Burning Me Poem

My mind took other avenues. In my sleepless, silent trance the fire came to occupy the empty cavity of my thoughts, and I came to realize the significance of the fire and its place in the lonely ceremony of service. Fire was among the first inventions of primitive man. In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from Olympus and gave it to humans, catalyzing the advancement of civilization. Under the stars it became clear the fire I was fueling was a symbol: I was growing civilization through my sacrifices. I pondered this curious realization throughout the night.

have realized that I have made a journey from darkness to redemption along with the author. Look in

I am no longer one of the people in the darkness. I have escaped the delusion. Through the pain in my

I don't know how to. Yes, you do. Is the fire real? The fire? Yes it is. Where is it? I don't know where it is. Yes you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it.”(278). This quote is said as the man is dying and these are the last words he tells the boy as he passes. The fire has been referenced several times by the man as he tells the boy they are the good guys, and that it is their mission to carry the fire. The fire in this book symbolizes humanity; as soon as the flame goes out humanity is lost, therefore the fire has to be carried to continuously burn. This is why the man asks the boy to carry the flame. The man is dying and if the flame dies humanity dies with it. The reason it is humanity that dies rather than humans, is that humans in this world still exist. The man and boy have encountered various people throughout their journey, but that is not what the fire represents. Most people we have seen in this wasteland are vicious cannibals who torture others to survive. These people are human and they are surviving but they are not living. Those who carry the flame in this world are doing more than surviving they are living. The flame carriers recognize and have compassion for human suffering; they refuse to shut this part of their mind off in order to survive. This is why it is different from the people just surviving. The spark and flame that humanity once was is carried within them. This is also why the boy asks the stranger when he sees him if he carries the flame. If this stranger carries the flame, the boy knows that he has not lost his humanity, and therefore can be trusted. The reason I think the flame was chosen to symbolize humanity is because fire symbolizes life and knowledge. It has been said that once humans were able to utilize the flame. Humans stood up above animals for fire was the birth of human intelligence. The fire represents this intelligence and human’s ability

Someone hands me a torch. Who, I do not know. My head is in a fog, I cannot even remember my own name. Focus, I tell myself, you cannot get distracted now. I pull my arm back and throw the blazing stick into the belly of the beast. I watch, enthralled by the beauty of the flames as the sacks of grain become alight. A shout wrenches me back into reality.

"By the keeper!" The burning man proclaimed and jumped back. Vishah looked up at the man, man was holding a torch that's what had blinded him. But the man himself, glowed. As if lit from within. Vishah peered at the man teying to find an origin to the strange light. The more he looked at it the more the void grew restless. It growled greadly, that light could be his, it's power, its beauty.

I had lit a fire on a dark and gloomy night while wandering the wilderness. I hoped that warmth would rejuvenate me and help me continue my journey, but the night sky had become so murky that is seemed impossible to find my way through the dark. Continuing the journey would be hopeless without a source of light to guide me along the way. While warming my cold body by the crackling flames of the fire, I realized that a man was approaching me. He had emerged from the darkness of the forest trees and appeared to be just as cold as I had been before I had lit the fire. He drew closer to the fire and asked me if he would warm himself. I agreed, but asked that he would show me the way to Bronzville. The man claimed that he was also journeying

October 21 the date that has hunted me for 9 years now. When I was 17 I went with my sister to the woods outside of our home in Ypsilanti, MI I heard the stories of the old church in the 1700s and how it was burnt down by "demons" or "Lucifer himself" I don't believe it because I'm pretty sure lucifer has more important things to do than burn down a church in Michigan.

back up, and once again I felt with certainty that it was all a masquerade she was performing--but I was also struck by how intensely she performed, as though lives--not just our lives, or even the lives in this small, sometimes sleepy Massachusetts town, but all life, everywhere, from the worms beneath our feet that blindly dug their myriad and vermicular tunnels to the vast and tenuous astromorphs that feed on clouds of nebulae like earthly cetaceans sieve plankton and krill through their baleens--depended on her performance. She looked up at me, and said: "What were once billions of cycles about your small sun have now diminished over the aeons to an infinitesimal remnant; mere planetary revolutions, in fact. There are still

Over the town of Ledwin, in the middle of a particularly hot July, the sky flickered while the waning moon hung in its tent. It was not the stars that shined deep across the cosmos, or the flames of a meteorite breaking through Earth's attenuated barrier. No, the very sky itself became bright, shining as if the sun was antagonized into a fearsome rage, then dark, as if it were subdued by a much more terrifying presence. It was like some sort of anomalous, uncanny light switch was being pushed, flipping the sun on, then off. On, then off. Alternating between levels of such extremity that it was a miracle the air itself didn’t catch fire and then freeze over, for it was not temperature that changed, only

Speaker & Setting- The speaker/writer of the poem is Randy Gailhas, but refers himself as the “Night Rider.” The author describes Marfa at night as “Dark West Texas”. The setting of Marfa is a eerie , mysterious , bizarre place as described in the poem. Marfa and the lights have a mystical feeling in the poem.

The smell of heated metal in this confined room started to clear my sinuses. As the temperature rose higher and higher, I felt my nose hairs slowly start to shrink and dissipate. As the walls crept closer and closer I realized I was being pushed to my death. The walls were closing on in on me and were forcing me to go in the only direction I didn’t want to. As I felt the heat of the walls start to slowly toast my back, I slid off the ground and into the abyss. As I held myself on the side of the pit for dear life, I find myself fixated on the hell laying below me, unable to avert my eyes. I looked around. Nothing. I looked at the sliding walls. Smooth as ice. There were no windows, no doors. I looked at the ceiling, there was no sky. I looked

The siren woke me up. A sip of smoke slipped through my throat and my eyes. Everything around me was burning by the blazing fire. Through the smoke I was blind. The ominous feeling passed through my body. Running through the fire made my skin stinging but It couldn't make me stop. The only thing that in my mind was to getting out of this place. The grey smoke surrounded me, I saw him and closed my eyes.

Lines nine through twelve describe the dying out of a flame -- the final extinguishing of a light:

Magnificent, heavenly light filters through the wispy clouds, signifying a new day. The thin clouds slowly drift apart, presenting a beautiful sky beneath. Speaking out to me, the sky seems to know every one of my thoughts, my dreams, my darkest fears. The sky is but a canvas of light, creating a new picture within seconds. Weaving a story through the delicate clouds, the picture grows beyond the expanse of sky. The colors splay before me, painfully beautiful and simple. Pink hues morph into vibrant purples as they blend with the beautiful blues. The glittering stretch of sea shines before my eyes. With every new wave, the light from above whispers promises of riches and sparkling diamonds. The light breeze that kisses the sea sends the twinkling light back into the air above.