Lion Eater

Lion, lion, lion water
Skater, skater, got to meet her
Eyes
And call her out, raise a shout
Raise a ruckus before she kicks that tuckus
Lion, lion, lion eater
Dark alleys model after
Monsters pay attention
Warlords aim at comprehension
Ideal fear when one can hear
The force of her voice, see the glare of an eye
Lion, lion, lion eater
Why, oh, why
What makes you so cruel?
Was it mommy or daddy or bullies in school?
Was it a lover, a brother, a television screen?
Video games or other things obscene?
A comic book panel,
a hipster in flannel
A broken promise,
an infinite long list
Of faults in the world that created a girl
Who stops a grown person in tracks
And has the last cold laugh
And is a lion, lion, lion eater

Really Really Real

To meet a hero is to meet infinite sadness and unrest. It’s not enough to get a person’s signature on an object of meaning, to say thanks, or to brush up against them the way any stranger too close might.

In your mind, they’re the silent best friends, guiding you through the best and worst times of your life. They are the standards you hold yourself to, the inspiration to do something (not just for the sake of creating, also for the sake of one day being noticed by them or having someone revere you the way you revere your heroes).

But when you meet them, you discover they are human. If they care about how much they mean to you, they’ll politely smile and chat for a few minutes, creating a favorable memory to carry you through the days ahead. If not, devastation.

Either way, you are left with a picture or an autograph, a story, and they go back to being the fictional hero on a pillar that you’ve made in your head.
Or they crumble, leaving the worshiper alone in the dust of his faith.

Beware of heroes. Beware further still of meeting them. They are only human and most humans are not nice people.

SuperGuy

For half a second, when you first see him, you forget that the stories you heard as a kid never happened. The resemblance is uncanny, a doppelgänger in a world where fiction is regulated to books and campaign speeches. The glasses, the hair; for half a second, you swear that Clark Kent lives in southern Louisiana.
He doesn’t, not simply because truth and parallel dimensions would keep him from doing so. Mostly in the way that this particular gentleman dresses only in superman shirts and jeans( negating the need for secret identity). There is as well personality differences. SuperGuy, as he is known as to those who do not know him very well, walks with a sense of confidence more likely associated with He-Man that the mild-mannered reporter of comic book fame. A rare breed of nerd in possession of technically good looks by society’s standards, and a passion for playing general in any group activity, he unconsciously attracts women to him. Despite the part of Lois Lane going to a curly-haired brunette, from sorority parlors to the bleachers of the football stadium, all are in agreement: SuperGuy is on everyone’s list.