Love's Stratagems Twenty Years Later

With apologies to Donald Justice


All their patience exhausted,
No longer do they touch hands.
Their love seems to be accosted
By time and tedium
And the other’s petty demands.
There is no happy medium.

Strong words are often needed,
Used as verbal foils
When arguments become heated.
Once lovers, they now are foes,
And neither recoils
When words turn to blows.


--Boris Victor Stecko