Poem: "The Hero's Hidden Face"

[ysabetwordsmith]

The second freebie of the day is brought to you by new prompter fatfred, who also inspired this poem.  The dialog quotes come from Sherlock Holmes.  The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a key mythology text about archetypes.

The Hero's Hidden Face

These are things that Sherlock knows:

     What happens when one puts
     human eyeballs into a microwave.

     What happens when one's flatmate
     discovers the results of said experiment.

     How to catch murderers.

     How to get himself not-quite-killed
     while catching murderers.

     How to put John back together again.
     All the king's horses.  All the king's men.

These are things that Sherlock thinks  he knows:

     "I'm not a psychopath, Anderson,
      I'm a high-functioning sociopath."

    "Don't make people into heroes, John.
     Heroes don't exist,
     and if they did,
     I wouldn't be one of them. "

     “You want me to shake hands with you in hell, Moriarty --
     I shall not disappoint you.”

These are things that Sherlock does not know:

     That John loves him
     more than air or freedom.

     That people all over London pray for him,
     not by name, but for all those
     who rush into danger for the saving of the day.

     That mythology is as true as criminology,
     just in different ways.

     That the Hero has a thousand faces,
     and one of them is Trickster
     laughing behind a tragic mask.