Stalker's Lament—sonnet #NationalPoetryMonth

"I Want You," the ballad of a creep, first debuted on this album.

Has anyone ever shown way too much interest in you? Has anyone ever treated you as an object rather than as a human?  Without going into the particulars, I can tell you that one such hollow manchild wanted me for his trinket. On a campus of thousands, he invaded my real estate. He routinely followed me into the dining hall and sat down next to me uninvited. He waited for me in the corridor to the restroom I used after Philosophy 101 each Tuesday and Thursday. Once, he crept out of some laurel hedges near the gym to surprise me. He crawled into the corner of my eye.

One night, while listening to the original Napoleon Dynamite in my (locked) dorm room,  "I Want You" came on for the millionth time. But I heard it for the first time.

Somehow this time I understood the desperate nature of the lyrics and how they eerily applied to this creepy dude. It finally clicked that his attentions were not indicative of affection. In fact, they were 180 degrees shy of respect and headed due north for danger. Stunned, I tried to shake him.

Remembering this, I imagined what the thoughts of today's paranoid obsessive freshman might look like in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet.* I don't know why. It just seemed like the thing to do.

Stalker's Lament

Why do I think to text you every day?
It is because you really should be here.
When I return, I'll make sure you will stay.
To lose you once again would tweak my fear.
Your face appears with every bud I smoke.
Your scent pervades each room like piny wood
you said goodbye 'for good' when we last spoke
you needed space and 'hoped I understood.'
I'll grasp the slippery string of your balloon
give up heart and soul as weights for ballast
Don't float away; I'll pluck you from the moon
and claw you back to Earth with fingers calloused.
You disappeared as quickly as a dream.
I'll capture you in videos I stream.

*Shakespearean sonnets are insanely fun to write (not only when writing from the vantage point of a disturbed mind!)  14 lines composed of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Iambic pentameter. The couplet often serves as an epiphany. It usually arrives in the form of a conclusion, amplification, or even refutation of the previous three stanzas. Write one and pretend you're the Bard himself.