five velvet ounces and a bar of soap | Teen Ink

five velvet ounces and a bar of soap

December 5, 2009
By laurenz GOLD, Phoenix, Arizona
laurenz GOLD, Phoenix, Arizona
12 articles 11 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Writing is not a job, something you do. It’s something you are, something you can’t not be. Being a writer is … about being so bewitched by language that writing seems real, and life by comparison feels like a dream." ~ Adair Lara


passenger asterisk with an undefined slope
peripheral glove on the nighttime lamppost
damaged tomato behind the key lime pie

write out your apologies in flavored ink
lick the envelope and send it to no one
and stop letting the world
pass you by.


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This article has 3 comments.


on Feb. 22 2010 at 7:13 pm
thesouth_star BRONZE, Northville, Michigan
1 article 2 photos 8 comments
Hmm. The transition is stark, yes. I don't want to exactly recommend anything specific... maybe add a line or word of transition? You could also perhaps use repetition somehow to pull the two stanzas together. I may just be silly, though.

laurenz GOLD said...
on Feb. 17 2010 at 6:17 pm
laurenz GOLD, Phoenix, Arizona
12 articles 11 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Writing is not a job, something you do. It’s something you are, something you can’t not be. Being a writer is … about being so bewitched by language that writing seems real, and life by comparison feels like a dream." ~ Adair Lara

Thanks for the feedback - I appreciate it! I'm open for suggestions about how to make the piece more overall coherent/consistent. Conceptually, it's about being forgotten, feeling inferior/unimportant... the first and second stanzas certainly have a different purpose. In the first, I was trying to mix vague surrealism with a certain tangibility, and to give the reader an intuitive sense of the overall message without spelling it out, particularly with the first word in each line (passenger, peripheral, damaged). In the second, I wanted to draw those images abruptly to reality and speak directly to the reader, in an attempt to make them feel like those images that seem distant in the first stanza... I was definitely going for a sudden/stark transition, but I had hoped it would be effective like that... I wanted the emotional impact to not really hit the reader until in the last two lines. Would you recommend a stanza in between the two perhaps, to more effectively and gradually link them? Or something else perhaps? I'm open to any suggestions (from thesouth_star or anyone else who would like to give feedback).

on Feb. 17 2010 at 6:01 pm
thesouth_star BRONZE, Northville, Michigan
1 article 2 photos 8 comments
I love where you were going with the first stanza. I feel like the second stanza kind of falls apart? Separately, the two stanzas are great, but together... I just feel like they don't fit?

But I absolutely love the first stanza. The imagry is great.