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Sharon Talbot Sep 2017
Ötzi

Even in my long sleep,
I dreamed of this.
A waking by strangers
A grasping of my wrist
And I wrench it back from them!

My dreams beneath the ice
Were warm, in summer vales,
Where children played
Under my watch, old but hale.
An easy thing, my guard was then.

I tend sore limbs as supper warms,
And aching joints inflamed,
And muscles tough as ibex horn;
For a while I can be lame.
And see my copper ax in the red-gold flame.

I dream of how it came to me,
After vanquishing a headsman.
Intruders fell before me!
And I earned this talisman.
Weapon, scepter, power of my clan!

Then I was sent across the mountain,
A lone journey I knew well.
To trade with kinsmen in a the northern glen,
With gifts, arrow shafts and tales to tell,
Never guessing betrayal that walked behind.

Alone upon the highest peak
I ate my last meal by the fire.
To me the gods seemed trying to speak,
As men I knew climbed higher.
We had words, but they were my kin!

In my long sleep I wonder why
These false friends turned to hate.
I’d watched over them, yet they cried
That my rule was done, and it was too late,
So I turned from them and faced my doom.

I crossed the last protruding rock
And now felt safe from them.
But then a blow, beneath my heart: a shock!
I fell in a soft, snowy glen,
And then a dull pain in my skull…and black.

Beneath me, I can feel the ax;
They’d never take that from me!
Nor my arrows, quivers and packs;
And risk the fury of the gods.
They’d taken my power and left a naked soul.

Five-thousand years I spent beneath the frost,
Until I was found and freed.
My scattered ions watched, angry and lost.
They dragged my body from its bed
And my soul from another life.

Now part of me lies in a crypt
Another frozen tomb.
If only I hadn’t run and slipped,
All those ages ago,
I would now lie in sacred ground,
Back in the earth to which all are bound.
Based on the 5,000 year-old, frozen body of a Neolithic man, called  Ötzi, resting under a glacier on the Austrian/Italian border. He has been widely studied and they theorize that he came from a transitional community at the base of the Alps in Italy, who were early farmers but also hunter-gatherers. When his stomach was finally autopsied, they found a meal of grain, mutton and greens. He was about 45 years old when he was most likely killed by an arrow in the back along with a blow to the head. He fell and bled to death between two large rocks, which kept his body safe from the moving glacier. Two hikers found him and assumed he was a recent ****** victim. The latter is true. His body is now kept in a temperature controlled refrigerator, taken out only briefly for various studies.
Colm Mar 2017
Perhaps I am mistaken
Perhaps you are not as you seem in the light of day
Glimmering like the Pyrite on the infinite cliff
On the edges of which you keep me, ever at bay
Because after all of the crystal
And shale has been stripped away
And the quartz, the granite, the limestone pale
Have fallen to the earth beneath
To be crushed underneath the walking waves
Perhaps then I will see you shine on a barren day
And my eyes will be better for the sight
Even if your worth is not in gold
But as I fear it might be, in clay
Sometimes these things just appear.... (:
Mike Rollain Apr 2016
Many years ago
When I was bored
I would set afire
A glob of hand soap
On the counter
And above it
I would suspend
A penny
And wait

Nothing at first
Patience was key
But then
A ripple
Then nothing
Then a violent tear
And from it
True color
Would escape
That copper facade
Like a tiny T-1000
And fall

Through the air

Shining
Morphing
Adapting
Impacting
Freezing
Frozen
Still
Science!
She gave me a six foot copper wire
Infused with delicate lights
That glowed like small, rosy Suns.

Little does she know
That I bathe in this faint light
And I am no longer afraid
Of the Dark.
A marvelous friend gave me a copper wire that powered tiny LED lights. I never told her what it meant to me.
Sonny Oct 2015
You were made of gold and I was made of copper
You were sunlight and I was moonlight
You had bright smiles and facts
I had secrets and books

I shouldn't have been this entranced by you
But life is tricky and fate is odd
So maybe this is right
Astral Jul 2015
The shadows dance their waltz with glee, among the floor of dead leaves and animal bones As the sun glistens among the tin hearts, and copper tears
Martin Narrod Nov 2014
This terribleness. The blur of traffic lights and puddles paints Los Angeles on my face at night. It's so hard to know who will doze in my blind spots. Sunflower seeds and ******* lining the carpet. I sat on the front porch for five hours gutting the wolves from my appendices. Usually the headaches go away with the squashing of the lights. Fluorescents are the worst, halogens second, and 60-watt 120-volt light bulb the bane of my existence. I look at my phone but I cannot summon a quirky 120 character quip. I need excedrin but all I have to grape flavored children's aspirin. I should have asked for the water. How many unfinished glasses of water have I left around this world?
     Maybe Bruce and I will squash after work. I can hear his weekly catalog of two night stands with those married transient women who drive from Santa B. I hate golf, I could have made carried a career in this resentment. Maybe rolling down the window will alleviate some of this pressure. Maybe it's barometric pressure, The Baby is here in time to drag the houses out to sea. It feels like Michelangelo is carving The David in my head and it's the chiseling I've never wanted. It's Tuesday and the drugs were horrible. They killed five of them today. We wrapped their heads in blankets from the Thrifty, and had to have the interns find clothes that would fit for the Christian caskets. Two days until Giving Thanks Day.
     I am wrapped in copper and stuck in amber. I am acquitted by nonsense and stipulation, sick with nausea and pushing my forehead into the steering wheel. This is all terrible. The lying I've never told myself. The people that don't even know it's lying. Her and I always seem to escape with our happiness and pleasure in tow. The odds are slim, but our clothes have never fit too tightly.
neon alien blouse girl lies lying tightly wrapper copper days fighting giving slim odd thanksgiving gratitude life blanket homeless ring internship myself I lights lux watts volts stand sit golf aspirin
Poetic T Aug 2014
Blankets covered the floor
White like forgotten snow
Ruffled in places,
Dust settled, grey patches in White
Foot touches floor, the blanket seeps red
Like a virus spreading ,
Consuming the white
The floor now like a wine,
A smell of copper
I touch the crimson,
A ripple spreads across the room,
From wall to wall,
Ripples come together forming more,
Then towards me they encroach
Liquid,
Scarlet,
Waves,
Washing over my feet,
A grip I feel as the crimson
Pulls,
Seduces,
Wrenches,
At my feet,
I collapse like a toppled tree,
The waves crash upon the wooden floor
Each like a hook pulling me in more,
Then I am consumed
Underneath the waves of crimson death
There is only darkness,
My screams unheard
Not alive,
Not yet dead,
I look up as the crimson turns white,
And where once there was liquid
There is now white sheets waiting patiently
For those who don't tread carefully
Only death does await.

— The End —