Hero
I have already submitted a first draft of this poem and changed things based off your advice, so now this is what I've got:
Hero
A fateful day of April,
Disaster struck the sulci of a city and
Buildings became ablaze - a furnace of suffering.
One passerby yelped, “Someone save us!”
Another cried, “Help me, please!”
But no one came. No hero or caped crusader.
No warrior or friendly protector.
The streets remain some desert, dry-boned wasteland,
The only sign of life being a desperate call for hope
That heralded no hero…
So soon the buildings were incinerated
Alongside their once-lively inhabitants, burned and scorched
Into a mangled mess of charred slop and bone.
The survivors tried to move on like retreating tides,
Yet their memories too return to the seared residue of a
Comic book page that refuses to close.
The hero, despite once being an omnipresent protector,
Was never seen again and
The blistered buildings became a monument
To honour those who fell by negligence.
As over time, when the people walked past those tortured towers
And saw the blackened walls, soot-smacked windows encased by a hellish pall,
And saw the present stuck in their tragic, tormenting past,
Saw their suffering looking back into their dysphoric eyes day after day for years on end -
And they began to ponder - whether the burning stove was the problem or
It was the hero…
I never mentioned before that this is an extended metaphor for the effects of an absent father who was an alcoholic on his child. I know that messages are often supposed to be interpreted in poetry but for me, they are really important so I wanted to tell you all my goal with this poem.