Entitled, I Met One of My Heroes Today
I met one of my heroes today
At a book-signing on the West End
His words sway freely like wind
Grand human tragedy, fearless ideals
He reminds me why I read, sometimes why I live But when I got there I couldn't understand
That little man across the room
Has moved me to tears? Has made me laugh and love?
Great expectations but realities will out I shouldn't have gone over to End today
It never occurred to me that meeting him
Would diminish the wonder invoked by his prose
Now his words are just words again, not answers When I got home I opened his masterwork
I tried so hard to live within its pages
The same familiar characters, the same beauty
But it doesn't work that way From now on I'll keep my idols on distant pedestals
But I will wonder, because I understand this:
Always, familiarity breeds contempt
Will we scorn the very stars of Heaven
If someday we live among them?I really like the driving concept of this. I think it might work a bit better if the "I" were to be fleshed out as a character experiencing this world that the "hero" creates for the "I." I think that the reader really has to be set up to feel the loss of magic that comes with facing reality and the difficulty of suspending disbelief after the mundanity of fact has shattered an image. It's like a dreamer awakening only to realize it was a dream and trying to sink back into it, only to have things go awry if at all.
Hey, thanks for reading mate! I agree that it could use a handful more stanzas, but once you get to a certain length you might as well make it into a bit of a story-poem and write 20 stanzas. Since I wrote this in 15 minutes that wasn't really in the cards.
No worries. I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised that there is such an interest in poetry among other topics on Hubski. Anyway, like all writing, a great deal of poetry is re-working things and developing the initial idea. As I said before, I think that the idea behind your poem is really interesting; this interplay of who we hope our heroes to be in light of how they've made us feel and how we feel after we see that they're just as human as ourselves.