What Makes Me

What makes the man I am

Is it gunpowder and lead

Or the tears that I've shed

Is it the grit in the top of the hourglass

Or the time already spent

Am I these words I spill so careless

Or the measured hand that traces

Imagination

Am I the spirit of the world I love

Or the remnants that made me sick

Am I running to greet the end

Or merely chasing new horizons

Am I the collection of atoms and elements

That sway with the weight of intoxication

Or the whole that seems somehow less

Than my everything collected

What fate befalls the unwilling

To give in

The incapable of living within

A flawed system

Do I define myself by the times I've swelled

With pride for the skies where I've dwelled

Do I fault myself for tasting hell

Or thank heaven I survived it

You are just a man she said

And called my strength her weakness

But where out there does the light exist

Without a taste of darkness

Upon which dream should I rest

Without these thousand markings

A hundred scars keep me far

From breaking apart in the wind

But do they dispel the pain that swells

From the daggers that found their way in

What makes the man I am

The answers or the questions

The losses or the lessons

Taken, I can't pretend

It's been easy stepping across death

To find what light still burns for this

And how many lie broken beneath

The bridges I've crafted to reach

The banks of my own peace

How many shake and pray for fate

To find them next to me

How many promises will they make

Before they find one they can keep

I will live, not easily, but with all my strength

I will not rest before the ground and I meet

Again, 'til I'm swallowed in the earth

I came from

What makes the man I am

Is everything and

The spaces in between.