Fire

fire
bright inferno
or
dull flicker
Catches the eye
won’t let go
it dances
and laughs
and spreads
its
ecstasy

but

somesay
its joy
is dangerous
and painful
and
treacherous

because

when fire departs
only
only
black ashes
and memories
are left
smoldering
with the grief
of a lost happiness
or
perhaps a life

but

just maybe
just perhaps
there is
a fire
blinking
flickering
growing
in
everything
and everyone
and
when the fire
engulfs
the person or thing or place
or animal
they, them, us
are together
as one with the
love in us
and around us


Or

perhaps not



This is my attempt at a free form poem.

Wow, nice.

I like the flow of this, but it gets repetitive near the end. You could easily shorten this by cutting out wordiness and replacing it with striking similes, metaphors, and imagery. For example, get into the taste, smell, or emotion of fire, not just what you can see. What feelings does fire provoke inside you?

Overall, I think this leans towards sounding scientific. You can easily push it in the other direction and make it dreamy, passionate, and romantic.

Great job! Keep writing!

I'm not a big fan of "free form" because everyone I have seen (mostly) try to write it on here uses "free form" as an excuse to ignore basic rules of... well, everything.

For this one, you need more punctuation. Or, rather, punctuation in general. It was OK. I think the line breaks are all too sudden, start-stop-start-stop, and you could really use a lot more imagery. Fire is such an amazing piece of nature; it destroys, and yet it also helps restart the forests' growth. It smells a certain way depending on what is burning, it is hot, it makes crackling noises, and pops. There is so much imagery you are ignoring! And the poem... it has a theme, a deeper meaning, but it is a weak one, it seems like you are just dancing around the idea, as if you aren't sure what the idea is.

If you would like to read a good example of a free form poem, take a look at RIP by Cade. It's really good, and amazing. Honestly, people think free form is some amazing thing. It just means you aren't rhyming or using rhythm... nothing special.

I don't like the line breaks in this, primarily because it doesn't fit with the theme.
I always think of fire as flowing and hungry, but your poem seems kind of disconnected and jerky. I know it's free-form, but I don't think the erratic line breaks did it any good.
To fix this, I think you should tie together your ideas more; get rid of the line breaks, give this a better flow.

That brings me to point two; depth. Right now this is a very simple poem.
And there's nothing wrong with that - simple poetry can be beautiful - but if you were trying to make this deep and complex, well...no, it didn't work. I agree with Suzanne that you were kind of just dancing around the idea of fire.
If you do want to give this depth, ask yourself some questions. What do you see when you look into fire? (Besides the obvious - dancing flames etc -) What does it remind you of? What do you feel near fire? And so on.

But don't be discouraged!
You've got a nice idea with this - albeit slightly overused - and I think you can make this really good. Don't give up!
Keep writing,
Camille

*squirms* Aww, Suzie gave you a link to something of mine...*giggles*

She does have a point--free form poetry doesn't mean "list random words with no sentence structure." It just doesn't have a specific structure like, say, a sonnet or a villanelle.

One thing that might help you...remember that poetry was originally, and still really is, a spoken art form. I'm not talking about just performance poetry...It began as a spoken form and is very similar to music in that rhythm and sound are very important to its success. Read a good published poet's work aloud--sounds good, huh? The words feel natural, the poem is comfortable, it creates a mood.

Now try reading your poem aloud. It's choppy, it's list-like, it jumps from subject to subject. Try instead to write in complete sentences about fire. Be concise and be precise. And don't go with the same-old same-old...we all know that fire is hot. What can you say about it that we haven't heard before? Cliche is a dangerous thing, and right now it looks like your poem has ingested an unhealthy amount of it.

Good luck!
-Colleen

It's kind of random... but it does capture the "essence" of fire.

very nice,the over all flow was good