Prometheus

Black skies dark winds whipping thunderheads blow
Circling cyclone dark power the world with waterspouts sow
Savage emotion bleak swirls from north and south
Storm swelling swelling within and without
I am not sad, nor happy nor morose
But that dark storm dark storm within my soul
Grows stronger grows darker breeds even more chaos
I cannot contain it not restrain it this creature of Sheol
It infests me arrest me and save me I cry
But truly truly I less prefer release than to die
I name the storm love those tempested seas
I crave it guard it this terrible disease
Terrible power its waves rip me off my feet
Its wind stings my face its rain pelts my skin
I crawl from the surf fall half destroyed to my back
As the lightning forked sky, incandescent second among the black
One great sheet, a bolt forking to a score more thin
And a crash a split as heavens and earth meet

A tree crashes to the beach
Felled in its prime by one bolt
And a fire smolders deep within the boll
hisses and pops its flame to the thunderous bass roll
stretching its fiery wings, a phoenix after the molt
reaching to the sky and stepping to the ground to teach
those below the sky of warmth and burn
giving light, ethereal light
from earth nymph’s delight
and showing glowing at every turn
the duality reality of true life lived dyin’
Phoenix! Burn’d an’ burn’d an’ burn’d again
Firebrand! Proud emblem through your sky a flyin’
Plunged browbeat to the cold sea again
Sitting bedraggled dead ash’d heap a lyin’
Why do you fly to the teeth of the storm?
Why struggle on wing? You cannot possibly fly
Why take to the sky when you know it means to die?
Slow gasping slow straining the phoenix made reply
From bruised abused broken shatter’d form


“I was born to fly
Born to live and born to die
My only life lived is that closer to death
Beating wings my constancy
An unheard prayer my security
Torn from heaven, the neap tide now my berth
Yet when I die, unwillingly embraced by cold earth
My last breath will be a gasp
A gasp of when I dared to try
Tried to reach up and touch the sky”

Then the cold phoenix died
Broken Beaten Bleeding and Crush’d
Proud head in ignominy lolling
Finally succumbing to Death’s Styx tolling
I held the cold bird wet in my arms
Dead Dead Dead Dead,
Dead Dead Dead Dead.
Befit of Life’s aura befit of her charm
I saw a black bird, no eagle or such nobility
Not even Athena’s raven, no such bird was she
A Crow! A Crow, a crow’s lifeless form
I held in that lull in the terrible storm
What bird What bird can this creature be
A bird that would speak such words to me?
What Fire! What Power! I see none, not now.
A simple bird. What happened? Wherefore and how?
The thunder had slacked, the spent rain ceasing
What doppelganger is this? ‘or whose shadow watch am I keeping?

I walked to the Ocean, sated near calm’d sea
Bearing the cold crow phoenix husk with me
I knelt in the waves to bathe the poor shell
Marred with earth from the flight ——— death knell
That crushed one wing, made sad jumble of feather and bone.
And as I teased the sand from his other wingtip’s flight
I saw something, not bird’s, not earth’s, not even my own
A blue spark softly glowing I could not move
It was a pale blue a deep blue a steel gray at times
fleck’d with the fire of the sunset and the crystal moonlight
with the beauty of a star speckled black winter’s night
and the hope of sunrise renewed reborn
It shattered— cannot be contained. Restrained this sky?
It Exploded! A laugh ! A nova! A phoenix cry!
A Fireball! A Fireball! Burn the sky!
Dead Crow Dead Phoenix started in my hand
Alive! Unreal! the Firebrand!
Unreal! Unreal! Unreal cry I!
Unreal the power the awe of the sky
Unreal the man drenched in fire in the sea
Iccarus may fall but he dares to fly
Unreal the power the awe of the sky
Exploded Expanded Consumed am I
Unreal the power the awe of the sky
Made Unmade Destroyed Reborn
In one instant All and Nothing am I
Unreal the power the awe of the sky
i am I am I Am I AM
I AM the man with phoenix cry
reborn reborn reborn to Die
And live that I might touch the sky