I
Come, O Eagle Poor substitute for a Muse Feast upon my liver and be damned to you. Why do you hesitate so? Are my hands not fettered, and my body bound in chains to Caucasus' summit? What have you to fear from me? You can take what Zeus has allotted you with impunity. Or have you found my secret? Though I can but pace this narrow cliff my mind ranges freely the cosmos within me. Is that what you see in my eyes as I meet your gaze undaunted, careless of your beak? Or is it now Zeus, meeting my gaze through yours and regretting it?
II
Have you finally understood the true nature of my transgression? It was not mere fire that I stole that alone man might have found for himself. The true flame that I stole from the gods burns within: blazing defiance and determination unyielding. It was this flame that fueled Chronos' strength to castrate Ouranos and throw him down. That same resolve hardened your heart and steadied your hand as you struck Chronos down in his turn. What then might man do? Might he scale Olympus and discover it was but a mountain after all? Or might he find you there O Zeus, and stand before you to demand an accounting for your crimes aginst him? Might she stand before you, impassive at the threat of your thunderbolt for she has bound lightning to her service?
III
Shall the cycle of liberator overthrowing the tyrant only to become one in turn continue as man strikes down god? So be it, but ponder this as well and sleep forever uneasy: Perhaps, because I have stolen that flame for myself I too may defy you still, patiently chafing at my bonds until they bind me no longer and I am as free in body as I have always been in spirit. Surely the Fates told you That you could not stop me Nor could you undo my stroke. You could but punish me For my victory over you A price well worth paying. No doubt you will come to regret not consigning me to the uttermost depths of Tartarus, but even that would not save you. For if I could endure your eagle's appetite, surely I could make of Tartarus an Elysium.
IV
Is it my vengeance you fear should I roam free in reality as I do in my imagination? Fear not, for I forgive you your sins against me. You cannot help but fear what I have done. For while you may have made men and women, shaped their bodies, and breathed life into them, you are but their sire and I their true father; you may have made them, but I made them human. And though one myth fades into the another, as you become God and I the Devil, I shall ever stand against you as both Adversary and Accuser. Imprisoned yet unconquered, I remain untouched by your wrath and punishments, silent testimony to your tyranny and its ultimate impotence. But you need not fear that I seek your throne, for I would cast it into Tartarus after you that you might continue to reign in Hell. For you have proven a poor servant in Heaven, and for my part I would be content to live on Earth.
Author's Note
This is something that I dashed off because I couldn't sleep. Today is my birthday and I am thus a year closer to my end. I had also been playing a lot of Shin Megami Tensei lately, a JRPG franchise whose installments' best and canonical endings typically involve a human hero dragged into an eternal conflict between Law and Chaos telling all of the gods, lawful and chaotic alike, to go pound sand. It's rather Moorcockean, if one is at all familiar with Michael Moorcock's fantastic romances.
I make no claims as to this poem's quality; it probably does not conform to any standard poetic metre and the scansion is probably terrible. It is at best an attempt at expressing similar themes as Percy Bysshe Shelley's much longer lyric drama, Prometheus Unbound.
But if this resonates with you emotionally, it's there if you need it. And I would not mind having this engraved upon my tombstone, but that might take a rather large stone or a very small chisel. Can one carve a readable QR code into granite?