A poem about the failure of poems is a risky thing to write, because it has to succeed a little in order to admit defeat. "you" by cloudsonthemoon takes that risk quietly. Its speaker sets out to describe someone they love, declares every available description inadequate, and in the act of rejecting them describes the person anyway. The central idea is that real affection is particular. It attaches to this blue, this brown, this laugh, and not to the stock phrases literature hands out to everyone.
The opening sets the terms. "I could use a million different things" and "I could use all the cliches" are two hypothetical lines, a list of options the poem never takes up. The "million" is plainly exaggeration, but it shows how much the speaker has considered and thrown away. Clichés, we are told, "won't do you justice." "Justice" is a courtroom word, as if the loved person were owed a fair account and the usual phrases would cheat them.
The poem then names a cliché and swerves away from it. "Your blue eyes don't look like the ocean" mentions the most familiar blue comparison only to withdraw it. In its place comes "the certain lake from a childhood memory." The wording matters: "the certain lake," not "a certain lake," as though the reader ought to know which one. We don't, and that is the point. The comparison is private, taken from the speaker's own past and not from a shared stock of images. Judging by the imagery, it also ties the loved person to something early and precious. The hair follows the same pattern. "Sweet chocolate" is rejected, and the colour is instead measured by what it does to the body: it "makes my heart well up to big in my chest." The phrasing is a little tangled, but the roughness suits a feeling that overflows its container. Here the poem gives up visual comparison and reports an effect.
Midway the poem turns to look at itself. "You're so much more than descriptions / or any poems could relate to" is a poem admitting what poems cannot do. The next line widens the claim from clichés to the whole library: "there is something about you that isn't like the other people in literature." It is a bold, slightly comic idea, a real person stepping out of every book at once, but the tone stays sincere.
The form supports this. There is no rhyme and no regular metre, and line lengths vary, so the poem sounds like someone thinking aloud and correcting themselves. Only the first line is capitalised, and the rest sit in lower case, which gives the page an informal, diary-like look. The stanzas are short, and single lines such as "I could use all the cliches" work as pauses. The one place the pattern tightens is the triplet:
"your eyes are a different blue
your hair is a different brown
your laugh is a different sound"
The repeated structure makes this the poem's closest approach to a chant, and the repeated word "different" carries the argument. It is a vague word, since it never says which blue or which brown, yet here that vagueness works. The speaker claims uniqueness without trying to prove it, which is the opposite of what a cliché does. The third line also moves from sight to hearing. A still portrait becomes a person who makes noise and moves through a room.
The ending is the most self-aware moment. "Nobody will ever understand the magic that you propell" uses "magic," the most abstract word in the poem, and the verb "propell" (spelled with a double l) suggests the person actively drives that magic outward instead of merely possessing it. The last line, "simple words could never be you," says "be," not "describe," which separates a person from any representation of them. It is also gently ironic, because the poem is made of simple words, and the reader has just come to know someone through them.
The poem is not technically polished, and it doesn't claim to be. Its value lies in its honesty and in one useful lesson about writing. It recalls Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," which also refuses stock comparisons, though that poem is ironic and strictly metred while this one is earnest and free. The strongest image here is the lake, not the ocean, and it works because it is specific and personal. The poem shows that precision matters more than ornament, and that admitting words fall short can be a way of loving someone in them.