They wanted to fly,
Daedalus and his son:
like birds,
like gods.

And so they fashioned 
wings of wax
and escaped across the sea. 
But Icarus flew too high, 
son-melted.

The story is supposed to be about hubris,
but we didn’t learn.

Instead we took revenge,
fashioned new toys,
not from wax but oil,
not soft but hard.

These wings cannot melt, 
eternal in their endurance.
And as a final cruelty,
are eaten by the winged ones
we once tried to imitate.

"If we cannot fly, neither can you,"
we say,
as their bodies plummet, crash, rot,
revealing stomachs full of our
eternal trash.

Though we can now fly higher than any bird
our legacy is the fall:
of birds, yes -- 
Of us, yes.