Birth Pains of a Still Born Hero

image borrowed from brian miller

Birth Pains of a Still Born Hero


The last panel of Uncanny Xmen issue #132 was the gospel
i needed growing up, the promise that i might
have a time or turn to look up from the sewer & smile
in ways that sent shivers down the spines of my enemies

&

At night I dreamed obsidian dreams, of finding them
in the parking lot behind the local motel where they hung
their shingle, sheets in the wind on Friday nights, & i strolling
between the cars, hoods still warm from cruising, confidently
into their circle letting them beat the hell out of me

again
again
again

And when they spent their last slug to my temple,
laying in broken puddles amid the asphalt, look up
with that smile and say, "that the best you got..."
letting it sit pregnant for a moment as my healing factor
knit me back together, then pop the claws with a SNIKT

The rest of it would probably turn your stomach,
like the sucking sound of wet sledge hammers and knock
on the cutting block when you slice the last bit of tomatoes,
but by the end i was warm and sticky, their entrails
etched with my initials in trails and for once, i felt
like a man, then awoke still a mutant yet powerless,
Peter Parker without being bitten by the spider, lacky,
lacking luck to Flash Thompson and his cronies

I'd spend saturdays, halfway down Williamson
at the little white house named B&D---i still smell
the memories of getting lost in the stories, among
racks and racks of comic books, they were hope for me,
the unlikely imbued with the power, forget responsibility
i wanted my pound of flesh & to be something greater
than me, and for the first time, blurred the lines between
hero and villain

Along the razor's edge we walk daily, so if you ask how
i understand, it is because i too sat the bar for communion
& threw back a shot glass of the darkness that dwells
in the cardiac corners of man, questioned heroes extinction
or existence, felt the worm turn round my spine
on its way to my mind &

became
became
became


Brian Miller

Posted over on his site Way Station One
Listed as #1 over on dVerse Poets--Poetics Saturday