Do you know, my artsy girl,
What makes a man’s face
Worth the remembering?
A woman memorable?
Dazzling?

Curse these hands which have never wrought
Any shape out of fine line and form
Worth the effort of looking,
For how could they ever hope to do justice
To what mine eyes beheld here,

O! Would I render this Beautiful Frame I see
No option but to carve it in truth unwithering,
Using tools granted unto this world –
With ink, stone, the earth itself
How I would paint thee until your eyes were more than alive,
(More humanity shown than in human is grown)
And indeed, you stepped, nay, leaped out of the canvas,
Tearing the heart from mortal man.
(And if I’m good, woman too)

That I could render your Self, statuesque,
Put Pygmalion, Venus, to shame,
Not just Life and Beauty,
Will fill this homage,
But I shall show the Truth
That lies within the Eye,
And a Soul to honor your own

If I could work in song, hitting upon the minstrel’s art,
Passion to steal away Reason,
With such music of emotion, none could tell
How your electric sex picked me out
And filled with ink, a wicked fast pen

Would that I were not plagued by this curse,
Desire to show the unshowable
Through words, express the inexpressible
In visions bestowed upon the sight of mind

To try to show beauty with words alone,
Is meaningless and trite,
Not to mention it’s never won to poets, Rights
To sit and talk and drink in his subject in seclusion

And the fruits of my hand, to bring forth the vision of my mind
Fail, again and again in the task I give,
Whether by paragraph or photograph
Sketch or sculpture, stanza, song
Even as I strive to the thousandth generation,
Still these visions remain locked inside,
Toothless to infect and spread

Too bad I got excited, eh?
Thought it might work,
When I heard that whispered promise
That you had a key.

Only more empty words did you bring
Out of the wellspring, the Inner Me

Do you know, my artista,
What makes a man’s face
Worth the remembering?
A woman memorably
Dazzling?