A kind of hither-thither whisper
Spreads across the yellow-brown veld.
Perfection stares me in the face,
Or rather, it wells up inside of me
As the sun burns the grass a bolder gold.
And somewhere high up an incredible gathering of the winds and the waters.
A cloud is forming, and I can smell in the wind what I recognize to be...
Innocence. Once again I'm a child wondering about that fresh air smell.
Get up and run! God screams.
I feel myself running around and frolicking in this fairy tale scene.
And even for a while God is silenced, and not a decibel of sound, nor of the cricket chirping.
Only the wind and the ground beneath my feet
Only my heartbeat. And His heartbeat.
And then the lightning strikes somewhere.
The fire blazes and I collapse, fear running through me.
My heartbeat speeds up and out of sync with His.
The fire engulfs me. It's over.
As I die slowly I can hear the whisper of the wind.
And something else:
Get Up and Run.
I sense myself a character in some story being told
Climax and final fight. I burst through the flames to face the Devil.
Unarmed I can only Hope.
A swing of my fist... yes! A battlecry:
Quis et Deus!
Climb the tree on the top of the hill and look around.
Paradise is gone, and Hell has arrived.
The fire has surrounded me and as far as I can see
There is only pain and suffering,
Everything that once was now cries out in agony.
Finally Hell finds its way up the tree
And the fearsome creature scurries up.
All of nature turns its sights on me.
The storm clouds brew overhead and the firestorm approaches.
I leap when the lightning strikes and I'm gone.
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137,562 Literary Works • 672,043 Reviews
Wow, the imagery is FANTASTIC. I really like the story it tells, too. I love the get up and run parts, don't really know why. The first part is my favorite, i can just feel it. I like this line as well: Perfection stares me in the face,
Or rather, it wells up inside of me
One thing, is that i would change that all i see is pain and agony part to something more visually descriptive or another adjective, it just sounds really angsty and cliched, but that could just be me.
Everyone else covered the rest.
keep it up!
I like this. It tells a story, but I think you should space the lines up a bit. Make the paragraphs less bunched, that way your poem will be easier to read and less intimidating. With the current spacing I read what you're saying but It's hard to fully comprehend the story because all the words are so close together.
Anyway, shows promise. Just do that and more people will comment.
I like this. Its very vivid and flows like lyric poetry should. Bravo.
I thought this was interesting. Things I liked: the use of imagery, the emotion, and the spirituality. I liked the imagery because it was vivid. You could kind of see the sun blazing on the field of yellow veld and the reddish glow of a fire. But to improve upon this, you could probably add more sensory things, like the heat off of the fire and the way it crackles and smells. This way you could make it sort of more menacing. The emotion and spirituality are good because I'm agnostic, yet I can really feel them, like I'm the character myself. As for the things you could work on, I saw a few sllight errors in grammar, just things like adding the word "and" or inserting a comma, simple stuff you'll probably find if you read through critically. The other thing is that I didn't quite understand the ending. What did the lightning stand for? Was it God? I hope this helps because this is a really good, spiritual poem, and I think you could probably even get it published someday if you tweak it.