Never meet your heroes, lest they fail your expectation
Resulting in the crest that's fallen down from that elation
Experienced upon neglecting self-examination
Overlooking what it took to gain this elevation
Grandpa Francesco Proia,
from Caserta, Italia,
a clever stowaway
in the bowels of the ship
bringing him to Ellis Island,
Feb. 4, 1905.
Gruff ways,
often snarling a guttural “Huh,”
a lack of English,
never-ending hand gestures,
made me fearful of him.
But awestruck I was
with the romantic notion
of his stowing away.
Bootlegging homemade vino
during Prohibition – another
plus as he captured my imagination as
un farabutto – a scoundrel, a reprobate.
Add in his being a coal mine boss
in Marianna, Pennsylvania,
and I had a genuine hero.
How many other children
claimed such details about their grandpas?
Never telling anyone
of my naïve admiration for him,
family loyalty prevented me
from bragging about him.
Living to just a few days short
of his “hunnert” birthday,
I loved and admired him to the end.
Even when the ship’s manifest
I discovered for La Lorraine
listed him as a passenger
in steerage, not a stowaway.
Romantic overtures
like gaudy butterflies
kissing all blooms
that come their way,
teasing me, haunting me,
flirting with me
and playing havoc
with my feelings
Are you really harmless?
Is it fatal poison I drink?
I ask for hero worship
I get senseless fiddle-fuddle.
I ask for endearing emotions,
I get teasing quips
and seamy punch lines
that make me feel worthless,
shabby and trivial.
I yearn for meaning
I get trivia, empty promises,
like husks of unfertilized corn,
like a rundown house
abandoned even by ghastly ghosts,
or like a hot futile desert
filled only with smouldering sand,
empty even of a hopeful mirage.
Should I be thankful
that you bestow your love on none,
that you just love to trifle
with every man's heart?
Alas, I love you too much.
Partners in Prose
I am addicted to the drug
of writing poetry with you
for we were destined to create
our stressed out syllables to mate
collaborating with such grace
not having seen you face to face
of all the demons to be slain
in anger where we must abstain
and hero worship penned with vain
and poignant battles weighed in woes
rephrasing as a change in clothes
adventures in our poetry
as partners you align with me
a slower pace will be refrained
and nee’r can its essence be drained
Eight Word Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Emile Pinet
August 5, 2019
waltz and sing
1-19-'17
waltz me to the darkened room,
where the things happen that never they let you know,
waltz me there with cutthroat and mistletoe,
let me find a blatant hero.
hero worship most sublime
unwind, and find some part of my
long-lost and fragmented mind
weave it to wholeness and tell me
in a warbling breeze,
something profound,
cuz I'm calling out
on my knees.
Walls to Kingdoms and Loves to Rags,
I can't help but climax in the crags,
Help me out long lost sorrow sky,
Help me, I'm too grdng old to die.
sing it to me, darling blue,
sing me the answer, in my wretched heart,
true.
Steve Säid
None so brave
Did on so many occasions
save
Me from the bullies
Who
For far too many
Their school days ruin
Steve Säid
Jet black hair swept back
Coffee coloured skin
Immaculate
Steve Säid
How the girls did swoon
Oh, how I wished I could have been like you
Ray Moody
Disappointment
My father's signature has been forged for I know his hand
Greed for squandering have made you fall to your lowest ebb
My temples blasted at the shame that we are of the same blood
I choked to know that your son dared to forge dad's will
The embarrassment gushed in my blood about trespassed relationships!
I was thorned in every nerve at your restless unrequited greed
How could my brother do so? Overpowered by his greedy half?
My spirits depleted as I weakened in the arms of my dependent mother
I had nightmares of her being murdered as my heart had been
Why hero-worship grandpa if his virtues of gender equality aren't followed?
It suddenly awakened me to life we didn't belong to the same family mould
Strangely you and your family that I immensely loved, became strangers
I signed the will with a heavy heave not because I was befooled,
But my nosedived soul knew that my father would have wanted it so.
You have been my greatest disappointment, oh my un-dear brother!
November 7, 2015
Contest: Dancing With Description
Sponsor: Casarah Nance
Hereupon
I hear a song
Hereunto I embrace the near of dawn
Hereunder I ponder long
Herewith birds to sing the strong
Heroic verse
I'm a hero
I don't need to rehearse
Hero worship gone wrong
Being a hero can make things worse
Been a hero so long
It's a heroic curse
A hero now withdrawn
Becoming perverse
Heroic heroin and no nurse
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.