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Not Quite the Man for the Job.

The spaceship had crashed in the desert.
(don't they always?)
I found it half-buried in red sand.
The door was open and ragged
like a mouth, or a freshly gouged wound.

Stupid now, when I think of it,
but I climbed inside to get
a better look.

My feet crunched on shattered glass.
Exposed wires hung from doorways
and sparks showered from control panels.
I found him in front of a giant TV screen,
slumped forward in his chair.

A dying spaceman, last of his race.
At least, that's what he told me.

In a broken, painful voice
he offered me a magical ring.

Said if I chose to wear it
I would possess a power
far greater than that of mortal men.
A power to create anything I dared wish for.

He held it in his outstretched hand
and fixed my gaze with his.
The ring glowed greenly, a steady light
among the flickering wreckage.

I know it sounds weird, but it's true.
We're living in strange times.
Last week a guy got bitten by a spider
and now he sticks to walls.

And if the last son of a dying planet
can rocket to earth and bounce bullets off his chest,
then anything's possible, it seems.

For a moment I saw myself
flying around with the ring on my hand.
Righting wrongs, defending the weak,
shifting the earth on its axis.

But who was I kidding?
You know what you get when you do that sort of thing?

You get mad fuckers in latex and armour
trying to beat the shit out of you.

You get alter egos and arch-enemies
and Batmobiles and secret fortresses.

You get everyone with a problem
dumping it on your doorstep.

And who am I to wear the white hat?
Who am I to say what's right or wrong?
I have enough trouble deciding
what to wear in the morning.

Besides, I never looked good in tights.

So I told the guy, "No thanks"
and left him for someone else to find,
preferring to think of the whole thing
as a dream.

The guy who got the job was a better choice than me,
all muscle, chin and cliché,
thick neck and even thicker head.
We met in a bar in the city.

Bastard tried to break my hand when he shook it.

I saw him on the news last week.
He was breaking up a bank-robbery
with big green boxing-gloves.

Kid's stuff, really, when you think
of the potential in that ring.

To put it in the hands of a simple-minded,
well-meaning moron like that
is a waste.

I've still got the same old nine-to-five,
the pay's not great, but it's a decent job
and there's no-one threatening my loved ones
or expecting me to save the world from destruction.

No quick changes in phone-booths,
no emergency signals from police headquarters.

It's a good life.
A quiet life.
A life I chose for myself.

In my dreams, every now and then,
I see myself flying over the city,
beating up the bad guys,
rescuing the helpless, protecting the innocent,

but those are just dreams. They end.
When I wake,
I wake to me.

© Adam Ford, 1997

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