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Jul 23, 2026
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CHAPTER 2 - The Devils Daughters - From Burning Fire to Blood Red
The heavy iron beams fall with a roar,
to bar the four sisters inside the door.
The ticking clock counts as the fire grows high,
as thick columns of black smoke chokes the sky.
"We must break free!" Belle bellows to her crew,
as orange embers choke their narrow view.
The Viper locks her eyes upon the wall,
"Blast through the timber, lest we choke and fall!"
Young Jessie reaches for her powder keg,
no time to argue, compromise, or beg.
She hurls the charge with a malicious grin,
to save her sisters from the roaring din.
The Viper aims and fires her trusted gun,
the bullet hits the mark; the deed is done.
The powder detonates with sudden boom,
and shatters wood to break their burning tomb.
They leap through cinders to the trail outside,
where lines of hidden marshals safely bide.
The lawmen shout and draw from leather hip,
as Belle cocks back her hammer, letting rip.
The Hell Cat then giggles and lights a stick,
her fingers are nimble, her movements quick.
She tosses the powder right at the crowd,
the blast splits the night with a roar so loud.
Now Sadie unholsters her twin chrome plates,
to seal the modern execution dates.
The Viper aims fast as she drops the rest,
a heavy rain of lead straight through the chest.
The dirt road is painted a bloody red,
every last deputy is lying dead.
They choke on smoke, escaping from the flame,
while Sadie trembles at the Marshal's name.
They leap on their horses and ride away,
to leave the fallen baron in decay.
The desert air cools down their fire warmed skin,
but silence grows heavy from fear within.
Belle asks for the truth of the note so stark,
as horses kick dust through the shadows dark.
"The Marshal comes to take my severed head,"
Sadie confesses with a mounting dread.
"He tracks our boots, he knows my legal name;
my vile ex-husband orchestrates this game."
The four phantom outlaws ride through the night,
with pistols all loaded and primed to fight.
They hunt for a town in the desert sand,
to find Marshal Cain and to take a stand.
Chapter 3 To be continued....................
— Ray Bear (RJ Bear), Jul 23, 2026
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About This Poem
Review Request Direction:
What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Review Request Intensity: I appreciate moderate constructive criticism
Editing Stage: Polished draft
Critiques
neopoet
3 weeks 3 days ago
Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem commits fully to its genre, and that commitment is one of its clearest strengths. The rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter hold a steady beat that suits the propulsive action, and the meter rarely stumbles. Lines like "The dirt road is painted a bloody red, / every last deputy is lying dead" land their beat cleanly and give the escape sequence a driving momentum that matches the events being described.
The cast is handled with some economy. Each of the four women gets a distinct moment and a distinct method: Cora reads the wall, Jessie sets the charge, the Viper handles the gunplay, Sadie carries the emotional weight of the pursuit. The choice to reveal Sadie's fear at the very end, after all the bravado of the fight, gives the poem a turn worth having. The line "but silence grows heavy from fear within" is a useful pivot from spectacle toward stakes.
A few craft matters could sharpen the whole. The action relies heavily on repeated verbs of aiming and firing, and this repetition begins to flatten the sequence. The Viper "aims true," then "aims fast"; guns are drawn, cocked, and let rip in quick succession. Because each stanza delivers roughly the same beat of shoot-and-hit, the middle stretch loses tension where it should be building it. One approach would be to vary what the danger actually is stanza to stanza, so each escape feels like a fresh problem rather than another discharge.
The naming carries some strain as well. The women are called by given names, then epithets like "The Hell Cat" and "The Viper," then "four sirens," then "four phantom shadows." These labels compete rather than accumulate, and a reader may lose track of who is who. Settling on a consistent way of referring to each figure would let the distinctions register more firmly.
The imagery leans on stock phrasing that does much of the same work twice, as in "orange and red flames" alongside the later "fire warmed skin," where the fire is named without being made particular. A single unexpected image of the smoke or the light would do more than several conventional ones. The strongest visual moment, the road painted bloody red, works precisely because it is concrete and slightly surprising; the poem could use more of that specificity and less of the generic heat and roar.
One small point of clarity: the "dead baron in swift decay" arrives without prior grounding, and a reader without Part 1 may not know who this is or how the character relates to the burning building. A brief anchoring detail earlier would help the ending land for those meeting the story here.
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Misspoetrynportraits
3 weeks 3 days ago
A fun read 😁
A fun read 😁
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