If a frame is worth a thousand words,
And still by all accounts,
A thousand words is all it takes
To make a second count.

Except a picture doesn't move
until there's twenty four
So for every thousand words too few
I'll write a thousand more

At least that's what I'd like to say
That I have two billion words.
That's eighteen years turned into frames
To heal a world of hurt

And it's not that I'm not willing
But rather, I'm not able
So I'll use freeze frame magic
To tell this hero's fable.

To reiterate; twenty four frames per second
Creates the illusion of motion
That's twenty four thousand words per second
To recreate this fluid notion.

And illusion isn't a word I like.
It implies he isn't real.
But the movement inspired in all alike
Has a kinesthetic feel,
And acts as a concrete testament to his existence.

His grin was always worn a little bit off kilter
As if it couldn't hold all of the joy it filtered,
And was tipping into the surrounding space
A contagious smile that slowly spread across his love ones' faces.

His eyes glowed without compare, immersed in umber flame.
The questioned who you were and asked you without shame,
"How can I help?"
They burnt away the paper mache masks we so often wear,
Mantles and guises with incendiary tears
Would fall to the ground, replaced by genuine care
And glimmering hope.

His eyebrows. I could talk for hours and still not touch the length of those majestic caterpillars. And no, there's no poetry here. They're eyebrows. Just looking at them, at him, you knew he would make you laugh.

And he did. He carried a profound simplicity for his youth,
And understanding hidden unkempt and uncouth
Behind messy tufts of shaggy hair
Aloof behavior, suggesting "I don't care"
When really, that's all he did.

He walked with a loose sensibility and a tenacious
Comprehension for life that many of us still grasp at tentatively.
He loved to live.
He lived to love.

If only life were so simple as kissing the pain away.
Which brings me to what I'd like to say today.

Sometimes, actions aren't enough to take away the pain.
Sometimes words cannot will the past to live again.
Sometimes what we feel seems wrong
And what we know is wrong feels right
Sometimes we don't have the answers
And sometimes that's alright.

Our hero lived a wondrous life,
And left so much love behind
His legend isn't simply his
But his and yours and mine,

A legacy lived on through us
And countless stories told
Frozen movie frames
We'll remember 'til we're old.

Snapshot stories played on repeat
Forever in our minds
To make up for the things not done
And words we'll never find.

I'd like to close on the last few words
I spoke to my dear friend.
"I won't say goodbye for now,
but *'til we meet again."

Tattered tapestries weathered with destroyed diagrams depicting derelict debris, once accruing avant-garde glances now know naught but bliss, for before time stole their accolades, fortune found favorable the telling of their tales.

Rose tinted shutters go off when I blink
Infinite heresy, each second passed
One thousand words paint a picture in ink
To make time's fickle framed flamed folly last.

The air grows thin as chemicals ignite
Our hearts and our veins wane, burn, wax, and glow
Temporal sands turned to glass cast a light
Voracious reflections, tentative, grow.

A crusade for knowledge here we begin
To know each other plain naked and bare
To quest and covet for what lies within
To examine our faults, our sins, our tears.

Two way mirrors peering into our souls
Laborious, fleeting, seconds made whole.

Drunk on love
Is a phrase I have never understood
Until now

It's the way you say lollipop
It's the minute bobbing of your hair when you laugh
It's your ability to fluster me and leave me speechless when I normally pride myself in my rapport and
I wonder what you're thinking right now
Is any of it the same?
It's your curiosity and your genuine soul and spirit and your tentativeness and your fear and

It's that the whites of your eyes
Remind me of home
Sun kissed skies
And a longing to roam
The horizon

There's a familiarity and I get a pit in my stomach that tells me I miss you.
I notice the difference when I reminisce, you-
The difference is, you don't smell like cow ****.

You smell like crisp morning rain
And bath salts.

I don't actually know your scent.
What I meant
Is that I'm calmed by the crashing of rain
And the other supposedly drives you insane.

You provide me with both:
An overwhelming peace
And an ever-growing crease in the folds of my mind
As I try to rewind
To the first time I met you.
Burned into my brain: the first time you set two
Boisterous, beautiful, brown gold orbs
Patiently on mine as you tried to absorb
All of the pieces of me
Contrast and contour
Not one fault ignored.
And by no fault of yours,
You sat and you listened
As sunbeams glistened
And my heart raced
And my mind doted
A smile donned your face
And my emotions exploded
Amidst this maelstrom of noise
These powerful currents
Distant echoes grew poised
And struck me recurrent

And your laughter sprang forth
From your buttercream smile.

Time slowed, and I thought: please stay for a while.

Residual raindrops grew reluctantly silent
The insecurities of my ever-racing mind resided
Dim in comparison to the fervor you'd quelled and excited

I could feel my legs keel and go weak
When you returned stolen breaths as you started to speak

And they told me to "be careful"
And "not to fall too fast"
But this vertigo feels lovely
And I'd rather it would last.