I read the passages of giants
from the scattered debris of their wake
and I feel my soul splinter
and my shoulders quake.
I don't have these powers
the qualities that work to seperate
the detritus like me from
the very best, the great.
They have booming prose
with gravity and magnitude
and my own scrawling throes
is more often slim, crude
they belong in company on Olympus
while I merit only solitude.

I've divided the individual
failures of decades of hate
from the love shaped residual.
I can't see lost or departed hearts
among the horizon line
and the myriad false starts.
I am now about six months shy
of the burning need
to work harder or even to try.
Love what's left or don't bother
it's all only finite time
and I can't go on any farther.

Life is what life will be, I guess.
All inherent need and ache
for hours of pain and stress.
I'll grow and change until
one day I don't,
it's not about won't or will.
Things work out, they always do
one way or another it ends
with or without me or you.
I love you just like thunder
following the fury.
Drowning, love, going under.

It's only a moment to bare.
It's a whirlwind, a maelstrom
but it's only short term care.