Anak Krakatau

[moonbird]

Her red hair is dancing
across the sky
like flames.
It turns the heavens to blood.

Her footsteps echo
all through the silent hills.
Her bare feet make
the trees
quiver.

There is no time to run.
Her fiery breath licks
the air.
The wind rolls over her
shoulders.

She dances passionately,
and she is blinded by her own rage,
and in her wild fury
she rips herself apart,
tearing with jagged
fingernails
at her fair skin.

She is ribbons of fire,
streaks of blood across the sky.

Then she is only dust.

[mpdague]

I really like your depiction of the volcano, especially the close, but stanza two seems a bit off.

[hillwalker]

Great imagery here... but like the previous poster I also felt 'footsteps' in verse 2 is rather misplaced. Perhaps it is the pulse or the beating heart of the mountain that provides the echo? Since a mountain is to all intents and purposes fixed in one place?

Also 'There is no time to run' in verse 3 presumably applies to people trying to flee the destruction - which is not especially clear (unless you inserted the words 'for us' or 'for them' so the reader is not tempted to link the image of running to the 'footsteps' in the preceding verse).

And similarly 'She dances passionately' is a powerful image, but not easy to equate with a mountain.

If you sort out the metaphors this can be an even better piece. The closing 3 lines make up for any flaws that have gone before.

H

[klatch]

I really like the line 'It turns the heavens to blood.'

[Haunted]

Powerful opening and great choice of subject. But the early images persuaded me to think it's a brush fire as I don't associate heavy molten lava with "dancing". For a volcanic eruption I would do it a bit differently, perhaps something like this:

She shakes her head in a tantrum
her red hair flies up to fill the sky
turning the heavens to blood

And since you already used "blood" in the first stanza, repeating it toward the end weakens to another image that's conceptually wrong.

Once "It turns the heavens to blood", it can't have "streaks of blood across the sky", because it's completely red and you wouldn't see any individual red streaks.

I hope I didn't rip too much into your poem, I think it's great, it just needs to be air-tight.

[blank|verse]

An enjoyable poem, moonbird, great use of personification.

I felt the opening was strong and drew me into the poem, but felt it could have done with something more, something different, rather than a reiteration of the original idea. Needed a kick like you get in sonnets when the volta arrives to flip the poem around. Still, good effort.