Eight: Heroic Courage

Heroic Courage

What it is is dying

that, but…    if a moment comes

you take them with your mouth shut, both

Respectfully, no…

Both

torture and release

No. I don’t think a hero can rescue a hero

No, you’re half right, never boast, I’m saying

Dying may not be requisite

However, the ultimate

Little engine of glory, dear, that pistons away inside he or she

the subsumption of self, ability to

Think, if one god defeats another, only the victor is God

here the drinks are waters from glacier melts

northern and southern caps the dare of imbibing

emerging bugs, old plagues, pandemics

They meet to discuss aims of a new party

inroads and ignorance ignorance inroads back athwart

the conversation the fat talk of canapé eaters

canapés littered with small infections

snipped from bloody gauzes

bitter chemicals

scraped with the point of a knife

from chalky or leaden elemental mothers

at the center sits the globe of a lamp

under it a cheese-sized chunk (purportedly) from

a rod extracted by a cleanup crew, waste of a near-armageddon

Because World Enders aspire to immune themselves

in millisieverts and micrograms

hard-skinned and incorruptable

to acids and poisons

but the speechwriter in the room

Asks again what is heroism, we talk about heroism, we cheapen

heroism, if heroism were easier to come by now

for being mass produced, we would see more of heroism

Heroic Courage

Benevolence

(2020, Stephanie Foster)