For Prometheus, I Would Weep

in a dream I’d sooner abandon
an ice pick of shadow
chiseled into my skull
I felt bone separate

as steel bit into membrane
skin was like spider silk

and I find that I’ve
no shelter inside my own flesh
no memories kept to myself

everyone is listening
with scalpel in hand
hoping to locate my weakness

and remove it to own

as though my strength
were unwarranted side-effects
in a dream where I’m medicated

my own heart is an illness
an island irresolute
that I tried to make selfish

in that dream I’d sooner
I’d never had back then
I felt my neurons
dying one by one

the pressure of a finger
to my temple
like a loaded gun

I smelt the powder of the bullet
the pleasure of the trigger
the one-option-release
the hammer mechanism

the blood trickling down
a slow stream to my mouth
my own venomous red
my own memories dread

so society has misinformed
malnourished the fledgling
left great children to die
wasting away from ostracized

how civilized to defecate
how ceremonial heads of state
love the lavish
drugged up, murdered

slabs of clay

this is the seasonal return
the decadent answer
the mortuary decay

I feel the womb
beneath my feet
and I see the swinging pendulum
the irate demigods

my own defeat

no penance would be adequate
this is a harmful turn
a tourniquet of events

a hand closed
a rift of fist

I feel the press of steel
deeper into my base line
my segmented spine
shatters like unity

anarchy in dismay

my own eyes grow dull
and then I watch
as my body falls