There are four legends concerning Prometheus.
According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was permanently renewed.
According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself [...]

BEFORE THE GAME
Shut one eye then the other
Peek into every corner of yourself
See that there are no nails no thieves
See that there are cuckoo’s eggs
Shut then the other eye
Squat and jump
Jump jump high high
On top of yourself
Fall then with all your weight
Fall for days on end deep deep deep
To the bottom of your abyss
Who [...]

Soft stockings coddle them by day and nail-bossed leather shoes buttress them, but my toes refuse to pay attention. Nothing interests them but emitting toenails, horny plates, semi-transparent and elastic, to defend themselves–from whom? Stupid and mistrustful as they alone can be, they never for a moment stop readying that tenuous armament. They reject the [...]

There was no one in him; behind his face (which even through the bad paintings of those times resembles no other) and his words, which were copious, fantastic and stormy, there was only a bit of coldness, a dream dreamt by no one. At first he thought that all people were like him, but the [...]

High Windows
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives–
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, [...]

A piece of a man had broken off in a road. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.
As he stooped to pick up another piece he came apart at the waist.
His bottom half was still standing. He walked over on his elbows and grabbed the seat of his pants and said, legs [...]

Oh didn’t we dance a puzzle
Round the tree when we
Danced the way we did
In early April when all is
Vernal and we needed twigs to
Invoke the gods that hovered
Near a healthy sprig
About a foot or so longer
Than needed to produce an
Invocation that requires wood
Or a cross of sticks so brittle
Not sought by dancing
Under the tree that [...]

© 1997 by Peter Johnson.
from Pretty Happy! White Pine Press, New York, 1997.
Hell
“If you want to understand the social and political history of modern man, study hell.” – Thomas Merton
It’s probably like the excitement of your first cigarette, but it lasts forever, that dizzying nausea — the Unknown: with imitation human heads on their [...]

Once upon a time there was an error
So ridiculous so minute
No one could have paid attention to it
It couldn’t stand
To see or hear itself
It made up all sorts of nonsense
Just to prove
That it really didn’t exist
It imagined a space
To fit all its proofs in
And time to guard its proofs
And the world to witness them
All that [...]

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After
all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we
ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother
told me as a boy (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess
you’re bored means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no inner
resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore
me, literature [...]