A vibrant gush of oranges and reds
dance across my bedroom walls.
Their radience gaudily painting
the monotonous white with
morphing thrills and elation.
The mural of my life
emanates from the flames,
and the sacred fading Sunset
ebbs out its final
luster before dissolving
into the gloom of night.
Its stunning radiance
framed by the billowing
smoke, exuding from
the devouring flames,
nibbling at my toes.
The flame’s fiery hue blends
in with the Sunset’s angelic brilliance
as its vigor incinerates
the carpet and crawls up
my bed covers like
an un-loved child.
The embers tickle my toes,
and gnaw at my palms,
as the fire leaps to
encase me within a warm embrace,
searing my skin.
Loving flames caress
my body, while burned clothes
disintegrate to dust.
Licking my face,
skin peels like wilting ash,
flittering to the ground
and caught in the
luminosity of the Sunset.
Muscles and skin now
slowly melt in the
heat of adoration,
dribbling off my cheek bones
like water droplets,
pooling on the collapsing bed.
Melting from the fire’s
tender cuddles, I glance,
from my dissolving eye sockets,
one final time at the
divinely dissipating gleams of light.
“What a beautiful Sunset,”
I mutter before crumbling
into celestial dust.
P.S: Hey guys! Been a long time since I posted a poem to YWS, so I thought I'd give it a shot. My poems seem to be getting longer and longer unintentionally... I meant to capitalize "Sunset," but other than that everything is fair game to be reviewed to pieces. Happy reading!
Hallo!
So. This is really well-written, and a lot of the descriptions are really powerful. A few suggestions:
Since you are saying the vibrant gush is the thing dancing, that should be "dances" in the second line. Also, I believe "radiance" is spelled with an "a". Also, the second sentence here isn't an independent clause. I would suggest either changing "painting" to "paints" or just combining these two sentences into one with a comma instead of a period.
I don't really understand what the narrator is saying about the mural of their life. Perhaps clarify that?
Oh. In the last stanza, when it referred to fire, I assumed it was just talking about the sun, but now there's smoke too? I'm a bit confused about this. Is it an actual fire, or just the sunset?
In the first line, I think that should be "flames's" (or without the second "s", depending on which you prefer) because I presume you are referring to the hue of the flames, and not the hue of one flame.
Also in that line, I would suggest describing the hue as more than "fiery". The fact that they are flames implies they are going to look fiery, so "fiery" doesn't add much to the image in the reader's mind of the hue.
Very nice contrast here with the fire burning and searing the person, but being described as embracing them. (Also, I like the ambiguity you have with "warm embrace".)
The second sentence here isn't an independent clause. I would make "licking my face" something like "they like my face" to make it a complete sentence. Also, "caught" should be "catching", unless you say "is caught".
Well. Isn't that a nice image.
Very nice last couple lines.
So, my overall impression here was thus: The poem is good, but not all that it could be. Sunsets have so much potential in them for descriptions, especially with the fire you use to describe it. You evidently have a large vocabulary that you use really well, so I feel as if you could have used a lot more metaphor and such to make the descriptions more poignant. A lot of the stanzas were kind of similar, repeating the same idea, and the descriptions of the fire got a bit repetitive. So, the poem is really good now, but could be even better if you tried to vary the way you described things and used more comparisons and such, perhaps ones that convey more emotion, as there is evidently a lot present.
Anyway, though, this was really well-written. Good job, and good luck with any future writing!
Wherethewindgoes
Hi there, dogsy!
I really like this poem. Your word choice is lovely, and I really like the ideas presented here. It takes me away in swirling images that also remain focused. Nice job.
That being said, there are some issues with it. Many are to do with grammar.
The way you use radiant and gaudy make "painting" a noun instead of a verb, the way you want it to be used. You could say "their radiance gaudily painting" and it would make perfect sense.
"emanating" should be "emanates" so it's not a sentence fragment.
You're describing gloom with melancholy, yes? Well, melancholy needs to be in a different form if this is so. Melancholic would be the correct way to say this.
change "ebbing" to "ebbs" for the same reason as the other.
you need an "is" in between radiance and framed so it's not a sentence fragment.
change "blending" to "blend."
Basically, to make grammatical sense, you (usually; there are exceptions to the rule) need to have an "is" before any verb ending in "ing." Since you do not, and since I think that adding an is would take away from the flow of the poem, I'm having you change the form of the verb so it makes sense. That's why I'm doing this.
tickling >>> tickle
gnawing >>> gnaw
melting >>> melt
You need divine to be an adverb. Divinely works.
There needs to be a comma after sunset and before the quote.
Altogether, I really like it, but also, you use lots of adjectives and adverbs all smushed up next to each other, and that distracts me. I'm not the biggest fan of adverbs, and I suggest that you go back and see which ones are truly necessary to illustrate what you're talking about. Also, try to use as few adjectives as you can (while still illustrating).
Melting here is a bit redundant. You talk about it in the previous stanza, and it seems as if the two overlap in time a bit because you use the same word. I'd use a different word either here or in the previous stanza.
All along, you're describing the fire as tender, and the sunset as beautiful. I'd like to see them perhaps be more of the same thing. I think if the radiance of the sunset is (clearly, it might be now, but it seems like the fire and the sunset are two different things) burning the narrator up, it would make an interesting image. If it is supposed to be that way right now, make that more clear in your poem.
Altogether, nice job. If you have any more questions about it, just PM me. I hope this review was useful to you. Happy poeting!