I wrote this Poem some 15 years ago, but it keeps coming back to me.
To hear it read with music go to:
http://www.jukeboxalive.com/audio_play_offsite.php?mid=1691203&skin=1168375&method=play&popup=on
Then click on Spontaneous Combustion
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION
In school we were taught
to look both ways before crossing,
not to talk to strangers,
and not to play with matches.
On the street a man in rags
shouts to no one in particular,
talking to God on a first name basis.
There is a notion that he
might have some truth to tell,
some knowledge gained
from pain and hardship.
But whether fraud or prophet,
there is a heat in his eyes
that could singe your eyebrows
if you get too close.
Fires start in unexpected places:
a cat playing with a lamp chord,
vapors rising from an uncapped can
or oily rags stored in a cellar.
There once was an ex-marine
who hid in a Texas tower
to fire randomly into a scattering crowd,
as if shooting at distant candles.
There was the teen age boy
who set his alarm
and arose one morning before school
to kill his Father, Mother and Sister,
still in their beds.
And there was a man burning
with his own lone obsession
who walked into a school
and shot children,
round after round
until sickened of the taste
of smoke and sobs and blood,
he felt the impact of the last bullet himself.
There are men who build bombs
like calculated bonfires,
men crazed with a cause
with twisted justification,
who send the prayers of strangers,
the hopes of those who have known
some moment of happiness
into an eruption of debris and smoke.
It’s as if an ember
carried on the wind were to land
hidden in your backyard garden,
to burst raging in the lilacs,
suddenly swallowing the night.
Could the spark that ignites
the artist
to paint flaming sunflowers
with the swirl of a brush,
who focuses all the more
to overcome solitary agony,
be similar to the one that smolders
in the demagogue
who sets a wildfire of fear
in the hearts of his followers
and fans the inferno of hate
until he himself is consumed
by his own blaze?
Could the hot coal
that burns in someone
torn by the love of life
and the ache of living,
one who translates a flicker
of beauty into tones on a piano,
be the same heat that flares
inside the mind of a man
who torches hearts with acrid lies
that blind the eyes of those
so eager to believe
and to be led
into the flames?
Could it be,
that for each Joan of Arc
who stands in the fire
with a prayer in her heart,
there is an inquisitor
fearing for his own power
who sets the spark
of her funeral pyre?
Could it be,
that for every Hitler
who deceives so well,
he deceives himself,
and brands humanity
with a searing iron of hell,
there also comes a King
who brings the dream of peace,
who teaches truth
to awaken our best placed faith?
c 1999 / Larry Simpson
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