words

men with purpose,
those germane to the universe,
those who shed inadequacy
like a summer coat,
they are not me.

men who felt the thrill
in the marrow of their bones
and composed whatever
may have bled from their ego
into a symphony of meaning,
i do not know them.

those who walked the earth
like giants lacking fear,
living and dying
in the space between the two,
scrawling their names
into the blood of everything
and drawing from nothing
their will to go on,
these men are strangers
to my timid enterprise
and they make my heart feel weak
in shameless comparison.

-S.C. Martinez