Inferno's Reach: The Call to Burn

A stream of consciousness poem for Madness & (May)hem Day 4

Image: Luke Thornton via Unsplash+

For Day 4 of the Madness & (May)hem challenge, I asked writers to develop three openings to vastly different stories or poems and then choose one to write.

Here is the poem that made it past the first stanza…

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The candle’s flame danced,
but not for joy.
It reached desperately
with every flicker.
As if it were trying to escape.

Its world has gone dark.
Now covered in ash.
The ground is melting.
It sinks ever deeper,
Still reaching for the stars.

I have witnessed the life
and subsequent death,
of so many flames.
This one is different.
Perhaps it has a name?

Could it be that it once,
was a part of something bigger?
Burning on a celestial sphere.
Did it taste stardust,
before joining me here?

Are flames like this born,
not from sparks and steel?
Wrenched from eternity,
and forced to serve
at the behest of man?

Perhaps Prometheus knows,
Whether flames possess life.
Father of all fire, I ask,
Is it more than heat and light?
Called forth by a spark and strike?

Are all flames your children?
Seeking a place to burn,
Longing to escape to a place
Unbothered by the whims
of conquest and war?

The candle did not ask,
For its wick to be lit.
It was not eager to perish.
The flame did not have
a say in whether it exists.

And yet it is here,
Upon a battlefield of wax.
They devour one another.
Their only legacy a smell,
That dissipates like dew.

Tell me something, if you please. 
How far does inferno reach?
Do your fingertips grasp
at strands of titan's hair?
Scorching the face of Iapetus. 

When the fire goes out,
Is the smoke your soul?
Traveling back to the cosmos.
Rejoining the father of embers,
until called to burn once more.

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