaborations,
but that was quite a challenge, not understood by all,
and these new Internet relations understood by no one.
It is still a frontier.



“Writing begins with a feeling” I now say,
and I believe feelings are what are expected soon in this piece,
for you must be thinking that I have deeply-held feelings on the matter.
So without further ado, let me retrieve those feelings,
both in a broad sense and to the Lady herself,
depicting this site as both a blessing and a curse,
as is perhaps all of life…



Wait! A minor case point:
I just read that the Lady IM’d me last week and I did not reply…
I do not see it, but I do see a new AP ‘upgrade’-
where all IM’s are deleted after three weeks.
Sad, to lose the correspondence of a poet so quickly…
Now since I’m am on closer to once in every three weeks nowadays
as opposed to every three minute in the past
I suppose I'll be missing messages…
and in regards to messages, I would say that in some ways
I have reverted to my natural antisocial self-
rarely responding to any messages from anyone-
making my life here lonely and bleak indeed,
but free of complications…
so the Lady was not singled out in this respect, as she felt.




So, where was I? Oh yes,
drawing up those feelings that most represent an era sadly gone by…

So, to those inscrutible feelings on the case at hand
here is an equally inscrutible poem...


"Twilight Nights of Fanciful Scenes, Bitterness, and Crumbling Dreams"

Love came in a limousine,
once a dream, then true.
Not sought, yet arrived.
Once arrived, twisted and transformed
into clawing demons
and beasts that devoured.

It was a new day yesterday.
Today I had to leave.
I was a Sunday feeling
on a Monday morning.
A slow mountain trying to sprout
in a hurrying city.

Many twilight nights
of imaginings,
fanciful scenes
duly captured with a wistful pen and feelings…
what more could one desire?

Alas, there was more.
The unattainable…
and love crashes.
Dreams crumble.
A bitterness arises
in the sweet summer night air,
and days scorch our feet
with the hot stones of tomorrow.

Who was I then?
who am I now?
Love was born,
then lost.
There is nothing to say
inside the son of a season.
shall I cry you a song
and play it in time
ringing the bells of towers
in blossoming fields?

Shall I grow old
on a park bench
smearing greasy fingers
on shabby clothes
while eyeing little girls
with bad intent,
spitting out pieces
of my broken luck?

Maybe scream in agony
as I rattle my last words
past clattering teeth
buried in an icy gray beard
so long it is tucked into my boots…

As I ponder aloud
upon all of God’s creations,
I wonder if Hillary should run for President…

So let us have another dance
upon the raised neon floor
scuffed with the echoes of lives shed in shadows,
tracing the steps of uncertainties across the faces of time
that mirror hearts once intertwined
as their virtual kisses evaporate
into the hazy mists of imprecise memory
and become lost among a distant mountain thunder…






Now, let me present my final argument to this case:

That LadyofAvalon cannot hold against me the very same 'crime' that she herself has committed, as evidenced in poor Leo2’s testimony in the comment area of her accusatory piece no less! (Poor Leo, the other husband that she selected, and subsequently abandoned, on that fateful day…)

Therefore, her case must be dismissed, as I will forward here that we are all guilty of this ‘crime’ to someone, somewhere, in one unsuspecting way or another; so 'crime' it is not, but simply a common human shortcoming that may improve given a little Darwinian natural selection, good science, poetic insight, and the grace of God…