Poems about heroes

Heroes should be recognised at birth,
Which would save them the inconvenience of a first name
That nobody will want to use.

As for example Voltaire -
Now there was a guy!
Less than h-a-p-p-y
With François-Marie Arouet as a handle
(and who can blame him? )
He up and invented his own name.
He would have invented God too,
If God hadn't already existed.

Or take Beethoven,
Who for all I know
Might even have been God.

Or then again Picasso.
He really didnt need
The Pablo Diego Joso
Francisco de Paula
Nepomuceno
Maria de los Remedios
Cipriano de la SantГ­sima Trinidad
Ruiz
That he was lumbered with from birth.

OK, it's easy enough to make fun
Of people with flatfish faces -
Both oyГЁs on one side, I ask you!
But who can look at faces the same
Since he drew them that way?
And if people don't really look like that,
Some of them jolly well ought to.

As a kid I prayed for sunless days
The skies were grey, the flood, it came
The rain, it falls
It washes our sins, turned us into heroes

The screams, they fade, the joy, it raised
We danced, we played
The rain, it pools
We act like fools, no stress of rules
The rain, it always brings us heroes

In puddles, I wade
My soul is saved
The rain, I dream, of nights I mean
In shadowed scenes
Together we are heroes

I believe in heroes

People would like to conceive of This
As a World of Heroes and Villains,
But the Villains sometimes do heroic things
And our Heroes
Oftentimes commit crimes

"pity the land that needs them"
When things are going well
You don't need people
Who go beyond the call of duty
When was the last time we
Didn't need them?

Was Annabelle just a woman in Poe's dream?
Was there really an angel on Janet Frame's wooden table?
Did Emily Dickinson really wear white for the rest of her life?
Was Dante just a bitter prick to tell people about a red man with horn's on his head
Didn't think it was Halloween too soon on the corner of his calendar

I resembled all the traits these writer's made of their spoken lives just like Bukowski
If he did live in many rooms and lost his brain cells in bottles
Maybe in the afterlife Burroughs will give me pointers on drugs along with Thompson. Meeting Rimbaud ask him if he ever was in the closet. Took an eyeful of literature before high school, made friends with boozers, losers and psychopaths. Don't quote me because I cherish them so much I know I'll try to make it like them soon, dead yet my heroes they remain alive
WRITE ME OFF WRITE ME OFFF Write me down there's no pen and papers around scrawl on the wall have a purpose to write them all

Have I caused offense
By not wearing a poppy?

Have I upset
Keeping my money from that pot?

Am I unpatriotic
By not wearing a 'help for heroes' t shirt?

Am I un-British
For questioning if there are heroes or not?

To sign up for the forces
Requires full obedience
To follow the orders
Of commander in chief

To fight an agenda
Remotely decided
And come back dismembered
To your homeland for what?

'What do you know?
Where have you been?
What have you seen? '
You may well ask

But I can't help wondering

Why would you go there?
What's great about weapons?
What's fair about killing?
After all, that is what's required

Americans
We complain when our foods served cold
When the WiFi is down
When the beer is too old

Actors and athletes are presented as gods
Their drama is top news
If they show enough skin
They become top dog

We worry about a pimples
We bitch about sports scores
Its all nonsense and bullshit

A long wait at checkout comes with a sigh
But stop, you fucking drama queens
Because there are some people whose lives
Never come with lies

The soldiers are heroes
They spend all their lives
Saving our asses
They put everything they have on the line

Carrying guns
200 pound armor
For America to have freedom

So stop your complaining
About your wants and needs
Because without those brave soldiers
We wouldn't be free.

A history painted in tears
With shades of blood
Tales of sacrifice told
Under unclear night skies
A life given that we could live
A people forsaken
Their dreams our reality