He is not ripped, not steroid freaky
but you have to appreciate the pecs on this guy
also the chiseled V that directs your eye
to the promising pelvis--and I don’t
easily wax prosaic about the physical--
but those biceps, and then of course
the kicker is his utter nonchalance when
he throws those square-toed boots up on
the coffee table and the jeans so well filled
out--it should be a sonnet.
Then the bad boy long hair, stringy
sometimes and not quite as clean as
you might hope, the assymetrical
eyebrows, above the calm eyes of
an angel: wronged and wronging in equal
measure. He tries so hard, he loves like
thunder. Every bad, impetuous thing
he does is for love. He has his ass (so
sweet, so tight) handed to him in a
handbasket daily. The ones who love him
cannot help him; the ones he loves will not.
He is doomed. He blames himself.
We love our beauties doomed, our lovers punished.
It allows our envy to be suffused with relief.
His innocence: a place we can imagine ,
recreate, but cannot inhabit any more,
jaded as we are. We know how this turns out.
We are helpless in that we cannot stem
the tide of his disillusionment. How could we?
It came to us far faster than to him. We wish
we could transform his Beauty into Truth.
I haven’t said anything yet about his mouth.