Beyond Beautiful

I wrote this some time ago for the wife and posted it on Urbis last week to fairly positive reviews.  I figured Id put it up here so that those who might want to read it can do so.  Let me know what you think.  It's going to be rewritten but that might take a minute.

 

Beyond Beauty

 

You are not beautiful.

The word is a weak thing

That can't carry your weight

Can't Encompass your strength.

Beauty is for teams of makeup artists

Snoop Dogg hooks, Teen-crushing

Grocery Mags and bland

Romance novels.

Beautiful is not real; beautiful is not every day;

The word is a curse and a mirage,

Branded like cattle, sold like wrapping paper.

Beautiful is the plastic ideal born gurgling

From huge Coca-Cola vats in Mexico and

Gap Sweat Shops in China.

And you are none of these things.

Beautiful can't show that smolder in your eye

When you glance at me.

Beauty can't taste the millions of tears uncried

That dried on the corners of your mouth.

Beautiful can't cover your back, long enough

To carry the weight of Nefertiti and Rosa and Camille

But strong enough to never bend.

Beautiful can't wrap me in arms

Longer than my imagination,

Reaching across two bad jobs and a

Grinding commute to

Encircle my chest, to give me strength and a

Longing for home I cannot ignore.

Beautiful can't make me strive to be

Better than I am now, can't make me thankful

For the blessing of you that God

Placed into my life.

Beautiful turns to ashes in my mouth when

I look at you, when I wrap you in my arms

And listen to you breathe.

Beautiful is not what you are, and yet you possess beauty.

But it is a small drop in the deep ocean that resides

Within you, lapping at the peanut butter beach that

Is your skin.  I can hear forever when we make love

And your body slides across mine.

You are beyond beautiful, stronger and more exquisite

Than any word can bear witness to.

Maybe one day,

I will find the word that covers you from head

To toe in the finest of ethereal thread, sparkles

Your magnificence for all the world to see.

But until then, I will enjoy the reality of

Your lips and your arms and your spirit and

Pain and strength and be overjoyed because

You are Beyond Beautiful and

You are with me.

 

 

Benticore

Out