Erich Fromm’s ‘Art of Loving’ is the book
I never read in teenage years before
I fell madly in love with just one look
and so often after I’m not quite sure
why I placed trust in lust in the first place –
experiencing shame; and mistaken,
diving head first, landing flat on my face
far away from Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ –
one less travelled; the path I didn’t see;
though pain taught me to be less short-sighted,
self-loathing, desperate, unhappily
driven by lust; my love unrequited –
and here Shakespeare has described my plight well;
heaven’s attraction had kept me in hell.

First published by Poets Online June 2017