The measure of a man
is what he’s made of
His guts, yeah
but his brain too.

And you can’t count
the shit he did on committee.
Just what he’s done on his own
with his bare hands.

A man writes alone.
He’s born alone.
He dies alone.
He doesn’t cry about it.
But if he did, he’d do it alone.
Nah, instead he buries it in his heart
and keeps it fed with just enough salt and gin
to burn on in his writing.

You might have heard
they make this machine now
that can write whatever you ask it.
I gave it a try, and you know what?
That son of bitch writes better than me.

But you know what it doesn’t got?
A single solitary contrary thought
that I don’t give it.
Its got no legs to it take to the corner
for a pack of smokes.
Its never had it’s heart broken
Or been ransacked by thieves.
It’s never had to fight a man.
And even if it did
it’s got no reason to tell about it.

Some people write
Cause their teacher said they had to
Or else they thought it’d impress a girl
Or for money
Or so crowds would line up
for their autograph.
Heck, it wouldn’t hurt.

I don’t write cause I’m the best
Or even to pay the bills
Or get fat or famous

I write cause I was cursed enough
to be born a man,
the only animal on this rock
evolved to spend his days thinking,
in a time thinking is done on paper
or on the Internet.

They say 25% of our energy
goes to the brain.
That’s double that of a chimp,
the next best animal
for thinking.

You’re born
Some hard shit happens to you
But you gotta eat
And you better put that fuel to work
No one asked
to be made of meat and brains
But we better work them both.
Use it or lose it, they say.

Nothing’s stopping you
from sitting on a couch
Watching shit someone else thought up
Or staring into space
Like thinking’s just casting stones into lakes.

A man writes alone.
Ain’t no machine gonna change that.
And if you want to go ahead and use that machine.
That’s fine with me.

You give it your two words,
if they’re the only two you wrote all week,
between your video games and TikTok videos,
And I’ll give it ten thousand words
I wrote after binging Hemingway and Tolstoy.
See if there’s a difference in what that machine spits out.

Anyway, I’ll write
no matter what you,
a machine, or anyone else does.
I write because its what I’m made of
And that’s the whole of it.

If you’re down to write too,
but could use a little encouragement,
if you just need a private space,
maybe something to get you started,
I made this app, Verse, for just that.
It’s free to download and includes
a free trial of prompts.

Written by a human without AI.

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