Freedom Burning

this old house
creaks and groans
and settles in the dark

cobwebs and terror
hide in closets
and under the bed

lies lived here

but tonight
they are evicted

gasoline
cigarettes
sin ignited

freedom
burning

Reviews

[absent]

Seriously. You have a way with creating images that haunt. I love your abrupt, gut-punching lines: "lies lived here". I love that you are telling a story without revealing everything and I can fill in the blanks myself. A good writer lets the reader decided some things for themselves. :D

[Elizabeth]

Thank you for the generous praise. I have a thing about brevity, you may have picked up on that :P

[realmwriter]

Now that is a powerful image and damn if I wish I could go back tomy old haunts and watchthem burn as matcg I flant. I love this poem. In so few lines it capturers raw emtion and polishes to fine image indeed. Very well done...! :)

[Elizabeth]

Thank you :)

[realmwriter]

Your very welcome..! :)

[Kaylor Mason]

I love this--I got the feeling of staring at an old wretched house that holds your childhood, all your bad memories, fears, and painful past, and being set free from them by watching it go up in smoke. Burn it down, build a new house, new home, new life, new self from the ground up. I can't tell you how much I wanted to do that to the house I grew up in. I still want to do it

[Elizabeth]

You got just exactly what I was trying to show.

[K. Edward Warmoth]

i came away from this with a very insurrectionary feeling. I don't know if you meant to imply any of the anti-imperialist lines I'm drawing, but that's what I got out of it.

[SpokenWord]

Burning the past by burning down the house. I would say that is how to move on into the next phase of life without any baggage to hold one back. Short structure adds to the meaning of your words here, nicely done.

[V.B.]

Like walking on a cloud with a pocketful of razorblades.

Incredibly economy of language here. Never using a single word more than you needed to tear a hole in the atmosphere. Excellent work Elizabeth, or Alice, or whoever you are. :)

[Chris Smith Welshpoetcs]

This gives me chills, burning the memories because they hurt too much. I found this a powerful read my friend.

[Derek S.Keck]

I love this; you've buried me under an avalanche of meaning and symbol in a minimalist piece. When poetry reads like its bled is what defines it as great poetry(in my mind). Wonderful!

[OT]

hmm it could be freedom dying but I took it differently - the sense of freedom - breaking through the brittle old structures - igniting "sin" to burn loudly - the cobwebs and terror of the old house - people dislike change - clinging to their cobwebs as the fires rage around! in this case let it burn free and strong!

[Calypso]

I'm sure there is a lot of people who want to burn down their old houses.