Please visit Paul’s blog to read all the contributions. There are some excellent poems there.
I chose to incorporate both images proposed for this prompt as they seemed linked to me. The first, by Marcel Herms is entitled And the fire…will stop. The second By Terry Chipp, is entitled Apparition.

The man in the flames

The man (it’s always a man)
in the flames, beneath the bullets,
hanging from the tree, cords creaking,
cracking bones and slow strangulation,
screams.

They cackle, the crowd of witnesses
or turn away, bored— Next!
Some slink away into their private darkness
to lick wounds and plot,
and when the words are written,
the arms honed and oiled,
and the vision (there’s always a vision)
appeared, verified and transcribed
into common parlance, they come out,

eyes bound (black to keep in the blackness)
against the blinding dazzle
of a sun (there’s always the sun)
they…