Heat Stroke (Edited)

eyes staring, wide
and terrifyingly blank,
he dropped like a stone,
like a felled tree
in a little empty pocket of the steaming,
seething crowd.
the sun beat down with the throb of the drums
and he lay there like a living corpse
in his empty pocket
while we offered our hands, our water
in an awkward way,
embarrassed to be frightened.
he looked twistedly, terribly comic,
with his infantile open mouth, his empty eyes,
and we felt ashamed to look on his
blankness, his suceptibility, and
ashamed to feel ashamed.
the band kept playing as the
crowd parted like a sea and they
took him off,
and people even
five feet ahead stood oblivious,
heads nodding to the beat,
as the sea washed in again, like a healing wound,
leaving no trace
except for the place where he had fallen
which was kept unconsciously clear, as if in memory of him,
where water had splashed from his bottle and
stained the ground
when he fell.
but that, even,
slowly disappeared
in the sun.