Maybe I am ugly,
It’s a fair point.

I’m not nearly as handsome,
After giving up the ghost on my hair,
After years of abuse to my joints,
The combat sports and bruises,
Broken bones, contusions.
Scars and reconstructions.

Maybe I’m not a particularly pretty packaged cup of tea,
But I’m plenty strong,
Built ford tough and could run through you Like a Ram.
I’m olive toned marble
With a slick tongue.

I am endowed in ways Aphrodite blushes
And taught just as well how to wield its power
I need not look like vin diesel
To know that I am furious and rarely fast.

I’m not an ogre
Or an incel
Ungrateful for life
Or stuck inside my own shell,
I’m half Sicilian and proud,
Part Mexican with a dah of Irish,
Green eyed, and hot tempered
Black belt, and fists of fury
Gun lover , and whiskey shooter.

I’m an artist,
Photographer for funsies
Love to camp, hike weekly
And I earn plenty of monies,
Clicking on a keyboard,
Penetrating weaknesses ,
Like chess boards
While coaching my underlings
New pawns I push forward.

So yeah,
Maybe I’m ugly,
But what I have in spades
Is the fact that when you call my name
It’s a statement of fact
I’m more man than most claim to be,
And I don’t try to dominate
It’s what’s bred within me

I was not trained for this—
no welcome packet, no handbook for gravity.
Just a name that clings like static
and a voice that trembles when spoken too clearly.

They asked me if I had room.
I said I had weather.
They asked me if I would disappear.
I said watch me smolder, and stay.

I have loved like a lighthouse
with no shoreline in sight,
signaling to anyone
who mistook reflection for return.

I’ve held their names
like breath under water,
carved pathways through others
just to find my own again.

But I do not sculpt.
I do not steal 'the good stuff'.
I inherit fire
and ask it if it remembers me.

If you see yourself in me,
look again—
I am not a mirror,
I am the window you opened
and forgot to close when the wind picked up.

Still, I arrive,
boots echoing in the hallway
of someone else’s myth,
offering only this:

I will not rewrite you.
I will not finish your sentences.
But I will stand here—
untranslated,
unsaved,
untouched by the need to be anything
other than true.

We pray in the garden,
For peace to take the ache away.
We pray in the garden,
For the light of God,
To guide us to better days.
We pray in the garden,
Guardian sanctum of our hope.