Souls On Fire Poem by Joseph Martin III

One day
he noticed the way
words pass from lips into air
then fall onto the floor
to scurry and scuttle into emptiness,
and he went completely mad.

Now the days have no need for names,
for him, living ghost of bone and blood,
who rarely speaks but watches instead,
or more correctly, sees like someone
seeing past a cloudy lens straight
into the heart of the world.

Man in a grey suit walking to work:
he is burning.

Woman with a stroller walking through the park:
she is burning.

Old man with wrinkled trembling hands:
he too is burning.

They are all burning.
We are all burning

At night he sleeps
and the dream is always the same:
a world flat and colorless, filled with so many,
so many souls on fire, so many consumed,
aching one day to swim in blue oceans.