Love, doomed, unrequited,
relentless, disastrous,
compulsively obsessed,
is for some whimsical reason
more passion provocative
than the fulfilled, happy, and
sweetly sublime, successful love story.
We are moved to identify with
the tragic heroes and heroines;
and follow Helen’s lesson in betrayed betrayals.

The soldiers of intellect
battle the warriors of feeling
and there are no winners;
but a stalemate of wasted energies
on a battlefield of relationships,
fought in a war of partners.

The needs frustration cannot be met—
symbiosis has given way to control strategy.
In the Aphrodite contest
and the many stages of Venus
we applaud looks above all.
The art of the glimpse—
a one second information session
that tells us biologically
to propel towards the stimulus of glamour.
Everyone else—stay out of the way.