Torch Song ~ poetry by Ronnie Sirmans

Torch Song

His normal identity: Johnny Storm.1
I tell him: Now that’s a hero’s name.
The Human Torch? That’s every man2
I’ve dated, who’ll burn you every time
after making promises. Doesn’t matter
if he’s a hot-headed superhero3 or not.
When you don’t have a secret identity,
why do you even need an alter ego?
But Johnny even uses a catchphrase:
“Flame on!”4 he says as he ascends
like an angel ablaze. And when he
turns himself off, his skin is warm.
And I ask him if he understands
that his combustion is a miracle.
Immolation first appears in the Bible
among Sodomites and Gomorrahians.5
Divine fury burns: Do people today
even remember Nadab and Abihu?6
The Human Torch cannot be loved
because he is all consumed by fire,
and so I have to keep my distance
or the heat will dry out my eyes
and will start singeing my hair.
He’s a metaphor for desire,7 I say,
but unflamed Johnny just shrugs back.
After a mission, he comes to my place
and catches me crying. “What’s wrong,
babe?” he asks. “No supervillainy,”
I tell him. It’s just the regular news.
“People on the other side of the world
are setting themselves on fire,” I say.
The martyrdom is spreading to protest
the evil that normal human beings do.8
Johnny Storm, my hero, doesn’t light up
as he engulfs me, yet I can’t breathe.9
His own fire doesn’t burn his skin,
and his actions don’t inspire rallies
or help push vile leaders’ downfalls.
But these other men self-succumb
to the whirlwind of heat and fury.
They all know they can’t turn it off,
but still they must try to save the world.

  1. First appearance: The Fantastic Four #1, cover date Nov. 1961. Johnny Storm aka The Human Torch was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
  2. The original Human Torch wasn’t a man; he was an android. He debuted in Marvel Comics #1, cover date Oct. 1939. This incarnation was created by Carl Burgos.
  3. Firestorm’s hair burns like a blaze; Ghost Rider has a flaming skull.
  4. The Urban Dictionary claims there is a gay or sexual reference when non-superhero people use the term “Flame On!”
  5. Genesis 19:24-26.
  6. Leviticus 10:1-2.
  7. Such desire has been popularized often on the hot music charts, including Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” (1963), Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” (1984), Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain” (2011) and Drake’s “Fire & Desire” (2016).
  8. The self-immolation in December 2010 of Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi is credited with spurring the Tunisian Revolution and Arab Spring. Other such self-immolations in recent years have also served as catalysts for political and civic movements. Some of the people survive.
  9. The National Fire Protection Association reports that most fire deaths aren’t caused by burns but by smoke inhalation and thus being unable to breathe. Before your body is subsumed by the blaze, your heart has already suffered serious damage.

Ronnie Sirmans is an Atlanta modern media company’s digital platforms editor whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Tar River Poetry, Plainsongs, Journal of the American Medical Association, OutWrite Journal, and elsewhere. Find him on Instagram and X @RonSirmans.