Wonderful
Is
Literal, describing you.
Lovely,
Is what I feel
Around
My love.

May I lay to rest
While I still might be missed,
And my unaccomplished dreams
May be spoken of,
Not my successful mediocrities
Forgotten--
When my potential may
Be actualized in the
Generous imagination of
Those who mourn
Instead of my living disappointment
Realized in old age,
When none of this amounts
To anything more than
The life of a person
Served better by early death
Of breath
Than by early death
Of spirit.

Intelligent is less than what we
Need, remember this is your body
Agency only to change more
Delight in hardship
Evolve during a single lifetime
Questions are for the slow
Understand to obey, not to comprehend
"Active lifestyle," synonym for
The never-
Ending diet.

Our face speaks
The language of nuance

Our bodies are fluent
In passion

choked cries are the liberated
Voices of pain

And hands the messengers
Of desire

Spoken word the refuge
Of a race too frightened
By such pure communication
Diluting speech to seek
Diplomacy over truth
Security over vulnerability

That I could say more
Than everything
By the angle of my expression
Rather than the constructed
Words of a language
Never designed to explain
The intangible.
For how better to articulate
Nonexistence
Than with the untouchable chill
Of a downcast iris against
An arched brow,
Not betraying the
Complexity of human emotion
With the word
"disappointed".

But what happens
when what you do
cannot be erased?

You keep going.

And what happens
when you run
out of space?

You start again.

But what happens
when you tire?

You rest.

And what happens
when you die?

You smile.

And what happens
when all you make
is absolute ****?

You learn to love the losers
and embrace the imperfect
for its honesty.

Because I am 60 percent persistence
and 10 percent talent
leaving me a 70 percent artist
in a world of 110,
which is a constant state
of adequate
in a world of miraculous.

And I can try to convince myself
that the remaining 30 percent
isn't emptiness.

It's potential.

I wish that you would lift my chin
with the tender underbelly of your middle knuckle
of your pointer finger
and that you would trace the line
of my strawberry lips
with the fingerprint of your thumb
softly memorizing the asymmetry
of a face not fit to model but somehow
fit to be deserving of your touch

I wish that you would brush my cheek
with the tips of your eyelashes
as they flutter to sleep next to me
your breath soft and steady
like a gentle wave expanding and receding
on the pale shore of my bare neck
whispering life into a cold shoulder
that softens at the cool warmth
of an unapologetic slumber.