A man, all dressed in black,
Cloaked in the night
He was all too familiar with,
His clothes, draped
Almost looked like they
Might fall right off of him
Chaos buzzed around him
Electrified the air,
Sirens raised the roof of the night
While the smoke brought it back down
People running for their lives,
Him with nothing to run for.
Some where distant,
Music bleared, the beat
Was the only audible thing
The heart and soul of the song
Penetrated the night,
Almost like a homing beacon
A thing to lead you to home,
To state where you could
Enter the euphoric place
Known only to partiers as
"The zone" where the music
Took over your body,
Did what it wanted with it,
It could make some stand there
Others jumped and shook,
As if possessed, by the demons
Of rock and roll
At the party, the Grateful Dead
Woke their dead.
Alone in his own zone
The man stood there,
Flames burning all around
Beams crashing to the floor
Firemen screaming,
Police and Ambulances
Siren blaring, attempting to do
The jobs of a thousand men
With slightly under a hundred
The largest force of civil troops,
Smaller then the smallest army in the world
Could fight like the largest
When called upon,
But all this was irrelevant to the black man
His face covered in soot
His clothes smelling of smoke
The Heat, the flames,
The smoke, the black soot,
All irrelevant, the bass beat,
Heard from a dozen miles,
Barely distinguishable above the sirens
Had dropped him into an in feeling,
That any mortal would be unable to describe,
Even when the flames hit his pants,
Made them startling orange and yellow colours
Even when his flesh was melting off him
Right up until he could not move,
His foot tapped the beat of the distant song,
An eternal testament to the power of music.