You

I have thoughts,

And they are what make me write.

To you today, and tomorrow some other name

With some other face that I will call ‘you’, too.

For I want this to be for everyone

And yet only you will smile just right.

And it is the smile of you that is most important,

For as I think in maturity’s way,

Trying to walk the pathes of elders who

Have, with canes and bowler hats, carved the ways

Before me with railroad tracks and factories,

Built up towns and farms and cities

Slick with oil and bright lights

That many think are the abomination of mankind

But really are just afraid to admit that progress

Does nothing but alter the world so that others

Benefit the more than those who once did…..

And well……this prologue just is meant to explain

The way I’m thinking about these things,

And how I believe now before all else,

Like the hero in the movie as the film clock hits two hours,

That this is the absolute truth,

And as always, the message is not for me, but for me to speak.

~~~~~~~~

I lamented smiles,

They change with time and mute themselves,

They bury themselves over time as if the face

Was but the earth, and thus the plates upon it shift

And always around the smile. 

They fade with age and forget to repeat themselves,

They become abnomalies like blackholes

And yet blackholes hold all of time within them

As do smiles, and we only explore the one and not the other.

Yet I say you smile unlike others,

Time has worn and days have gone and people pass

And words have struck you from my tongue and other tongues

And yet you still smile in that way that I harass you for,

Yet don’t change it.  In the pictures that I have

Of you I am warmed by it, like subtle violin music

Welling up in the soundtrack of my life and marking

The important things.

There is nothing about you that I don’t think is wonderful

In ways that I don’t know myself for I don’t think

I’ve ever wanted to invest such time in someone

I did not want to hold like a lover and although once I did

I was confused about what you were to me.

People will say that we were failed, but we were not

Failed but rather testing and now the tests are done

And the vessel has returned from pushing through that

Blackhole crossing like a shooting star and burning

In its re-entry into the world and as the door bursts open,

Let me shout that we have not failed.

We did not know where we were headed and in finding

That our guesses came out wrong did not make us

Wrong and failures, but just explorers into different worlds.

Our goal has not changed…..and all this intellectualism

Spewed upon these pages in scientific metaphor

And fake maturity tried only for the reason to impress

Once more mute the rawness that you have in that

Which I have loved so well–

That you are my greatest friend for just letting….

All the things that I can do and I am not afraid….

Where have those inhibitions gone?

Where have all those things dissipated to?

The touch that doesn’t sting, the words that always do

But heal.  Telling someone to do anything

And doing everything that I always just stopped myself from doing

Because of taboo.  This is you.

You are not innocent in experience,

But you are in mind and heart,

And for this you always get that way that makes me push more

Word upon you, words that make you more and more that way,

It perpetuates and yet, I don’t want it to.

You should be proud of you.

You should respect you.

For admiration, like love, like a Rolls-Royce

Is something I don’t have and don’t expect to often get,

Except in glimpses of someone else,

But there is admiration in you, and respect, and pride,

And a love for what you are that cannot be denied.

So this is yours.  For now.  Until you smile again

Like a twelve-year-old child and remind me once more

That while I say ‘Alas the day that smiles did die!’

There are some still who have lost and cried

And not once lost that same smile that pushes Earth

Back apart and reveals once more the things

Scientists and intellectuals, the ones I pretend to be like,

Forget to explore and remember and record.

So this is your record.  Hard data, too.

And while science is your dislike,

It is why I break it down to show,

That you are in everything in ways unknown but to me.

Your smile is the only blackhole we see.