I can taste the color purple

I can taste the color purple trickling down the back of my throat
And feel the unraveling scent of a used bar of soap

I hear the way your hair curls as it twirls around my finger
And smell the warmth of your laughter as it dances in my eyes

People call me foolish or dillusional for describing what isn’t there
When all you have to do is open your eyes as if light were penetrating them for the first time

Smell sweet roses
Wrap yourself up in a simple embrace
Hear the birds chirping in the morning
Taste the cool snowflake on the tip of your tongue

Learn to appreciate the little things in life
Live like there is no tomorrow
Explore every experience there is with all your senses
For no sense and experience is mutually exclusive
Paint your rainbows in the sky

You can taste the color purple

Comments & reviews · 11
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User avatar
ToritheMonster
Comment

Gasps! You have synestesia? Or is this poem coincidental?

I love this in every single way! No nitpicks, only positive comments from me! Keep on writing, you have a talent!

~Lindsay
"There is no honorable way to kill, no peaceful way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending." -Abraham Lincoln

User avatar
katchaerin
Review

Hey there!
I like it.
Your descriptions are clear, and I felt as if I were in your place. :)
Your theme was likeable. :))

Keep writing! I'll be reading more of your works.
Kudos to this great job done!

-KAT <3

User avatar
TheModernist
Review

I agree with all the above posts which say that the poem is "choppy" and could benefit from a bit of punctuating, but I really like what you're trying to do with it. The first part, the one with couplets, seems to be describing an experience where this color purple transcends the realms of mere color and becomes alive:

"I can taste the color purple trickling down the back of my throat
And feel the unraveling scent of a used bar of soap"

"I hear the way your hair curls as it twirls around my finger
And smell the warmth of your laughter as it dances in my eyes"

The second stanza is a little disconcerting for two reasons. First, you move away from the first image, which the reader is inclined to feel is important since it directly related to the title, and second, it brings in a different character: "you" which is only referenced one other time in the poem.

"People call me foolish or dillusional for describing what isn’t there
When all you have to do is open your eyes as if light were penetrating them for the first time"

I almost feel as if you can end the poem right there, or that this should be moved towards the end of the poem as you build towards a conclusion, and have more images and examples preceding the third couplet.

Then the poem shifts form,Based on the first stanza, it felt a little like I was reading a different poem altogether:

"Smell sweet roses
Wrap yourself up in a simple embrace
Hear the birds chirping in the morning
Taste the cool snowflake on the tip of your tongue"

You return to more imagery. The only suggestion I'd make here is that the imagery lacks a focus, and that unity becomes clear in the last stanza but it distances itself from the title, based on that I would suggest either you tighten and unify the poem or make a title change, maybe both.

"Learn to appreciate the little things in life
Live like there is no tomorrow
Explore every experience there is with all your senses
For no sense and experience is mutually exclusive
Paint your rainbows in the sky"

I do like the third and fourth lines, because they're true and put in a way that's not often said, the same cannot be said for the other three lines: avoid cliche

You can taste the color purple

This tag-on seems like you realized you may have lost track of the core-imagery, like what you described in the first couplet, and so in an attempt to bring it back, you just sort of tagged it on.

I like what you're trying to do, and like your message which seems to be basically that a color can be tasted, touched, seen, heard, smelt, sensed with the mind, a sort of call to embrace and feel the enormous intrinsic simple beauty of the world through out senses.

As I said before: This needs to be tightened.

The Modernist

User avatar
Panda326
Review

Hey there. This poem was...... interesting. I as well got a bit lost, and found it hard to understand this. This is perhaps just me though, so I don't know. I actually got lost after the first two lines, after that, I didn't seem to get it till the last two stanzas. Other then that, and what the others have said, nice work.

A poem of greatness or what may have you. Nice, Great, Excellent and what not. Only I can say, try to check every spelling of the word for it makes your poem too odd to read at.

beccalicious94 wrote:I can taste the color purple trickling down the back of my throat
And feel the unraveling scent of a used bar of soap

I hear the way your hair curls as it twirls around my finger
And smell the warmth of your laughter as it dances in my eyes

People call me foolish or dillusional for describing what isn’t there
When all you have to do is open your eyes as if light were penetrating them for the first time

Smell sweet roses
Wrap yourself up in a simple embrace
Hear the birds chirping in the morning
Taste the cool snowflake on the tip of your tongue

Learn to appreciate the little things in life
Live like there is no tomorrow
Explore every experience there is with all your senses
For no sense and experience is mutually exclusive
Paint your rainbows in the sky

You can taste the color purple

Random avatar
blackbird12
Review

Hi, beccalicious! Some of the images here are good, but you have some major issues that need to be addressed immediately to strengthen your basic writing skills. First, punctuation. Use it. There's absolutely none of it here, and that really destroys the flow. Think of it this way--punctuation tells the reader when to pause, and if there's no punctuation, then ostensibly this whole piece is meant to be read in a single breath. I doubt you want it that way. Secondly, the length of your lines. Honestly some of these lines are so long that it feels like prose smashed into lines of verse, particularly this stanza:

People call me foolish or dillusional for describing what isn’t there
When all you have to do is open your eyes as if light were penetrating them for the first time


Look at how painfully long that second line is. And as mentioned before, "delusional" is misspelled in the first line.

Learn to appreciate the little things in life
Live like there is no tomorrow
Explore every experience there is with all your senses


These are all cliches, in this case trite platitudes on life. Cliches are hands-down the surest way to kill any poem's credibility.

And a few nitpicks...

I hear the way your hair curls as it twirls around my finger


"Hear the way your hair curls"? I don't know about you, but I have no idea what hair "sounds" like, unless it's really stiff and starched--then it cracks.

You can taste the color purple


The title of this poem is what caught my interest, but it's a disappointment because you never explain it at all. The idea of tasting a color is creative, but then you never give me the vaguest detail as to what purple actually tastes like. It's your job as the writer to describe your ideas to the reader in-depth. Otherwise I'm just left with an empty image.

So, overall:
1.) punctuation!
2.) remember that this is verse and not prose, so every word counts, and lines should not so long as you have here
3.) unique description that employs strong word choice.
above all else...
4) avoid cliche!

I can taste the color purple trickling down the back of my throat
And feel the unraveling scent of a used bar of soap
I like this. Great imagery and description. :D Good start.

I hear the way your hair curls as it twirls around my finger
And smell the warmth of your laughter as it dances in my eyes
How can you hear the way someones hair curls? And smell the warmth of laughter. Perhaps if you interchanged them?

People call me foolish or dillusional delusional for describing what isn’t there
When all you have to do is open your eyes as if light were penetrating them for the first time
This line is a bit weird. It's completely crashed the flow of the poem.

Smell sweet roses #FF0000 ">---> Should have some kind of punctuation
Wrap yourself up in a simple embrace
Hear the birds chirping in the morning
Taste the cool snowflake on the tip of your tongue
I dont see any punctuation in this stanza.

Learn to appreciate the little things in life
Live like there is no tomorrow
Explore every experience there is with all your senses
For no sense and experience is mutually exclusive
Paint your rainbows in the sky
This seems a bit preachy..like a grandfather giving his grandson advice before he dies when its meant to be a Lover Poem-I think. Punctuation is also inexistent here.

You can taste the color purple
No I cant. :P On a more serious note. This line doesn't do anything for the poem you might as well just cut it off completely.

I liked your imagery, the flow wasn't the best and the poem seemed to be all over the place. Your punctuation wasn't anywhere to be found.

Keep Writing

Anger :D

User avatar
GagaBowie
Review

Hi,
I really enjoyed this poem. The imagery used it very detailed.
The one criticism i have is that i think this poem would work better if the poem had rhyming stanzas and lines. I just feel the flow would be more smooth, but hey - it's your poem. :)
Hope this helps and if you want me to review any other pieces I will.

User avatar
Torigirl15
Review

this was a very choppy poem, and i thought it should have had a little more flow to it. I liked the idea behind it though, and maybe if you had changed your word choice, and fluxuated the lines a little bit more, it would be an excellent poem.
you also sound a little repetative in a couple places, but that could be easily fixed with one simple word change. Good idea for a poem though!!!

User avatar
LadyPurple
Review

Hiya Beccalicious. Looks like I'll be your critique person tonight. I found a little nit pick.

beccalicious94 wrote:People call me foolish or #FF0000 ">delusional for describing what isn’t there
When all you have to do is open your eyes as if light were penetrating them for the first time

Delusional was spelled wrong.
Well...I kind of got lost.... It's good but I just got lost. I like the sensory language though.
~Ladypurple.



A big mountain of sugar is too much for one man. I can see now why God portions it out in those little packets.
— Homer Simpson