Perhaps if you would spread some of that compassion that you feel for your detractors towards me who judges

You have me on the horns of a dilemma, themilum.

If I flatter you, however deserving the praise, there will be those who see you, as "the self-annointed judge", as amenable to flattery, which, of course, you are not.

And, if I accede not to your valued advice by acclaiming not your talents and your virtues, then you will judge me recalcitrant and animated by the negative emotions you have already perceived in my limericks, so that even if I should labor to extirpate from my rhyme any trace of angst, you will judge my output still tainted by ignoble pride, and your judging of my rhyme will be the harsher for it.

But I find myself in no such quandry in accepting your prudent advice that I "condescend" and "flatter" my enemies.

I acknowledge the merits of my 'enemies', themilum, but it is not with "condescension" that I do so, but with alacrity and joyfulness for the gifts they share with us, nor is it with "flattery" that I acknowledge them, but, instead, with sincerity and gratitude.

How I might feel personally about my 'enemies', themilum, has absolutely nothing to do with their wordsmithing or poems or intellectual insights or scholarship or meditations on high principles, so long as that flowering of mind is not befouled by some unprovoked invective or innuendo or injustice directed against me personally, or against anyone else.

For what does the pure essence of a sound have to do with the instrument which gave vent to it, if one is attentive only to the sound itself?

Besides, themilum, my 'enemies" are my 'enemies' in single quotes only. They are only my 'enemies' because they judge me their enemy.

I have no enemies here, themilum. And I am indebted, as I have said, to those who have denounced me as their enemy for they have given me extraordinary cause and ambition to improve myself.

And for that, I salute them.

I can't "defeat" my 'enemies', themilum. Why would I even want to? Like sand in an oyster, they can only bring out the best in me, in every sense of that term.

In any case, they have ever bit as much right to post here peacefully and peaceably as I do -- as you do, as we all do. :)