The Poet Stalker was written as a caricature of the eloquent men who pursued a talented and popular poetess I knew. I thought it a clever bit of self-deprecating humor that my betters might dismiss as trite and which my peers would see as harmless fun. As it turned out, the joke was on me.
In the introduction to the poem, I stated without proof that talent attracts talent and celebrity attracts stalkers, and wondered whether it followed that a talented celebrity attracts talented stalkers. Unfortunately, my guess turned out to be a good one. The poem earned me the praise of my peers and cost me the lasting commitment of my very own, very talented stalker.
I tried to laugh it off for a while, but eventually admitted to myself that I couldn't. Although I kept my composure and refrained from taking down my poems in a panic, I did not write another poem in over a year. I don't know whether I would write such a poem now, so perhaps it is just as well that I wrote it then. It is, after all, my first (and, to date, my only) piece of humeur noir.