Drawing You

Slowly I brush my thumb across your face,

the lines of your aging beauty like gold in the cracks

of a broken vessel, made priceless,

the heat of naked banished ego blushing your cheeks,

after a life of vanity, of staged male pride,

that you finally set aside for a wise woman’s softness,

and ended entirely too soon.

You are the broken masterpiece, the cracking fresco, the crumbling palace,

forgotten toasts echoing through your halls of priceless proud memory.

Your old friends wandered gaily away like a fading summer day,

carrying golden masks and knighthoods,

yet you persevered for Art, ever the prince, never the peer.

In the deep symphonic darkness of your resonant vocal perfection,

in rippling elocution savoring my mind with chocolate smoothness,

the cedar wood vibration of your emotion thrumming the strings of my heart,

You whisper your suffering into me, and confess your sin.

Your face cradled in my hands, your eyes look away, glistening,

and I lean in to brush the impossibly perfect curve of your lips with mine,

and tickle the fleur-de-lys of your triumphant beak with my silly button nose.

The great glowing fires of your eyes lock and haunt mine,

grey emeralds of passion miles deep 

in arched lady's wells of demure Hollywood bone.

Cupid’s bow in pink parts to take my lips,

and my heart surges with joy.

Your eyes flutter closed, your breath catches

and cries out for anchor at my port,

the raging polar storm of your pain abates,

the dark clouds of sadness dissipate in blinding warmth,

and you become a being loved in healing and wholeness.

You cannot be captured.

You are a floating collage of Stanislavski, 

but I will draw gold between the pieces of you

until you remember that you are real,

until the tears are gone and your laughter's roaring echo

becomes the world's holy recollection.

Your smiling face possesses me

beyond law and condemnation,

beyond judgment and common sense,

beyond warning and choice,

and I must let go, and love.