Anti-heroes and Menschen

So can one be tough and good?

 

Anti-heroes and Menschen

Can one hold no prisoners
shout “Never Again!”
and be a well-loved mensch
or the salt of the earth?

Can men of action
at the center
of a self-possessed universe
be our lovable heroes?

Witness Aveh* as
his neck cords bulge crimson,
teeth bared in challenge;
blind with rage and the thrill of the kill,
his black booted foot
bearing down
on his foe’s naked spine.

“I’ll break you”
he screams and spits,
grasping the last Wii
aloft in blood-splattered fingers,
triumph joining rage
in the lines of his face.

Can Aveh be our salty friend,
the one we send to battle
to keep the world honest,
the one we love and count on?

And what if Charlie Brown,
our lovable mensch,
lost his cool and not his clothes
when the batter hit the baseball?

What if Charlie
kicked Lucy in the head
while screaming “never again you jerk!”
when she pulled away the football?
Would we love him as much?

Can we love our damaged models,
our Super Anti-Heroes
when they cross that line of decency?

Can we love our athletes, actors, lovers
when perfection’s a thin disguise?

Can we love each other
on bad days and good ones,
when we grow mental muscles
and do what we could not
or when we shrink from each challenge,
retreat from each fight?

Can we love ourselves
for all of our flaws
when we bark at the dog
or kowtow to bullies,
on days when we’re kind
when to be kind’s absurd,
and even on days
when we bite the hand that reared us
and lose all sense of honor?

Can we love our good and our bad
our tough and our soft
and agree that we're whole?

*From an earlier poem “Creation’s Opposite”

Reviews

[Thomas Dylan]

I'm going to keep reading this David, because the poem gives me a feeling that I understand fully its theme, but I'm not sure I understand it completely. If you can follow my thread(not sure that I can). LOL. HUNGOVER, you see- Sunday morning.
And that is OK, because poetry should be challenging, something to be argued over and debated. Otherwise there wouldn't have been books written about 'The Wasteland', or articles written about 'Desolation Row' and other Bob Dylan songs.
But this is good; it has characters in it to create interest, it has a punchy ending, it's well structured and well expressed.

[Randall Richard]

this started off a bit clumsily, i almost stopped reading. it was just so blunt and preachy at first, but you found your stride from here on,
Can we love our damaged models,
our Super Anti-Heroes
when they cross that line of decency?

after those lines itwas a very good poem. i would scrap the intro though, do something shorter, revise the charlie brown stuff, i thought that was a good point.

[Eric]

This is the question; and it pierces. Pierces. And the timing... if you only knew. I've been sitting here in my own self hatred when along comes your poem. No answer. Just a question; can we love our good and our bad our tough and our soft as if we are whole?"

And hearing the questions, in the form of a poem, reminds me of the answer. Yes. We can. Yes. I can.

This was more than a poem for me. It was a reminder.

Thank you.