Prometheus

By Jeffrey Armstrong

Stealing fire,
A real live wire,
Prometheus angered the gods.
He stole their flame
In a risky game,
To get even, against the odds.
The key is friction,
With truth and fiction,
A torch that gives off light,
The heart must care
To breathe pure air
And fly alone in the night.
So he struck a deal
With the chariot wheel,
By rubbing his stick on the rim,
While the disk turned round
He dropped straight down,
For the fire now was him.
Then such a flame
Enveloped his name,
The comet Prometheus,
Blazed through the sky
Like a piercing eye,
We saw him and he saw us.
In a dreadful flash,
With a blinding lash,
We took the fearful boon.
Writhing with pain, we blinked again,
As Prometheus fell in a swoon.
And the gods in rage,
Fashioned a cage
Of chains, on a lonely rock,
Where broken he lay,
As thevultures preyed,
Twisting his gut like a clock.
Now the light he brought,
Which his spirit bought,
Cast a shadow across our soul
And his borrowed plumes
Now light our rooms,
We live in what he stole.
But until we blaze,
He must spend his days
Chained to a rock for us,
For the stolen fire
Was to take us higher
And we are Prometheus.