Hey, Achilles, what’s it like
To die from an arrow you didn’t see?
Hey, hey, happy stuttering Hercules
What’s it like to be mad and ****
The woman you love,
The children you love,
What’s it like to watch terror born
On the faces of helpless thousands
And be counted in those thousands
As defenseless? What’s it like,
Hercules, to be loved, to be a hero,
To be unstoppably strong and
Uncorrectable? (In the back of your head
There’s a voice) Pleading with
Wreckage in the making and
Begging your arms not to swing,
Your hands not to squeeze,
Your lungs to stop breathing
Long enough to faint and later wake
With sense and reason?
Do you ever want to die?
No, no. “Dying is for fools,” you say.

You are a legendary fool in paper armor,
Tilting at windmills and running from smiles;
You are happy, blind, and wounded
In the ruins of a diseased world.