The Measure of a Man
There is a cathedral beneath every man.
Not one built of stone,
but of appetite.
A quiet, ancient thing
lit by the blue flame of wanting.
Some carry it carefully,
hidden beneath pressed collars
and practiced gentleness.
Others let it ring through them
like war bells.
But always—
at the center—
desire.
For flesh.
For gold.
For dominion.
One.
Or all three.
The holy obsessions
around which entire lives are arranged.
A man may speak beautifully of love,
may cup devotion in his hands
as though it were sacred,
may build a home,
father children,
learn the choreography of tenderness—
and still there will remain within him
some private kingdom of longing
for which everything else
is negotiable.
Watch what he pursues
when no one is looking.
There lies the truest scripture.
Some men hunger for women
not even from lust alone,
but from the unbearable need
to feel chosen.
To see themselves reflected
in another body
and mistaken for immortal.
Some spend themselves at the altar of money,
feeding the great mechanical mouth of ambition,
mistaking accumulation
for permanence.
As though enough wealth
might finally silence
the terror of being ordinary.
And some crave power—
that dark, intoxicating current
of bending rooms toward themselves.
They do not merely wish to be loved.
They wish to prevail.
To stand above.
To remain untouched by consequence.
Most men worship at several altars at once.
Sex.
Money.
Power.
The old triumvirate.
The three-headed god
history has forever dragged behind it.
Wars have been waged for less.
Kingdoms buried for less.
Women ruined for less.
And still they call it nature.
But loyalty is not measured
by what a man desires.
It is measured
by what he refuses to sacrifice
in order to obtain it.
And that is the sorrow of it—
how often goodness is abandoned
not in moments of desperation,
but in moments of wanting.
How many men
would rather be worshipped
than witnessed.
How many would choose
the glittering illusion of conquest
over the terrifying intimacy
of being fully known.
