Romantic Poems

Beneath your black silk shirt
is absolute fuel, shaped by ambition
into shoulders and a pistil neck.

You are secretly becoming a legend
to seventeen year-old boys,
plotting ways to see you in the nude.

The leak-hole of constant beauty,
spawning stray eyes across the city,
intense bursts of revived chivalry engulf you.

How many dedicated little gods
conspired to create you out of water,
air, and every thin, fluid element?

In err Aristotle said, "no very small
animal can be beautiful." And how you prove
him wrong. For we are pinholes in time.

Age will pass you gently from year to year.
Already it has carved into you a smile that the gods
still look for under clouds and miss incredibly.

The ocean coats your eyes, the wind of ripe fields
flows through your lips. Earth's original coastlines
shape your cheeks and round down to your mouth.

You are the thesaurus of beauty, every possible
avenue to it named by you. I am slowly mapping
them, etching each gesture to find the ways to center.

I have never wished so much to be a bit of food,
water that will coat your cough in winter,
wine that will go to your blood and intoxicate.

Let it be. Oh God, let it be.