Reduce Me
2019
It's said there is weak men amongst us all,
Or maybe it is there is weakness amongst all men,
For we were told a fable,
that tears would reduce a man,
However, I have cried
more than a thousand tears,
And with every time my pours have been watered,
My once battered heart has been countered,
All weights once against, now balanced,
It is tears that made me a man,
strengthened and rooted,
My mother wept as I was born,
in the most courageous act of life,
My father wept as he drew the hospital curtains
and said this,
my son, is the world,
And God knows,
I shall weep at both the courage,
and the cowardly,
The elation, and the sodden,
the earthly and otherworldly,
I seek not the tears,
I seek the strength within them,
So if I am reduced to my knees,
with the concrete rained upon by my tears,
So let it, let plants grow because of it,
Let my son and daughter see my tears,
God, let my friends and my wife see too,
so they know I have not been made half man,
I have been made whole,
by all of these consistencies that reside within me,
From the cover of my toes,
to the eyelash that protects my macula,
God give me strength,
give me tears,
let me live, and die in this strength
and tell the world he cried,
and no single tear reduced me,
from my elation to my pain,
no single tear reduced me.
