Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Hero by Teresa Beem


When Average Joe falls, we chuckle, we joke, 
Whatcha expect from a regular bloke?
His language is peppered, like regular folk. 
Give 'em a break and go find ya a smoke! 

His eye filled with lust for the maidens and beer,
Life for us mortals needs warmth and good cheer.
No need to go judgin' or cryin’ a tear, 
For Joe, we'll forget by this time next year.

We like Joe, aren’t a god, we confess,
We didn’t start nor can clean up this mess

we’re just livin‘--no more and no less,
for comfort and fun, surviving the stress.


For you and for me and for Joe, we belong
t'a world, a real world, where temptation is strong.
We toast to a time when no more there'll be wrong,
Till then, we will boast with a frail human song!

Yet once in a lifetime a soul doth arise,
with steel-plated courage, with pure, endless eyes,
his fiery virtue, to draw and baptize
men from their lethargy, lust and their lies.

His smile warns cowards as a rattlesnakes rattle,

to cease in his presence from four-lettered prattle,
our mooing and moaning as if we were cattle.
Even Joe, his strength, gives the valor to battle.


But heroes and saints? The merriment stills,
a hush, as news of their fallenness spills
out like a death. A betrayal that kills
a small piece of God. No righteous man wills.

As heroes they crumble their sheep they forsake,
The sins of the shepherds, they shatter and shake
making a mountain of faith an earthquake.
Our cowardly hearts too easily break. 


Great men confuse our endless weak chain
So Joe and so you and so me, we remain
comfortable cowards. It seems so insane
to risk and to give and to crash and cause pain.


We toast to good Tom, to good Dick and good Joe,
We toast to us all and each regular schmo,
We laugh at our foibles, our foibles we know.
Yet a strange solemn silence at our fallen hero.  



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