"praise your body"

I have spared you so much.
These details are mine,

you're welcome for that, and
thank you for them.

I like to keep it general,
and very specific. Each thing
I could say, without reason
except the old saw about beauty
and truth, which though beautiful,
doesn't prove true, sometimes

even for those

whose face and form well deserve
immortalization upon a Greek urn,
or in verses commending its notice
to us.
In practice,

our words prove mortal: they or we
die in the utterance.

When they are proved

rightly unwelcome,
and so, wrongly given -
and naturally, wrongly received,
we learn to retreat,
to leave truth unspoken
and beauty unbreathed.

It is not noble to fail
in ignoble attempt. If

you do not know
how they will be received,
if you are not sure of your target, then
every arrow you loose

is poorly and wrongly aimed and spent.

And you shouldn't have. You should have been
content

with how much it means,
without even being meant.

Let alone being said. I speak now

for others' sake than my own.
Myself, I don't find I stray
from the mark, much
but much luck

and the graciousness of others
should not be assumed. And so,
I have struck common cause

with etiquette, when I noticed it,
and agreed, with myself,
for the most part
to shut the fuck up.

And so, you must guess

I have spared you so much
such truth, on the theory you already know
all the beauty that it would try
to embrace, perchance to fail
to describe. One glorious,

disgracefully ungrateful mess,
meticulously unmade.

Whole passages of your arms,
how they drape gracefully tapering
from your frame and form, or project
forcefully in showing and doing
your will; how they make angles
and attitudes together, cradles
and swings, traps and bars
and how they draw me in,
without saying a thing,
in the way of wishes
which must not be said aloud,
to mean everything. Of your legs,

I have oh God already said enough,
let alone the between and behind - but
this

is not, and surely should not
be allowed.
And the willowy torque
of your torso
and hips,
and the tension implicit
in shoulders and neck, and back,
which my hands would give hours
to knead, and need, and fix -
all of this can too readily be
imagined

without my needless
and kneading words.
Your face,

from
and over which

the loveliest spirit
dances and plays, is yours alone

and amazingly, mine: on whose face
all these lights have shone,
and been changed, and made
sublime. It doesn't take me

to give this back, to you
to whom everything belongs -
and in whom it already finds face

and immortal form. Or if not
immortal - then worth being made
so, in image and song, that could try
in play an eternity,
and fail, and fail, and fail
to succeed, to capture your lively
and springing grace, but oh!
What an epic they'd make of the chase
while you stand, cross arms,
foot doing impatient ironic
not-impressed slow tap,

and look on.

So wrong, to think

it takes words - of which I have some -
to see why we find it all strange,
and would wish to share what we find
with the one who gave, to make it
familiar again. It is so,

so good. See good, say good,
we think - but you know, it's a question
that you should ask of you: does the source
of such good want it back from you?
Want to hear your opinion
of their own good?
Is it for their own good, or
for yours that you bend

your great bow of yew? With great
quiversful of arrows true,
you have burdened your back.
And oh, such release to loose them
streaming, blackening the skies
with your multiplied shaft -
every one striking true!
Glancing from rocks, clattering,
sticking from every tree, while
slightly cowering but mostly perturbed,
your target and object stands
perforated by compliments,
pincushioned with praise, penetrated not

in the least, as your arrows
vanish

from her body,

leaving no trace
but scorn, possibly.
So.
You didn't know how she'd take it?

Then you shot wrong.

It cannot be heroic,
daring greatly to fail in a cause
that you don't know is right,

only strong.

"Sorry"