Less Than Brave

 

“Inner Strength” by Sharon Cummings

 

 

I never feared men
a machismo thing born on
unkind city streets
but age and infirmity
shrivels all vanity

 

(originally posted January 2014)

Uniforms

 

“The Wall of Daydreaming and Man’s Inhumanity to Man” – Chicago Street Art

 

irrational valor

a selflessness

sworn of an oath

to protect and defend

turn aside mortal peril

walk into the fire

stand into the bullets

take illness in hand

a state less of the

mind than the heart

it’s a calling

the voice of an

impulse to serve

a devotion to duty

a knowledge that

one’s fellow man

needs protection

no threat

the more grave

than he is to himself

Distraction

False Front Building by Peter B Pearman

strawman as strongman

a false-front illusion

for scaring the world

to distract it from noticing

how much in truth

it scares hell out of him

Underground Railroad

“Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad” by Paul Collins

secret safe-houses

hid in plain sight

righteous bravery

tracing invisible

networks of yearning

defiantly smuggling

flesh and blood

cargoes of freedom

a life and death drama

heroic and noble

both black and white

consciences adamant

in their pursuit of

complete abolition

uncompromised ethics

the impetus driving

beyond scathing words

to engage mortal action

unshakeable warriors

smashing at shackles

redeeming the

uttermost shame of

imperfect utopia

 

***************

 

(inspired by the upcoming telecast of a new production of “Roots”)

Mongoose

“Snakes Abstract”
Digital Art by mickyd600
From picstopin.com

brave beyond reason
Kipling’s unlikely hero
let loose his children
among halls of government
see how the snakes flee the nest

Reticence

“Reticence”
Artwork by Michael Divine
From tenthousandvisions.com

like a box in a box in a box

hides the continent kernel of self

the embarrassing essence

of genuine judgments

perceptions uniquely obtained

from the shape of the world

by the lights of legitimate eyes

purely personal inklings of when

how and why did we come to exist

all the deeply internal eccentric

held thoughts and ideas never

shared never given communion

from fear of rejection or worse

fear of falling ignored through

fat cracks of ambivalence

confidence comes from acceptance

acceptance from joining the throng

fully naked of all but one’s honesty

honesty tendered with bravery

bravery being the purview of heroes

and heroes don’t hide their own hearts

like a box in a box in a box

Nodding to Beowulf

“Beowulf Wrestles with Grendel”
Illustration by Lynd Ward
From wikipedia.org

old monsters measure
the distance of fear
the heroic of heart
can be shaken in time
courage eaten by evil
who stridently bays
in a thundering voice
the poetic expression
of epithet sagas replete
with the terrors of
conscience projected
across generations in
oral tradition by firelight
found on low fens or
the high glacial ridges
of centuries marked by
the long lasting night
before medieval dawn

here did descendants
of Cain the behemoth
the ogre the firedrake
occupy mists of the mind
trampling men in their
naked mortality only
to find that one day
from their multitude
prey would arise a son
trembling with sword
standing taller than fear
invested by poets with
bravery spanning the
whole of his race all
the nations who yearned
to be other than victims
to tolerate no more of
monsters no longer
resigned to oppression

and thus did the singers
of sagas convey how
long suffered humanity
found its redemption
at hands of one man
standing taller than fear