A Fighters Love Poem

A Fighters Love Poem
– Juan Santiago

My Lady, How do I love thee
well let me count the blows
An offside shot and a flat snap
to earn for you a rose

Cupids combat archers might loose their
flights of arrows to sing me to my rest
but Anti-bounceback devices on those arrows
still lodge deep within my chest

Speak of Florentine as pasta
and I simply get more confused
Isn’t it just using two sticks
on people who need to be abused?

It sounds to me like we’re both
just playing with our food
But why then am I the one
who always ends up bruised?

And Goofy footed dancing
to me is not a galliard
It’s a stance that gives to me
that extra long reaching yard

This fight a shield hook or a sky hook
and for the next maybe a rising snap
and be sure to double check my wallet
as cushion from a painful Radnor Wrap

The angry pillbox legged behind his shield
for me is just Alpo in his new can
but quietly he’ll wait across the field
so I can prove to you that I’m your man

Surely even a swift rapiers lunge
might pierce a beating heart
but loves truest weapons require
even more clever an art

with a stick in my mailed fist
And the smell of fighters in my nose
I’ll go and win for you a crown
And retrieve for you a rose

And when the day reaches it’s ultimate end
After the final fight when to you I will bow
all I will ever need in this world
is a loaf of bread a Jug of Gatorade and thou