Sometimes I lose things.
Sometimes it's little things.
Things like my ipod or my keys.
Bobby pins and chapsticks often evanesce without warning or cause.
Sometimes I lose bigger things.
Things like my favorite sweater or my school bag.
Things like the reason I came into a room,
Or the memories of what I had for breakfast that morning.
Sometimes I lose my train of thought, or the point I was trying to make or an idea.
Sometimes I lose arguments.
Sometimes I lose friends.
I like to think all the things I lose go to the same place.
A plain white place full of hair ties and dollar store bracelets,
And I like to think they all wait there, patiently.
Wait there to be found.
One day I lost my passion.
It floated away like a helium balloon drifting toward the sun.
But I couldn't let it go.
I chased it into the sky,
Past the moon and the stars and the milky-way,
I followed it into the white place,
I faced a sea of bobby pins and hair ties and chap-sticks.
I faced all those lost arguments and ideas and aspirations and promises,
And I told them I was sorry.
They asked me why I never came looking for them, why I'd let them disappear.
I just told them the truth. I said,
Some things need to be lost, so new things can be found.
I tied my passion to my wrist with a piece of twine,
Let it float above my head like a guardian.
It reminds me that so long as that knot holds,
(I double-tied it just to be safe),
It doesn't matter how many things I lose,
I'll keep what matters.
The originality is brilliant. I've never seen anything like this before. Very one-of-a-kind.
The technique is very fine, very precise. It captures the writer's depth of thought, and all the emotions in this, all of that in just a few words.
It affected me deeply. How well this was written, it's like it's happening to you right here, right now.
This was beautiful.
Being free-verse and therefore without any meter, rhyme or rhythm, the poem really was propped up by it's message alone. I'll get to more on that when I critique the technique.
I can say that the jump from "wait there to be found/one day I lost my passion" seemed to ruin the wonderful momentum you had been building up from the first two stanzas, but then you redeemed yourself with the fantastic imagery of the following lines, so the reader wasn't left suddenly thrown into a narrative. I felt the same sort of jump later on with "I faced all those lost arguments and ideas and aspirations and promises/And I told them I was sorry." but it worked really well in that instance, so good job on that one. Just watch out for jamming up the pace of the reader, it can completely change the reception of a poem!
The vision was great - the title caught my fancy, the concept reeled me in and from there on I was happily tugged along for the ride with curiosity.
Though, I can say that the idea of a "Place For Lost Things" is far from original, neither the sentiment of loss and gain. It's one of those things that seem to pop up every now and then in media or quotes, but you can't pinpoint an exact place as to where the idea originated. If that makes sense.
Technique wasn't something that I felt I could rate highly with a poem like this - written simply like speech, presented like dot-points. There is a lack of (more complex) poetic technique that makes your style read like prose. Incidentally, I think when writing free-verse the absence of structure demands more complexity and specificity of words, which can be something to work on in future. Finally, you know repetition can be very effective (and builds up great momentum in this piece) but my advice would be to avoid relying on starting lines with "And," or "Sometimes," as the act of dropping down to a new line already renders the words pointless. Negating the words would have the same effect without the superfluousness, and would create room for more complex imagery.
Anyway, good job! Your style seems more like prose than poetry, and I think it can be hard to find a midway between the two.
It's a nice feeling to carry your poem's happy little concept in your head after reading.
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