Scott Owens’ poem To Be in Poetry appeared here April. After reading this poem I think Superman needs to try writing a little cathartic poetry from time to time, don’t you?
The Real Death of Superman
By Scott Owens
By Scott Owens
Superman longed for the old days
of good guys and bad guys,
Kryptonian-toting Lex Luthor cronies,
reality-bending midgets,
villains from other planets
bent on world domination
with their death rays
and mischievous toys.
He missed Solomon Grundy
and General Zod, simple men,
really, with simple plans
and motivations. He wanted
more natural disasters, earthquakes,
landslides, typhoons, things he could stop
with brute strength, super breath
or flying around the world backwards.
He didn’t know what to do
about drugs or booze, low
self-esteem or clinical depression.
He grew tired of saving
suicide girls from the sides<
/span>
of bridges only to watch them
find another ledge and jump.
Raw force seemed silly
in the face of self-mutilation.
He could knock a gun from a wrongdoer’s
hands in an alleyway stick up
without thinking twice,
but in their own homes, pointed
at their own temples, weapons
of self-destruction too numerous
to account for, he lacked answers.
Confronted with spouses returning
to abuse, with abandonment
and exploitation, with incivility
in all its forms, his big hands were useless,
his x-ray vision saw nothing.
He grew bored with irrelevance,
became powerless under the sun,
his own impenetrable skin grown thin.
Awesome!
You bring back a blast from the past and then we are reminded that even then it was similar, but not as deadly. Impressive.