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."
I wanted to genuinely write a thousand words for you.
And while I was writing, I realized something.
I'd want to write a thousand more.
And a thousand more.
And a thousand more.
And I don't think that feeling will ever go away.
So instead, I'm going to trust that you'll live on in all of us.
To my dearest brother.
1998-2017.
As always, keep writing.